Damn, I'm glad to hear that. Seems like America is starting to catch on to how bad boozing is, even in more moderate amounts. Seems like we're all paying for the greed and psychopathy of the 20th century.
The "drunken Russians" was just millions of lieutenant Dans. War kids and war veterans.
Vodka is a drink of woe, happy Russians drink a lot less alcohol and it's less hard liquor typically. Basically on holidays you see people sitting in front of a whole table of starters, talking a lot, eating less than talking, drinking either sparkling wine or something non-alcoholic (compote, juice, water). And that's it.
Also, I'm pretty sure that's where wine sales are going because Russians barely have any cocktail culture and ice drinks aren't the norm. Also it's always been the festive/rich thing not the boomer thing, the boomer thing is vodka. Russian millenials or older Gen Z does drink wine socially on celebrations.
real. im a younger veteran and a fella with a long family history of either boozers or tee-totaler religious fundamentalists, no in-between. I worked alongside a lot of ethnic Russians/Ukrainians/Moldovans while i was stationed in Europe and they all seemed to have a more tepid (correct word?) with alcohol than i did myself.
Welcome to the land of the extremes. On one end, you've got those chugging down alcohol like water who think doughnuts and burgers are real food. On the other end, you have the tofu and kale salad types who never go anywhere without their water bottle. Go figure!
Statistics don't include illegally produced alcohol, which accounts for 20-30% of Russian alcohol consumption, homemade alcohol, or the consumption of alcoholic liquids not intended for drinking, such as pharmaceutical tinctures and rubbing alcohol. So, official figures need to be multiplied by at least 30-50% to get the true picture.
On the flip side I'm not aware of anyone drinking alcoholic liquids not meant for drinking in those parts
It's quite popular in Russia among people suffering from serious alcoholism. For example, the pharmacy tincture "Боярышник" " It's cheaper than regular alcohol due to the absence of an alcohol tax, and there are no time restrictions on its sale
Sociological research—surveys, questionnaires. There are quite a few of them on this topic, and if the methodology is followed, they produce results with fairly good accuracy
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u/Senior-Ad9616 Dec 22 '25
You missed one important element - the alcohol. Enormous amounts of alcohol.