Transcript 0:00 [outro music] Thanks for tuning in to Wit and Wisdom with Tom Green, where we start conversations on the things that really matter. This is episode number one hundred and seventy-one of the Wit and Wisdom podcast. 0:15 We're glad you're here. If you enjoy this conversation, I hope you'll share this podcast with a few people you care about. We're always looking to make new friends. 0:28 Okay, if you're listening to this podcast, I'm gonna assume that you survived your self-imposed Dry January for twenty twenty-six. Congratulations. 0:38 That's no small feat for a country that treats alcohol like Italy treats olive oil. The move towards voluntary abstinence in the United States has become a thing. 0:51 What started as a quirky little wellness flex has quietly turned into a social experiment, a reset button after the marathon holiday experience, a time where we spend time with family, and we also drink a lot of booze. 1:07 Yes, it seems like everybody is doing Dry January these days, and roughly one out of three US adults participated last year. Of those, about seventy-two percent made the whole month. Pretty good. 1:19 Another fifteen percent opted for what I like to call Damp January, just cutting back instead of cutting it out entirely, which feels very American, sorta half committed. 1:31 We love self-improvement, but we also love ourselves a loophole. So cheers to you, dry or damp, you get a gold star either way. The case for going cold turkey is stronger than ever, at least in the United States. 1:48 Alcohol wrecks sleep quality, it stresses your liver, it spikes anxiety, and it has a way of turning otherwise rational adults into complete morons. It's a net negative. We know this. The data is clear. 2:05 The Surgeon General has the receipts. Alcohol is linked to liver disease, cancer risk, cardiovascular disease, shortened lifespan, and it remains the drug of choice for twenty-eight million American alcoholics. 2:20 And despite all that, many Americans build their entire lives around drinking. I mean, after all, who can forget Jesus turning water into wine? It wasn't just a miracle, it was a brand launch. 2:35 And I'm guessing that wedding reception was an absolute rager. But context matters. Back then, water could literally kill you. Fermentation wasn't a lifestyle choice, it was a public health strategy. 2:51 Wine inhibited pathogens. Beer was safer than drinking out of the river. Alcohol wasn't just a vice, it was an infrastructure. It also came with medicinal qualities. 3:04 A little red wine for the heart, a little whiskey for the nerves. Yes, alcohol was the original Prozac. And then over time, alcohol evolved into the universal social lube. It made conversation easier. 3:19 It lowered inhibitions. It helped strangers become friends, and friends sometimes become something else. It has a rich history of bringing people together and occasionally ripping them apart. 3:34 But we Americans love a party. We always have. But we actually drink less on average than many European countries. We have fewer long lunches soaked in wine, 3:45 fewer cultural guardrails that say, "Drink, but don't be sloppy." We tend to binge, regret, repent, repeat. We've all been there. But now something strange is happening. 4:01 Alcohol consumption is dropping faster than Prince Harry's approval ratings. And it's not just Dry January. This trend has actually been building for years, 4:12 quietly, across all age groups, all income brackets, and social classes. Fewer drinks per week, fewer nights out, fewer bars, more mocktails on the menu, and more people waking up 4:30 without a bottle of Gatorade or a bottle of Advil next to their bed. On the surface, it sounds like progress, and maybe it is. But cultural shifts are rarely one-dimensional. Every gain comes with a trade-off. 4:46 I think we can all agree that booze lowers inhibitions and helps people relax, especially in social settings. That's why someone you can barely tolerate at six PM can feel like a lifelong friend by eight thirty. 5:00 Alcohol doesn't make people more interesting. It makes them less annoying. What's harder to quantify is what alcohol gives us, or I should say, gave us. 5:12 I'll admit it, that some of my most creative ideas were found at the bottom of a scotch bottle. Not because alcohol made me smarter, but because it made me braver, less self-editing, less perfectionist, 5:27 more willing to throw an idea on the table and see if it survives. And alcohol makes tough conversations easier. It turns boring business dinners into something tolerable. 5:39 It greases the awkward gears of human interaction. And let's not ignore its role in reproduction. You can't underestimate how many accidents were born nine months after a good bottle of Merlot. 5:53 Thank goodness my parents were big Merlot drinkers. And drinking reduces social anxiety. 6:01 It makes approaching a stranger less terrifying, especially one you're attracted to.Without alcohol, many of us would still be single, overthinking our lives, and living in a van down by the river. 6:16 So if alcohol consumption is dropping, what happens to all that? Well, one way to contemplate that is to look at the birth rate. America's birth rate has been falling in lockstep with declining alcohol consumption. 6:32 Are the two directly related? I don't know. But once you see the connection, you can't unsee how deeply alcohol has been woven into the architecture of connection. 6:45 Both alcohol consumption and the birth rate are at an all-time low. Is it a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe social lubrication matters more than we want to admit. And college campuses offer another clue. 7:03 Late-night parties and cheap beer used to be table stakes. You learned who someone really was at 1 a.m. at Waffle House over a plate of scattered, smothered, and covered, not at 10 a.m. in Econ 101. 