Ja, Alkohol ist schlecht für Sie. Aber könnte es uns weniger einsam machen?

Alcohol seems to have lost its grip on American life in recent years.

Younger adults are drinking less. Sober bars and alcohol-free member clubs are cropping up across the country. Nonalcoholic beer sales have soared. And content from influencers promoting a sober lifestyle have proliferated on social media.

But rather than harnessing that momentum, the dietary guidelines that the Trump administration released earlier this month no longer put a concrete limit on alcohol consumption. The new directive is simply to “consume less alcohol for better overall health.”

In explaining the change, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, offered a defense of one of society’s oldest vices: Alcohol has a social benefit, he said.

“Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together,” he said.

His comments landed like a cultural Rorschach test, offering the most high-profile entry yet into an ongoing debate about **whether alcohol is, primarily, a public health problem or a useful social crutch**.

No, it is just paying to feel like you have friends. You may go to the bar and be around people, but it isn’t a meaningful connection. Your friendships will be based around spending and consumption and your hook-ups will be empty and based around excess rather than genuine connection or belonging. Impulsivity and excitement, blah. Don’t ask me how I know. Years of research and vomiting out my feelings to nobody in particular!

Downvote me all you want, I’m divorced and have DUIs, know a ton of murderers and people in prison, I am very lucky not to be. Alcohol has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and decades of my life. My drunk friends are downvoting me. I am alone everyday of my life. I had friends while I was drunk, could go out tonight and spend $200, and have friends for four hours, maybe a boo for six! Feck off.

You downvoting me is a sign of me being alone, look at me, look at what alcohol has done to me, you cowards. You don’t like to see how alone you are, how empty your alcoholic relationships are, but it’s true. In between the bars, alcohol is the only part of your life you can keep together.

I mean yeah, why do you think there are so many bars and almost all social events as a adult include it

There are folks working on developing safer alternatives; there are benzos that produce a similar ‚buzz‘ while being orders of magnitude safer. Unfortunately, getting them approved will be a massive uphill battle, despite the fact that alcohol itself would never be approved given the current standards.

I was listening to a BBC interview on the issue where a psychologist stated that many under 30 could benefit from trading a few liver cells for better social lives that included social alcohol use.

Nanny conservative state tells you to get no vaccines, drink more alcohol and eat like it’s the 1950s. What could possibly go wrong?

I guess this isn’t as bad as those „could 1 drink a day actually be healthy“ articles, but still feels like pro alcohol lobbying.