The Josh Innes Show - Why Are People Drinking Less Booze?

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

According to a Gallup poll, people are drinking less alcohol because they don't see any medical benefit. No shit. It's booze. The benefit is that it's tasty and a few drinks can make you more likeable. Duh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Chris Hadfield, astronaut and citizen of planet Earth. Join me on a journey into the systems that power the world. No politics, just real conversations with real people shaping the future of energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Well, here's a sad story. The U.S. drinking rate at New Low as alcohol concerns surge. That's sad. Get this number.

The percentage of U.S. adults who say they consume alcohol has fallen to 50 poor. 54%, that is, according to Gallup, that is the lowest it's been in 90 years. It coincides with a growing belief that Americans that moderate alcohol consumption is bad for one's health. Now the majority view for the first time. So people view that drinking some alcohol is bad for your health. No shit. But I'd like to know the number of people who drink alcohol and say, oh, it's bad for you. Are the same people to go to Burger King every day?

That's bad for you. Do you smoke cigarettes? That's pretty fucking bad for you. I'm going to guess that there's something bad about smoking pot. I don't know what it is, but there's no way that smoking pot is 100% kosher. I can tell you that taking those prescription medications and those opioids, those aren't very good for you. The cake you ate today isn't very good for you. That carbonated sooty pop with all that sugar and it's probably not good for you either.

I don't know why I'm sitting here having a passionate defensive alcohol, but here I am, I like to drink beer. Everything is killing you. So it's all about picking your poison, basically. Let's talk about this after these words. All right, so from 1997 to 2023, at least 60% of Americans reported drinking alcohol. The figure fell to 62% in 2023 and 58% in 2024 before reaching 54% today. Prior to the most recent poll, the rate has been under 60% fewer than 10 times, including 58% in the initial 1939. poll and a one-time low of 55% recorded in 1958.

The highs of 68% and 71% were all recorded between 74 and 81. People were getting bombed in the 70s, apparently. The consecutive declines in Americans reported drinking the past few years are unmatched in Gallup's trend and coincide with recent research indicating that any level of alcohol consumption may negatively affect health. This has been a sharp reversal from previous recommendations that might, moderate drinking could offer some protective benefit. What protective benefits does anyone think drinking alcohol has? The only thing I've ever heard about alcohol where there's a benefit

is that, well, it's good to drink a glass of red wine every day. Although every doctor I've ever talked to said, yeah, that's stupid. So I don't really know where that started or where that came from. You know what the health benefit of it is? You drink a couple of glasses of wine that makes you tired. You pass out and you actually go to sleep instead of sitting on your phone watching porn or gambling until 1 o'clock in the morning. Doom scrolling on Instagram. You drink a couple of glasses of wine. Maybe you'll pass out and you'll get some sleep.

It may not be the best sleep because it's passed out sleep. So it's not real sleep. But you're passed out at least. It helps you kind of conk out for a little bit and maybe you can sleep. That's me. I need to start drinking a glass of wine. I tried the pot mints. I know we talked about that on the podcast because I thought that would help me chill out

and go to sleep. I don't think I like it. I tried it for a week or two. And it just wasn't my thing. And then if I took two of those, it put me to a point where, like, when I'd fall asleep, I'd wake up in the morning feeling kind of shitty. So I'd just stop doing it. Maybe I'll go back to it on occasion.

My best bet is drinking a glass of wine or two. And, like, that could help me. But I have never believed, like, Jilly loves to say, well, she loves to follow this one. You know, it's good for your heart to drink a couple of glasses of wine. I'm like, I don't think that's true. You're not going to convince me that drinking alcohol is good for any point. part of your body. I don't drink alcohol at all for the health benefits. I drink alcohol because I'm a fucking degenerate and I want to feel good. That's why I drink alcohol. I don't, I'm not like,

well, you know what, drinking this glass of wine, I hear that it's going to reverse heart disease if I do this. Well, fuck that. Obviously, I don't. So the idea that people were drinking alcohol thinking that there was nothing wrong with it, every drink of alcohol you take is probably killing you in some way. Everything's killing you. Right at this very moment, we are slowly dying. That's how these things work. Using 2023, 62% as a baseline, the decline in drinking has been more pronounced among women down 11% since 2023 to 51% than men, down 5 points to 57%. Drinking has also declined 11 points among non-Hispanic white adults, while it has been fairly steady around 50% for people of color. See, the brothers get it.

