Too bad: drinking alcohol is not cool anymore
Nothing is hipper than voluntarily leaving the wine alone. If it's not dry January, then it's a moderate March or an alcohol-free April.
A mindful May or a spa September. Sober October. Sober November. Drinking is becoming a bit out of fashion. Drinking is no longer cool.
We are increasingly leaving those drinks as they are because we want to lose weight or because we want to feel fitter. And often we find it suits us after a month or two of abstinence. It's actually just like with cigarettes. Once we all did it and it was very normal, smoking. Smoking was charming, sexy, interesting. Now it's dirty and you have to stand outside in the rain if you want a nasty puff that is disapproved of by every dog walker you encounter. Alcohol is going that way too. Once it was for the rich, the sociable, and the coolest, now it's for the losers who have no life. Not for those who do have something useful to do with their time. Not for those with ambitions, friends, and family.
It doesn't just come out of the blue that we need to know less about wine and beer weekend after weekend. Alcohol is discouraged by higher taxes, restrictions on promotions and advertisements, and an increase in the age limit. For that one piss-warm beer in the pub you now have to pay 3 euros and, well, you have to be quite old. We Dutch like to take cues from other countries and take, for example, the drinking country of drinking countries: England. Young people are done with it, as the figures show. Even there. At least 30 percent of young people in England do not drink. Never ever. No sun, drinking, and hospital. What happens because of this is perhaps the most important if you plan to hang out with the red spa water: the social pressure among young people to drink alcohol is decreasing. Not only in England but also in the Netherlands. In other words: it's quite interesting to say that you want water. It's a bit ‘EWW’ if you say you want a scroppino, sangria, or gin and tonic or two.
I have another fun fact for you: the trend continues after 2020. AB Inbev, the largest brewer in the world, expects that 20 percent of beer sales in 2025 will be non-alcoholic. Heineken is primarily dependent on Heineken 0.0 for growth. In short: quitting drinking is no longer for the losers, those overly healthy types. It's no longer cool for a month. It applies for the whole year, for next year, forever. A sober 2031, that idea.
I don't really know. I hate hangovers, can't take it anymore against wine, I'm tipsy after two glasses, I'm always tired because of my kids and therefore have little energy for having a drink. But for a creamy scroppino after dinner I'm quite often up for it. And never again a wine? Never again a Corona with lime? Meh. Maybe in this case, I would really like to be very uncool. Sometimes.
Source: De Volkskrant
