Drinking: why are we in denial about the fun bit?

Picture by Mauricio Mascaro I was recently on the hunt for some good drinking anecdotes. My tasting events are built around a broader narrative from alcohol history, but without amusing tales and trivia, they’d be a bit dry for an audience getting steadily merry. So I googled "drinking stories". A bit vague, sure, but sometimes casting the net wide brings in a good catch.* It might not surprise you as much as it did me, but entertaining tales of mischief were not what the internet bestowed upon me. Nope. Instead, I found tales of woe, recovery, trauma, shame, and abuse - towards the self and others. In previous essays, I’ve explored the historically precedented conditions that have led us to a point where hedonism has become unfashionable. But I’m not interested today in the socio-economic reasons behind the decline in alcohol consumption. I want to talk about the attitude shift. Not “Why are people drinking less?” but “How has our attitude to it changed?” How is the decline in alcohol

by Simon Sharp · source ↗