They're like, no, I ain't done drinking. I've already gone this far. Let's fucking go. white people start reading shit on the internet and start seeing reels about alcohol being bad for you and they're like no i can't do this while they're out there fucking vaping i hope your vape pin blows up in your fucking face i know that that's not nice to say and it ain't christian to wish for vape pins to blow up in the face of people but people who vape like i don't know i hate vapors for whatever we like you like that'll probably kill you i would imagine that vaping is probably not super great for you so don't judge the way i consume out of it alcohol, you sons of bitches. Now, young adults are the ones that, like, Jillie was talking about this with me the other day because she reads all these stories for radio stuff. Like, younger people are not at all turned on by the idea of alcohol.

Like, many of them are into vaping, many of them are into pot. Many of them are into edibles, gummies, those pot, mince, and all that shit. When I was a kid, like, alcohol was kind of the exciting thing you looked forward to as you got older. Like, the first time I, I can remember the first two times I tasted alcohol. One, I was at a concert with my dad, which is weird because my dad doesn't drink beer at all. And we were at some concert, some country concert. And dad's like, here, you can have a swig of this beer.

And I took a drink of it, and I'm fairly certain the shit came back up through my nose. But I'm also fairly certain I was like 10, all right? And maybe I've made that up in my mind, but I'm pretty certain that actually happened. And then another time when my, we didn't have a lot of booze in the house. Like, I don't remember. There were never beers in the house when I was growing up in Louisiana. I couldn't take because my dad doesn't drink alcohol. The only time there'd be alcohol is if there was a party and we had leftover booze.

But I also never really desired to drink it. You know, when I was 15, 16 years old, the idea of drinking alcohol wasn't something I coveted. It wasn't like, oh my God, this wasn't like an 80s, you know, teen movie where God the parents got to go out of town so we can have a drinking party at 16 and go take the cars somewhere and get into fucking mischief. That was never the case. I never aspired to that. That's just never what I wanted to do. But for some reason, we had a bottle of Bacardi rum, which no one's going to drink this Bacardi rum on its own. It was probably there because we tried to make dacchries or something like that.

It was the lone bottle of alcohol in our house. There was no wine. There was no beer. It was just this Bacardi bottle. And me and my buddy tried this and it was so bad. It tasted like gasoline to me. And I'm like, this is fucking terrible. Who wants to drink alcohol?

Fast forward a couple of years later, I'm passed out naked in my dad's pool with Coors Light Can floating around me like I love alcohol but the kids today don't aspire to that like you know like when you like watch Superbad which is wild the thing that Superbad is almost 20 years old you want to feel old Superbad came out in what 2007 it is 2025 Superbad is 18 years old I want to vomit like that seems like yesterday that I went to the theater to see that movie 10 different times because it was so fucking good and it's still one of the funniest movies I've ever seen and movies used to actually be funny from that era, but now I'm old man yells at clouds, so I'll shut the

fuck up about it. But my God, that was good shit. So in Superbad, the whole point of that party was, or the movie is he needed to get alcohol for the party. I don't think high school kids in this era give a shit about that because they don't need alcohol to get blitzed. They don't need to go to the liquor store and have some older guy buy them booze. They don't need a fake ID McLeaven. They don't need any of that shit. They just need to vape. People to sit around and go home and get stoned. And that's what these people want to do. These young kids are into vaping. There's been little difference in recent decades in the percentages of partisans saying they drink alcohol, but that has changed over the past two years with a sharp drop

reported drinking among Republicans falling 19 points. Well, Democrats continue to hold steady. I can't imagine why in recent years Democrats started drinking more. I wonder why. Maybe it's because every day you wake up and you're afraid that you're going to misgender someone. You wake up every day and you're like, shit, if I say the wrong thing, am I going to lose my job? Or am I going to wake up tomorrow and decide that I want to be a man? What do I do? I got to get hammered.

