Live a long boring life and create lots of value for shareholders
Seriously, people who think that drinking is the only thing to do are the boring ones.
But in your example, when exploring a far-away land, a few beers with the locals in some pub can greatly enhance the experience.
Drugs \o/
I know people who don't drink often, much who still party and are "fun" to be around. And I know people who are boring who don't mind a drink.
I succeeded in quitting and of course it wasn't true. Literally every aspect of my life improved. An addicted mind is an unreliable narrator.
Now imagine there's a magic potion that make it feel like it all goes away even if for just a little while.
Does that help explain it?
The fact one chooses to imbibe instead is not the thing bringing you joy, it’s escapism. So the fact you would conflate that to others that are content and have no need to escape is ass backwards logic.
If the criticism was phased as, “a drink really helps me unwind after a stressful day/week” I’d get it. But it’s usually projected outwards as “you must be boring/miserable for not drinking”. That’s the rub.
Unfortunately these effects are inseparable from less desirable ones: guilt, anxiety, upset guts, hypersensitivity to smells, hair-trigger impatience, flop sweat.
Also I say I’m a non drinker as I think it’s the most accurate description but it’s also not a law or taken super duper literally. Middle aged Me probably averages 3 drinks a year. Some years I might have ten, some years zero. I had a few years where I drank every day. I partied a lot as a teen (regular shitface drunk), quit for most my 20s, then started drinking wines when I was in my early 30s, and quit again and have been super infrequent drinker since (about last 12 years). I’m always surrounded by people drinking, I know they enjoy it, I don’t frown upon them for imbibing. It looks like a hobby to me, people talk about whiskey/wine/brewers like they talk about sports teams. I’m just not very interested in it. Sports either for that matter.
Anyway, you can be quite a successful billionaire and have no one likes you. Being right and rigid is boring, sometimes being unhinged is interesting.
Just because you think your life would be miserable/boring without alcohol, doesn’t mean my actual life without alcohol is miserable/boring. To me, I find people that lean into this projection don’t even realize that their life is already miserable and the drink is what makes things tenable
*checks notes*
"By regularly buying goods from alcohol companies, and especially by making those purchases (and chronic low-level self-poisoning) a core part of your self-identity like a good little consumer!"
Oh wait, was I not supposed to draw attention to that second part?
The guy I was replying to was satirizing beer drinkers as consumerist cogs in the machine. I pointed out that of all the things to criticize someone for enjoying alcohol is probably one of the least corporate. If buying alcohol makes you a monopolist’s bitch then so does buying anything and everyone in the entire world is hopeless.
It’s like claiming solar panels make you a slave to factory owners when they can be used, operated and repaired in a distributed manner. Sure, maybe, but like what a weird hill to die on?
If you've seen anybody who lives for Friday / Saturday night and a Sunday hangover, it fits the consumerist image pretty neatly. Many (obviously not all) are slaves to alcohol.
We've all heard the wine'o'clock jokes from middle aged women in the office, people struggling to complete "Dry January" and similar challenges, colleagues talking about how excited they are to get a drink when they get home.
These people are held under the thumb of a handful or two alcohol companies. In many cases, it's simply a wasted weekend and quite a sum of wasted money, especially when you can't remember any of it.
So as a matter of current reality, alcohol-culture overwhelming means megacorporations. Things could be different... but they aren't.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/sabmiller-ab-inbev-would-dom...
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1 - Luminouslow: "Pfft, health shmelth, the corporations want us to be cowards who don't drink alcohol, and this is playing right into their hands!"
2 - Terr: "That's hypocritical nonsense. If anything, people like you--ones who treat regular alcohol as an important part of their identity and try to ostracize people who don't drink--are the real corporate sheep here."
3 - Subjectsigma: "Alcohol isn't always corporate, people can brew their own at home."
4 - Xornot: "That would be a very different situation than the world we're discussing right now."
5 - Subjectsigma: "But Terr started criticizing people who drink as consumer sheep, which is very unfair because they could have bought locally."
6 - Terr: "Dude, WTF, did you even see what I was replying to!? Where the guy suggested not buying anything was worse!? [Recursion error]
That aside - the more I think about it the more I don’t understand how you could look at such a globally distributed and diverse product as alcohol and think its consumers can be easily stereotyped. Not even months ago in America there was a boycott of a massively popular brand of beer on political grounds; how very sheepish of those consumers!
But that's quite different to thinking the current regime of anti-drug enforcement, incarceration, and generally catastrophic waste of time, resources and lives - is at all a productive or even useful thing to do for society.
I'll discourage everyone from drinking alcohol or smoking weed, but that's very different from thinking any of this should be banned.
Though I'll happily commit to the notion that I suspect you'd get a lot fewer fights among dedicated stoners then drinkers on a friday night.
Okay, but so-what?
This isn't about every single possible alternate universe of alcohol economics, this is about the weird argument given by the parent poster.
Do you really think they were advocating for everyone to engage in self-sufficient home brewing?
It's also quite telling that you consider not drinking a boring life, in my experience (obviously this is anecdotal) people who are not drinking are more active and are typically more open to try new things.
I used alcohol to cope with stress at work/life and when I stopped, the switch flipped and I saw how much I numbed myself to the pain that was necessary to change any of it. I basically grew a pair over 90 days. Now, none of people's manipulation or crocodile tears affect me.
If you are stress- and anxiety-free, you don't have this problem and can afford it, but I highly recommend to people to quit drinking and doing drugs who recognize themselves in what I described.
I however really love the taste of good specialty beers and the meme of drinking a beer while cooking&eating food. Not sure if I want to cut down any further, I enjoy drinking too much. But investing any technique to increase anxiety resistance sounds worthwhile to me, otoh...
Jesus, where is the line. I'm tired of other people to tell me what to eat and drink on a weekly basis.
A study being published saying "this this isn't great for you" is not at all remotely communism.
Also yes people should be allowed to smoke
In a pastrami sandwich, about 50% of the calories will be from the bread alone.
People can eat bread, but when they wonder why it's hard to lose weight they tend to ignore this unconsidered contributor (conversely if you're working in a field or at hard labour job, breads a pretty great, compact calorie source).
Dude but it's their problem. You can get heroin and crack on the streets right now. I do not want things to be banned just because some dumbass is doing it wrong.
Literally reminds me of the anti-cannabis activist who's biggest argument was that "I smoked some weed, went home and they said my relative died and I laughed. Now I think nobody should ever use cannabis and it should be banned completely."
You have been complaining about a study which suggested that people who care about their health might want to re-evaluate their risk appetite in light of updated data.
Yes, assuming that I never have to inhale any of your smoke. Even outdoors. I don't care what you do to your body, but I do care what you do to mine.