0 point drinking that

Alcohol-free drinks, premium fuel and other wastes of money

We suffer currently, they say, from too much information, rather than not enough. Rather than swimming in data lakes, we’re drowning. And if you want helped out, someone will throw you a lifebuoy - for a price. In the past information was hard to come by, like an oasis in a desert (to continue our water-based analogy). Now we are jumping off a sinking Titanic without any room on the door to climb on to¹. My point (that I barely made there) is that there’s too much information out there, and the issue comes from sorting what’s something worth listening to, and what’s just Twitter.

One the big places we see this is with diet. Carnivore, Keto, Paleo, Atkins, IF. Get shredded in 30 days, get shredded in 30 hours, get shredded in 30 minutes. However long you have, we’ll get you shredded in that time*. That sums a lot of the online world up - junk diets, junk science and well, junk. And with all the bad ideas out there, the alternative ways to live, very occasionally, some of them catch on. Some ideas like alcohol-free drinks.

Well I need to be more specific, water is a non-alcoholic drink. I mean the ones that look, taste (ish) and most crucially (for the people who sell them) are priced the same as alcoholic drinks. The marvels of modern marketing that could only be thought up in a board room. Spending the same money to specifically not get the thing that makes it so expensive. Like saying ‘I’ll have the engine-free car please’ or buying the Mona Lisa just to have the frame.

It really is baffling. And yet people still drink it, and companies promote it. Well i’m here to stop that. Allow me to debunk all the typical arguments presented for why 0% alcohol is acceptable. Before we begin, I use ‘debunk’ in irony. It’s a weird new word that’s overused, and grossly used in modern times. Almost exclusively in situations where people are merely presenting opinion rather than provable fact, and usually for click-baiting purposes. A sad modern trope where everything must be presented as hyperbole, else be ignored. Imagine the papers of yore printing ‘Hawking DEBUNKS Steady State Theory (Gone WRONG). Anyway onto the debunking.

‘Well I like the taste’ is a common ‘benefit’. To which I reply ‘no, you don’t’. Objectively alcoholic drinks aren’t as nice. The taste goes with the feeling. The buzz of the alcohol taking hold, the feeling of summer sun and bbq smells, the sudden feeling of internal hubris when you approach the girl. That’s what you like, not the hoppy, wheaty taste of beer or the over-fizzy version of morning juice offered by a cider. I mean there’s a reason spirits are always mixed in with something actually nice. It’s like saying you like tomatoes because you ate one in a burger. You don’t like vodka cokes, you just like coke. And if you just like coke and you’re staying off the booze - just drink a coke. It’s an impressive hustle for companies to sell ‘alcohol free spirits’ at £20 a bottle, mere aisles away from where they sell flavoured water and juice for 50p.

‘It’s better for you, less calories’ well you know what else is? Water, or Pepsi max or literally loads of things have less calories. If you want a healthy drink, go to a hipster cafe and pay £7 for a Super Max Greens Juice that looks like Shrek’s cum. Just because it’s slightly ‘healthier’ than a normal beer doesn’t make it healthy. In the same way that being a less prolific murderer than a serial killer doesn’t suddenly make you a good person.

‘I don’t want to feel left out’ how are you left out? You’re literally there. Being left out is being sat at home wanking into a sock, rather than being at the pub. You're not more left out than the person who drinks a Fosters is to the people who drink Peroni (or literally anything else). The only left-outted-ness you have is that you are sober, which your pointless poncy, look-at-me 0% drink doesn’t solve in any case.

Unless you are an ex-alocholic who needs it to stave off the shakes, there’s really no point. It’s as much a scam as ‘premium petrol’ is. You know what actually ‘goes further’? More petrol. Which you can buy when you don’t waste your money on premium fuel. If I’m going out and i’m driving, or i’m not drinking for whatever reason i’ll just order a coke. If you want me to pay £5 for a drink that’s less tasty, and doesn’t do the thing it was designed for, well there’s 0% chance of that.

1. There was enough room on that door, js