So the liberals are drinking and the Republicans aren't fascinating. Well, part of that could be the bud light. That's all bud light and kid rock. Majority now say that drinking in moderation is bad for health. How do they know? Like, what the fuck do you know? Are you the surgeon general? Are you a doctor?

Like, well, we surveyed a bunch of dipshits at Walmart, and they said that drinking even a little bit is bad for your health. No shit, Sherlock. For the first time in Gallup's trend, a majority of Americans, 53% say drinking in moderation, one or two drinks a day is bad for health. I don't drink one or two drinks a day. I don't drink in moderation.

I drink heavily two days a week, so thank you very much. Today's belief that moderate alcohol consumption is unhealthy follows increases from 28% and 39% to 45% last year. By a contrast from 2001 to 2011, the percentage with this view hovered at nearly 25% roughly equal to those who consider drinking beneficial. There is no benefit to drinking except you're happier. Well, you know why people don't think there's a benefit to drinking anymore? because nobody knows how to get laid anymore. The key benefit to drinking was you can go out to a bar, you catch somebody with their inhibitions down, someone who's sad, someone whose boyfriend just fucking broke up with

them and is looking to get down because she's Randy and sad. Maybe she'd blow you in a nice way, not in a predatory way, but like alcohol helped that. There's a whole goddamn song by Brad Paisley called Alcohol, and it tells you all the benefits of alcohol. You want to tell me that Brad Paisley doesn't know the benefits of alcohol? he does. Notably, it helps white people dance. That's number one. But if you want to just look, there are benefits. But now those benefits don't matter because people are afraid of their own shadow. Right. Like people are petrified of going to a bar and hitting on a chick because they don't

want to be considered a creep. So nobody does that anymore. So you don't really need the alcohol. So dude just sit around their house and get hammered alone. So it's a little breakdown of what alcohol can do. You want to tell me that there aren't benefits to alcohol? I can make a anybody pretty. That's a benefit. I can make you believe any lie. Benefit. I can make you pick a fight with somebody twice your size. That's a negative. So we're two to one in favor of the positives. Been known to cause a few breakups. It depends on if you want to break up. We'll consider it a positive. Three to one. I've been known to cause a few births. That's a negative. Three to two. I can make you new friends or get you fired from work. So that's one and one. Okay. Actually,

It depends on if you hate your job. Like, if you're drinking less, how do you go make friends? That's how you talk to people is alcohol. A lot of times, the only way I can communicate with anybody is if I'm drinking. But anyway, point being in all of this is the people that are like, I don't really see the health benefits in it now. How did you ever see benefits in terms of health for drinking alcohol? That's all bullshit. I asked a doctor that one.

Like, I was in there, and, you know, because Jilly would always drop that on me. Like, we should drink red wine every night. And they say that, you know, a glass of red wine. wine is actually good for your heart. And I would go to the doctor. And of course, the doctor's never going to tell you that, right? But I'd go, so doctor, is it true that drinking a glass of red wine every day is like good for you in some way? And he's like, no, you dip shit. It's not. It's alcohol. Like, there is no benefit to that. I like it, though, and I don't give a shit. I've come this far. Like, I've already come this far. I try to estimate the number of

beers I've consumed in my life. Actually, I have a plan. So we have this extra fridge in the house. There's a lot of negatives about this little house that we live in because it's old and there's no dishwasher. That's a pain in the ass. There are some negatives. But there's an extra fridge in the basement, a beer fridge, as it were. And I actually want to keep a running total of the number of beers I drink during football season. Basically the Saturdays and Sundays and some Mondays, Thursdays, whatever. Now, I'm not going to count beers I drink at bars because that's just too much math I have to do. But I want to see how many beers I consume over the course of an NFL slash college football season.

I'm going to keep a tally of it. I'm intrigued by this. I'm going to get a whiteboard in the house and I'm just going to keep tabs on it. I like to drink beer. It's just what I'm into. All right. Anyway, more to come.

Drink more beer.