The Case for Social Drinking
Americans are trading bar culture for wellness apps and mocktails. But despite alcohol’s many shortcomings, our national sobering up is not a simple cause for celebration. We’re also losing social spaces and traditions in an increasingly alienated society.
Alcohol sales volume fell 2.8 percent in the first seven months of 2024 alone. (iStock / Getty Images)
One Thursday night in October, I noticed a man in his mid-twenties sitting alone at a Pennsylvania brewery where I host a weekly trivia night. But he didn’t spend the night drowning his sorrows. Instead, I watched in real time as he befriended complete strangers over a few rounds of beer — a scene I’d seen play out many times before. Now not only does he return to the bar every week with his new pals, but one of them recently got him initiated into a neighborhood social club. Just a few months after their boozy introduction, he wailed a song at a trivia teammate’s karaoke party on New Year’s Eve. I know this because I was there too, invited after a few months of socializing at the brewery.
Stories like these of alcohol-aided serendipity increasingly sound like relics of America’s glory days. The COVID-19 pandemic froze social drinking at bars and house parties, and it has yet to fully thaw. Not only has Dry January been extra dry this year, but the rest of the calendar is drying out too. Young people are increasingly booze-free or “sober curious.”
This development isn’t universally a bad thing. Alcohol’s many downsides are well-documented. We knew about the crippling addictions, the dangerous blackouts, and the negative health implications long before the surgeon general weighed in recently with a blanket warning against alcohol consumption.
But, like it or not, alcohol is a major conduit by which Americans enjoy each other’s company in person. We’re atomized, alienated, and internet-dependent enough as it is. Alcohol has some drawbacks, but it also facilitates the face-to-face social connections that sustained all previous generations. We should take them however we can get them.
A lack of genuine offline connection is also poison for any serious political project. It’s nearly impossible to have a semblance of socialism without the social. So be careful, sure, but keep the booze flowing.
Rum and Revolution
In America, bars have always been more than a place for beer and a bite to eat.
“[They’re] where people gather and talk. And drink. And alcohol leads to more talking, more drinking and, under certain circumstances, a heightened level of outrage and commitment to action,” writes author Christine Sismondo in America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops.
As such, social drinking is an overlooked ingredient in the age of revolutions and social change, including the French Revolution. As one French scholar notes, not only was alcohol central to social life, but it also sparked protests around the issue of excessive taxation, pushing ordinary citizens to participate in the creation of a new regime. Red wine symbolized liberty, equality, and French republicanism, as Jacobins and sans-culottes drank everyday red wine in taverns, cafés, and meetings.
If not for the bar, Americans could possibly still be subjects of a British king. In colonial America, the pub, short for public house, was where people mingled over a mug of beer regardless of class. Early laws fixed the price that tavern owners could charge for a drink, so they couldn’t simply cater to wealthy patrons.
Pubs also served as meeting places for assemblies and courts, destinations for entertainment and refreshment, and democratic venues for debate and discussion on revolutionary ideas. They “became a public stage upon which colonists resisted, initiated, and addressed changes in their society . . . gradually redefining their relationships with figures of authority,” writes David W. Conroy in In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts.
The Green Dragon Tavern, a bar in Boston, was nicknamed the “Headquarters of the Revolution” by future secretary of state Daniel Webster as the meeting place for the Sons of Liberty. The Boston Tea Party was planned behind the closed doors of the tavern; Paul Revere was sent from there to Lexington on his iconic ride after he overheard plans for the invasion of Lexington and Concord. George Washington’s headquarters was once at Fraunces Tavern in New York City. The Whisky Rebellion in the 1790s and the Stonewall riots in the 1960s also came pouring out of bars.
Taverns have frequently served as a meeting place for the labor movement, providing a space for workers to debate and organize. That’s why early industrialists often banned them in company towns and eventually supported the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition in the early twentieth century — control over the pub meant fewer people agitating for unions and better working conditions. “People didn’t jump on board with Prohibition until they saw the saloon as a dangerous, radical political space,” says Sismondo.
Not all socialists were against Prohibition, but one prominent opponent was Eugene V. Debs, who wrote in 1916:
Socialize the liquor business, take out the profit, and let it be controlled by the state, as Socialism proposes, and there will be a summary end to the evil, but never through prohibitionary legislation. There is far too much “prohibition” in the world, and often the spirit of it is bigoted and tyrannical. There are tens of thousands of laws on the statute books which prohibit almost everything conceivable, and for all the good they do they would better be repealed.
Closing Time
In the 2020s, bars and taverns are closing all over America — but this time, it’s not the government shutting them down. It’s Americans willingly putting the bottle down and staying home.
The numbers are striking. Nationwide, alcohol sales volume fell 2.8 percent in the first seven months of 2024 alone, according to IWSR, a beverage industry analysis firm. Wine sales dropped 4 percent, beer fell 3.5 percent, and spirits were down 3 percent. The picture of decline becomes sharper if we assume that the data include heavy and problem drinkers, including those who have maintained their bad pandemic lockdown habits and who consume their booze at home.
As a result, happy hour isn’t so happy anymore. In Philadelphia, for instance, there are currently about 1,300 active liquor licenses, a 38.1 percent decrease since 1997, and more than sixty of these are held by supermarkets and gas stations. Chicago’s bar recession is even worse, down from 3,300 establishments with tavern licenses in 1990 to about 1,200 today.
The abandonment of bars is occurring alongside a broader social recession, as documented in “The Anti-Social Century,” the current cover story of the Atlantic. Americans now spend less time interacting face-to-face than in any period in modern history.
This social decline is especially true for Gen Z, which has been called the homebody generation. The under-thirty crowd would seemingly rather sit at home and smoke some legal weed while scrolling social media feeds than imbibe with friends at a bar. One recent study proclaimed that 2022 was the first year in American history in which marijuana consumption surpassed alcohol consumption, with Gen Z leading the way.
Other young people have bought into the optimization movement, led by influencers who are obsessed with maximizing health, practicing self-discipline, and eliminating all indulgences — that is, with becoming secular monks. The extreme end of this trend is embodied by Bryan Johnson, the vampiric-looking tech multimillionaire who claims his $2 million-a-year self-care routine will grant him immortality. Bryan Johnson has received blood transfusions from his teenage son to reverse aging — but he doesn’t drink.
Again, there are some positives to this change in America’s habits. “That demon drink” is a culprit in an untold amount of addiction problems, violent incidents, bad behavior, and numerous health risks. Nevertheless, we continue to need connection and stimulation to thrive. Loneliness and atomization can also take years off your life. Alcohol is a time-honored way to break the ice, and its social benefits can outweigh its drawbacks for people who can use it in moderation.
In his book Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher wisely told us that the dregs of late capitalism shouldn’t be suffered alone. “The pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood or healed if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals,” he wrote. It’s far from perfect, but a PBR with pals at the local watering hole is one antidote.
Frank Sinatra said it best: “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.”
So cheers.