7:18 But alcohol consumption even among college students is crashing. Only about 52% of students ages 19 to 22 report drinking in the last month. That's also a historic low. But the kids aren't dumb. 7:36 They know that one bad night can live forever in these times. Recorded in 4K, uploaded by a friend, indexed by Google, searchable for the rest of your life. The cost of a bad night has never been higher. 7:54 And the workplace has followed the same arc. After-work happy hours are fading. Office drinking culture is dying. The fastest way to the unemployment line is one ill-advised Christmas party cocktail too many. 8:09 And hitting on the boss's third wife can lead to the unemployment line. Alcohol once played a role in bonding at work. But now, frankly, it's just a liability. And here's the irony. 8:25 If it weren't for alcohol, we might still be a British colony. I'm reaching here, but the Molasses Act of 1733 taxed molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British colonies. 8:41 Colonists responded the only way they knew how, by getting angry and slightly drunk. By 1770, Americans were importing 4 million gallons of rum and distilling another 5 million gallons domestically. 8:59 I suspect that the Revolutionary War wasn't really about tea. It was about rum. And without that argument, we'd be drinking Earl Grey at Starbucks instead of cold brew. 9:13 Yes, believe it or not, history is soaked in alcohol. But cultures often evolve. And today, coffee shops are the new dive bars. As fewer people drink, they're looking for alternative places to commune. 9:31 Spaces that aren't home or work, but somewhere in between. That's why coffee culture is booming. Nearly 73% of Americans drink coffee every day. But at the same time, another business is booming. Cannabis. 9:49 Marijuana use among college students is at its highest level since the 1980s. Legal or not, usage is exploding. It's lower cost, no calories, no hangover. 10:03 I recently went to a bar where the drink menu featured more THC sodas and gummies than beer options. That's not an experiment. That's demand. And cannabis doesn't make you loud. It doesn't make you flirt. 10:20 It doesn't turn strangers into friends. Unfortunately, it turns your couch into a destination. According to a new report from the New York Times, of all places, nearly 18 million Americans now use marijuana almost daily. 10:37 And that figure has tripled since 2012, when only about 6 million people reported daily use. And it's up really dramatically from 1992, when only about a million people smoked weed on a daily basis. 10:52 At the same time, growing research has raised concerns about a potential link between heavy cannabis use and schizophrenia. 11:00 A recent study in Finland tracked 18,000 individuals with cannabis-induced psychosis and found that roughly half were later diagnosed with schizophrenia, prompting renewed debate about the long-term consequences and the legalization of widespread use of marijuana. 11:20 In Virginia, for example, emergency department visits linked to cannabinoid syndrome have increased nearly 29% over a five-year period. So what is cannabinoid syndrome? 11:32 Well, it's a condition in long-term frequent cannabis users that causes cycles of severe nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. 11:41 It's a paradoxical reaction where cannabis often reduces nausea in the short term but triggers recurrent episodes of intense vomiting and abdominal pain after months to years of heavy use. 11:53 It's most often seen in people using cannabis daily. All of this brings us to an unanswered question. Is the reduction in alcohol use really a net positive? 12:06 Well, some would argue that we're finally realizing how bad alcohol is for us. But that doesn't fully track.America's never been more unhealthy or more obese. 12:17 People haven't suddenly embraced wellness or suddenly become more disciplined monks. This is not a moral awakening. The drop in alcohol consumption feels less like a health movement and more like a symptom. 12:31 Fewer opportunities for social interaction, fewer reasons to go out, more reasons to stay in, less reasons to drink alcohol. 12:42 Add to that the increased use of marijuana, and what you find is a very large movement of people who are simply staying home on the couch, using marijuana products, and zoning out. 12:54 See, that nasty pandemic trained us to be alone, and it turns out we liked it. Convenience is seductive, and so is control. But like work from home, that isolation is efficient and also corrosive at the same time. 13:13 So before we start congratulating ourselves on drinking less, we should pause. Which vice is more dangerous, alcohol or isolation? We know what alcohol takes, but we don't yet know what isolation costs. 13:30 But loneliness is linked to depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and early death. There's no question about that. Humans are social animals. We evolved around campfires, not screens. 13:47 Yes, alcohol use is declining, but connection is declining faster. And whatever replaces alcohol won't just shape our health. 13:56 It will shape our relationships, our birth rates, our creativity, our productivity, and our ability to tolerate one another. 14:06 Yes, that quiet, unresolved tension between clarity and connection may just define the next chapter of our lives. Wit and Wisdom is a free weekly podcast for people who are curious about the world. 14:24 If you learned something today, or if this podcast challenged you, or it made you think differently about the world, how about sharing it with a few people you care about? 14:33 Maybe you, too, can have your own honest conversation about the things that really matter. So thanks again for tuning in. I hope you'll come back next week for another episode of Wit and Wisdom. 14:45 And in the meantime, always remember, nothing beats nice.
