I recently gave up drinking and in doing so, have found somewhat of a community of people doing the same.
People committed to their health, their bank accounts, and not spending every weekend rotting away in bed hungover. And it got me thinking. Gen Z kind of started this whole movement.
Which means, somewhere in a marble-floored boardroom, alcohol's PR team is having a very bad day.
The numbers are in, and they're brutal: two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds now believe moderate drinking is unhealthy, up from 40% in 2015.
Gen Z is officially ghost-ing booze.
And no amount of celebrity vodka launches or Instagram-friendly cocktail content seems to be bringing them back.
This is alcohol's great reckoning. The substance that survived Prohibition, multiple public health campaigns, and countless After School Specials is finally facing its toughest opponent: a generation that simply doesn't give a sh*t.
I feel like, for a while now, we’ve watched the industry scramble.
Celebrity partnerships multiplied like product placements in a Marvel movie. Craft distilleries bloomed in every gentrified neighbourhood, touting their IPA to be the fruitiest, hoppiest experience yet.
"Wellness cocktails" with adaptogens appeared on menus. Low-ABV everything. Canned cocktails in millennial pink. Tequila brands with sustainability missions and minimalist bottles that look like they belong in a MoMA gift shop.
It always makes me think of that one SpongeBob episode, where everything's on fire and all the little Spongebobs are running around inside his head with clipboards screaming.
"This is fine," says alcohol, launching another celebrity tequila. "Everyone loves tequila!"
But Gen Z isn't buying it. Literally.
Ask any bartender about their younger customers and you'll hear the complaints: they don't tip well, they close tabs after every drink, they nurse two beers all night.
From the industry's perspective, these are problem drinkers. But in the original sense of the phrase: they're not drinking enough to be profitable.
But here's what's actually happening: Gen Z showed up, looked at the bill (financial and physical), and said "no thanks." They're ordering non-alcoholic beer, making a mocktail last three hours, or just—revolutionary concept—not drinking at all.
The hand-wringing about Gen Z's social lives reveals more about us than them.
Which is weird, by the way?
There's this bizarre insistence that you need alcohol to have fun, to make friends, to be interesting. As if the entire foundation of human connection rests on fermented grain. Spoiler alert, it does not.
Meanwhile, Gen Z is literally still at the bar. They're just drinking non-alcoholic beer.
Think about that for a second. Non-alcoholic beer tastes bitter, costs almost as much as regular beer, and delivers exactly zero buzz. By traditional logic, it's pointless. And yet they're choosing it anyway, because they want to socialise, just without the hangover, the anxiety, the brain fog, the empty calories, and the generational trauma.
It's the same energy as ordering decaf coffee at 10 PM because you want to hang out with friends at the internet café, not because you need a caffeine hit. The ritual without the damage. The vibe without the consequences.
Of course, Gen Z has other concerns, you know. Real ones, like unaffordable housing, climate collapse, late-stage capitalism.
The list goes on. And on. And on and on and on.
When you're living through multiple existential crises before your prefrontal cortex fully develops, maybe adding a depressant to the mix seems less appealing.
This generation watched their parents self-medicate stress with wine o'clock culture. They grew up with "mommy needs her juice" memes and normalised bingedrinking. They saw the Instagram-perfect brunch mimosas alongside the very real mental health struggles and dysfunction. They're choosing differently.
Where there's a crisis for one industry, there's opportunity for another.
The non-alcoholic beverage market is exploding. Functional sodas, complex mocktails, alcohol-free spirits that actually taste sophisticated. These aren't sad substitutes; they're deliberate choices. Gen Z is showing that you can have the ritual, the social lubricant, the fancy drink in your hand, without the poison.
This isn't about being boring or missing out. It's about being selective. It's about asking "what is this actually doing for me?" and not accepting "because that's what we've always done" as an answer.
Are we finally breaking the cycle?
Here's what I hope for: maybe we're watching the beginning of the end of alcohol's stranglehold on social life. Maybe Gen Z is finally kicking the destructive habits and generational traumas that come gift-wrapped with every boozy bottle.
Alcohol's PR team can keep running around with their clipboards, launching celebrity brands and wellness-washed marketing campaigns.
But you can't rebrand your way out of being fundamentally bad for people.
You can't influencer-partner your way into a generation that's decided they deserve better.
The building's on fire, and Gen Z has already left. They're at the bar next door, drinking something that won't make them sick, having genuine conversations, and, imagine this, actually remembering them the next day.
Sorry, alcohol. Your rebrand isn't working. And maybe that's exactly as it should be.
Because if my generation were the last ones to sneak out and end up black drunk out on the grass in a park somewhere – I’m definitely not mad about it.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
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