Everyone’s favorite “Caribbean Queen” Rihanna, made a viral New Year’s Eve announcement that she had successfully made it through 2024 booze-less. Now, only the algorithm truly knows whether her statement was the catalyst for Apple News’s nearly simultaneous follow-up campaign for a dry 2025. However, the timing of GMA’s Riri segment and Apple’s Pavlovian News alert were alarmingly coordinated. But perhaps the reason sober living is trending has less to do with Rhianna’s year-long commitment to the movement and more with keeping up with the youth’s vote to abstain from alcohol altogether.
For all the grief I’ve given Gen Z and Millennials over the years, I must admit when it comes to binge drinking, they are far more responsible than their predecessors were. In my early 20s, taking a 30-pack of Bud Light to the dome and snorting an eight-ball to sober up enough to drive to the afterparty was a routine Thursday through Monday occurrence. But sometimes, the weekends lasted til Tuesdays back then. It depended upon whether the Pats were playing on Monday Night Football, but that’s totally beside the point. Now that my Gen X old wise ass realizes the harmful side effects of boozing it up on the body and mind. Not only through personal experiences but also by watching others methodically destroy their lives throughout a social lifetime. It’s a tragic underbelly of the nightlife scene that you can’t unsee. Nowadays, I may have a handful of alcoholic drinks over the course of an entire year, if that. Although plenty of fun memories were made during those hard-partying days, the list of regretful brawls and activities may have been a bit lengthier during that foggy era. Sadly, it appears Gen Z’s sobriety motivations aren’t all positive. They may be avoiding all the dangerous pitfalls of alcohol. Yet, it may come at the expense of making lasting memories that friendships are based around.
FOR THE ENTIRE “TIME” ARTICLE QUOTED CLICK THE LINK https://time.com/7203140/gen-z-drinking-less-alcohol/
Since drinking is so ingrained in most social aspects of modern society. I guess it’s one of the few healthy side effects of a growingly anti-social generation. Thankfully, what these kids lack in a sense of humor and overall personality, they make up for in resourcefulness. Creating worthy alternatives to a civilization that has rotated around binge drinking events dating back to 7,000 BC. I mean, even the Last Supper had its own accompanying wine-tasting menu. Let’s hope in the future, we can find a good balance between a healthy relationship with alcohol and functional human-to-human companionship. A bar full of drunks can be a potentially deadly cocktail, but so can an abstinent lone-wolf sociopath. Take the recent tragedy in New Orleans, for example. In 2001, my clique tore up Mardi Gras the week following the Pat’s first Superbowl victory at the Superdome, as if we were bulls running through the streets of Pamplona, Spain, in early July. Sure, we allegedly left a trail of lifeless, wannabe-tough guys in our wake. But unlike the victims of the sober white pick-up driver terrorizing Bourbon Street this New Year, they semi-consciously wandered away alive with spilled to-go drinks all over their clothing and lessons learned. Unlike the carnage left behind from this week’s needless party-foul/disaster.
FOR THE ENTIRE “PSYCHOLOGY TODAY” ARTICLE QUOTED CLICK THE LINK https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-case-connection/202208/3-things-making-gen-z-the-loneliest-generation
THE-ANTI-SOCIAL-MEDIA 