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A Diehard Drinker Accidentally Quits | The New Yorker

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The cultural discourse around avoiding alcohol never convinced Sarah Miller—and why sober up when the world is burning? Then life intervened.

The cultural discourse around avoiding alcohol never convinced me—and why sober up when the world is burning? Then life intervened. June 20, 2026 Illustration by Derek Abella A few years ago, I noticed that drinking alcohol had fallen out of favor with young people. I was annoyed. Yes, some people drank so much that they got fired and hit on random people and drove drunk—those people should obviously quit. But being able to drink reasonably and quitting anyway was, I believed, a rude refusal to have fun with others. We lived in a world where everything had become a kiosk or an effluent…

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