Episode: 152: Season 7: We're Back, and Nobody's Drinking Anymore

SEASON 7 IS HERE. After a long hiatus, Mike and Nat are back for National Recovery Month. We catch up on where we've both actually been, and Nat explains why he's becoming a Freemason — which, for a show called Recovery in the Middle Ages, feels overdue.

Then: a non-alcoholic bottle shop opened one town over, so we brought some of it into the studio. NA beer goes down fine. The fake wine did something else entirely — it made us both uncomfortable in a way we spent a while trying to name. Why does one substitute feel harmless and the other feel like a near miss? We don't fully land it, but the conversation is worth having if you've ever stood in that aisle.

That leads into the numbers. Gallup says the share of Americans who drink just tied its lowest reading since 1939 — real sobriety, or just substitution? A 340,000-person study rises from the grave to tell us wine is heart-healthy again, the same myth we buried in Episode 143, and we take it apart. And buried in the crosstabs is something nobody can explain: since 2023, drinking is down 12 points among Republicans and 11 among independents, while Democrats haven't budged. Mike thinks it's Ozempic. Nat isn't buying it.

Welcome back, Monksters.

WIW: The Syracuse Figure — upstate New York has a Bigfoot, and it's four foot nine.

LINKS: Gallup, "Americans' Drinking Remains at Record Low" — https://news.gallup.com/poll/713534/americans-drinking-remains-record-low.aspx Wine vs. beer vs. spirits, ACC.26 — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260808235008.htm GLP-1 usage by state — https://dataexplained.com/news/weight-loss-drug-usage-by-state-in-us/ PLOS One, health and political geography — https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0254001

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