I feel like every year, once January 1st hits, it's like, okay, I'm going to stop.

There's some people who are able to do that, and I applaud them to do so, to just cut

cold turkey, but I feel like alcohol has been a part of my life and solely it.

And just to cut that out completely has been such a struggle.

Welcome to how to, the show where listeners write to us with our toughest questions and we talk it out with the wisest people we know.

I'm Courtney Martin.

Have you noticed Americans just aren't drinking like they used to?

On the one hand, the younger generation appears to be drinking less,

and there's a cool rise in non-alcoholic beverages and sodas

and even like whole bars devoted to socializing without booze,

something I could have never imagined a decade ago.

It feels like it's never been so normal to be sober.

On the other hand, the pandemic threw a lot of us into a dark place. Women especially started drinking more to cope.

And we've seen the rise of these identities that go along with that, you know, the wine mom

and the craft beer bro. Even though research shows

that too much alcohol can be bad for us, six in ten Americans drink and a third of those

that do say they drink more than they should. Now listen, I'm not calling people out. I can relate.

I myself am one of those people who wants to reset my relationship with alcohol in this post-ish pandemic moment.

But as I've looked out for resources, I found it interesting how much of the public conversation about drinking revolves around either abundance on the one hand or total abstinence on the other.

Meanwhile, a more searching conversation, you know, a conversation about moderation,

for example, just seems missing, which is where Rosamund Dean comes in. I'm a journalist and the

author of Mindful Drinking, How Cutting Down Can Change Your Life. And the reason that I wrote the book

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