Fewer Americans are boozing after a massive COVID-19 spike — and a surprising generation is leading the way

Americans are finally starting to feel the boozy hangover from COVID-19.

Alcohol consumption in America dropped for the first time since the pandemic, a new study found — but older generations are still boozing at elevated rates.

Instead, it’s Millennials who are reporting less heavy drinking. Gen Z, meanwhile, is quitting altogether.

Alcohol drinkers — anybody who had even a single drink over a year — fell by 2% from 2022 to 2024, a recently published study from USC Los Angeles’ Dr. Brian P. Lee found.

Heavy drinking — five drinks daily or 15 weekly for men, and four daily or eight weekly for women — dropped even more, slipping by 8% during that time.

Young people are increasingly giving up drinking, with 5% of Gen Z quitting the sauce between 2022 and 2024. Drobot Dean – stock.adobe.com

“Seeing this first decline gives you something to hope for as a doctor, but you have to be appropriately cautious too,” Lee told CNN. “One change doesn’t necessarily mean a sustained trend.”

Lee’s study supported his caution — despite the recent declines, people were still drinking at higher rates in 2024 than they were in 2018.

He first identified a spike in pandemic drinking in a 2024 study which found the portion of Americans who drink increased about 3% between 2018 and 2022 — rising from 66.34% before the pandemic and 69.3% after.

And while drinking overall was now creeping down overall, that wasn’t the case for everybody — younger people were quitting the sauce at higher rates than older folks, who continued to imbibe above pre-pandemic levels.

Gen Zers — people 18 to 29 — saw all alcohol use drop 5% from 2022 to 2024, while Millennial — aged 30 to 49 — heavy drinking fell 17%.

Americans 50 and older are drinking more than they were before the pandemic, a new study found. Seventyfour – stock.adobe.com

But both Boomers and Generation X continued to drink at pre-pandemic levels — with heavy drinking rising 36% between 2018 and 2024 while the number of drinkers climbed 4%.

“We’re seeing the biggest increases in heavy drinking in exactly the group that we’re worried the most about in terms of their health related to alcohol,” Lee said, noting people are most at risk for liver conditions beginning in their 50s.

“This is a generation that really learned to drink when a few drinks a night was just what adults did,” he added. “That’s something that we need to continue, with messaging, to informing people what they’re really putting into their body.”

Those fears are real — Lee reported a noticeable increase in patients with liver conditions at his own office since the pandemic.

And while the declines found in Lee’s study were promising, experts cautioned it was too early to know whether Americans were really improving their habits on the whole.

“This is an encouraging trend — at least there’s a change in direction,” said Dr. Jagpreet Chhatwal of Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Overall, I would not see this as a big victory in any way because the rates have been so high, even before the pandemic.”