Plenty of Americans like a little snort now and then. Some like wine, some beer, some sterner stuff. I'm a beer/whiskey man myself, and I find a tot of bourbon or Irish whiskey before bedtime helps me sleep. For a guy like me who has struggled with insomnia all his life, that's good news.
Through American history, people have taken a drink here and there, although most of us can't approach the cast-iron livers of the Founders, some of whom drank in prodigious quantities. My own father, a Greatest Generation/World War II guy, drank very little; he liked a little Crown Royal in his Coke now and then, and a bottle would last him a year. I drink... well, a little more than the Old Man did.
These days, there's been a lot of talk about the youth of Generation Z, and their abstemious nature. But new research is indicating that it's we aging Baby Boomers, not Gen Z, that are scaling back the most on the sauce.
Seventy-one percent of boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, consumed alcohol in the past six months—the lowest drinking rate of any generation and down 2 percentage points from three years ago, according to IWSR, a market researcher for the global beverage industry.
By contrast, 74 percent of Gen Z who are at the legal drinking age reported drinking in the past six months, up from 66 percent three years ago, as young people in their late teens and 20s catch up with the total adult population drinking rate of 76 percent.
The study challenges assumptions that young people are driving the weak demand and falling sales plaguing the global drinks industry.
“The narrative that Gen Z is the generation of moderation is now conclusively debunked,” said IWSR President Marten Lodewijks.
Things have changed a lot, of course, since the 1970s, when my friends and I regularly indulged, often resulting in the mobile, thunderous earthquakes of drunken excess we called "the weekend." Also, I spent my late teen years (the drinking age in Iowa in those days was 18) working in the local Woolco discount store, and it may seem surprising to some, but retail workers were, at least then, a hard-drinking bunch.
The survey of more than 32,000 people across the 15 largest alcohol markets found that drinkers consumed 3.9 drinks at each occasion, down from 4.4 drinks in 2024 and 2025.
“The moderation trend increasingly appears to be driven by lifestyle choices, resulting in a structural rather than cyclical change,” Lodewijks said.
That may well be. But I have another possible reason.
Read More: New: A Beer a Day Keeps the Blues Away, but Moderation Is Key
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Yes, we Boomers are cutting back on the sauce, indeed. All of my contemporaries, at least the ones I know, sound a similar refrain: We can't party like we used to. And that's the real nub of the matter: We're not as young as we used to be. Hangovers used to be an inconvenience. Now they're agony. In fact, I can't remember the last time I drank enough to have a hangover, because I'm a little worried about what one might do to my aging carcass. Oh, I'm still in pretty decent shape. I found this really great gym that keeps me in reasonable shape; it's called "Alaska." But that shot of the good stuff that, 20 years ago, would have had me reaching for another is these days more likely to start me yawning, and I expect that, not necessarily any big societal trend, is the reason behind more and more Boomers climbing on the wagon.
So if you are, like me, an aging Boomer, and you've noticed you're not as quick to reach for the bottle as once you were, you can quickly discern the reason: Just look in the mirror.
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