Yes, in short, because I like them.

For better or worse, booze is a big part of British socialising culture, so it’s unusual if someone my age (mid thirties millennial) has never drank, but a couple of my mates have gone tee total in recent years.

Why do I still do it? Beers with your mates whilst enjoying a beer garden or watching the footie is a pretty enjoyable way to pass the time. I’m also a bit of a nerd with it all so I love trying new beers, there’s been a huge renaissance around beer variety over the past decade-ish, so there’s always something new to try. I’ve gotten more into wine and cocktails in recent years too, and there’s a rich well of variety in there to experience too.

Smoking tobacco I generally avoid now, it’s nice to have the odd one with a beer but I’ll probably only have a few a year now. I regularly smoked last in my 20s. I occasionally have ended up with a vape in my pocket after a big night out, but I don’t really like them much flavour wise.

Weed is something I still enjoy, it helps me clear my head, relax, and kinda be more present with whatever activity I’m engaging in, if I’m smoking with mates it can often be a pretty hilarious time. However, it’s easy for me to slip into habitual use with it especially though, I don’t really seem to get much in the way of acute negative effects beyond tolerance, so I try to be mindful to keep it in check these days. I’ll probably try and relegate it to a treat for when I visit somewhere like Amsterdam in the coming years given the downsides of smoking (I’ve got a vape, but I basically never choose it).

FWIW I’ve heard that Gen Z is differing their consumption habits significantly from previous generations. Less drinking alcohol in general, preferring non-smokeable forms of tobacco/weed.

There doesn’t appear to be too many bad examples in here, so allow me.

I smoked cigarettes for a long time and, at 59, got to experience lung cancer. I’m currently 62 and still dealing with it. I’d probably be dead now if the mass in my lung hadn’t adhered to the back of my chest cavity and eroded into one of my ribs causing a ridiculous amount of pain. Lung cancer usually goes undetected until it spreads to other places, like the brain, so I guess I got lucky. It did pop up on an adrenal gland, but we nuked that one too. I have another small mass in my other lung that will probably have to be radiated too. I’m also dealing with emphysema and a mouth half full of fucked up teeth. (So glamorous!)

Having no wind in my sails and trying to talk around and eat with both upper and lower partials just sucks all around. I’m only 62, but I feel like I’m 82, and I only have myself to blame.

No. I don’t want cancer, so i don’t smoke. I also was an alco, so I’m recovered now and don’t want to go back to that. I’m sure my liver agrees with my decision.

I drink beer cuz look around.

I’m the older end of Gen X, and have never smoked. The major factor in starting is peer pressure and I didn’t have any peers around me at the critical time who did. My family didn’t either.

I seldom drink alcohol and then I have only ever enjoyed cider - not beer, wine or spirits. This is just a matter of the taste for me. I simply don’t like it.

As a kid, I had had grape juice and I had heard adults enthusing about wine as usual and I had a idea what it must taste like.

If you imagine a taste/mouthfeel spectrum with wine at one end and grape juice in the middle, what I imagined wine to taste like was pretty much at the opposite end of that spectrum to what it actually tastes like. I had one mouthful and had no desire for any more at all. I have obviously tried wine and the rest at various times since, but my opinion is basically the same.

With cider, I’ll seldom have more that a pint or two a month these days.

i drink cigs and smoke beer

I started smoking and drinking at 12 because I thought it would make me look cool and developed a pretty bad drinking habit in high school and college. After college it got worse and there were some severe consequences. Finally got sober at 30. I’d been trying to quit smoking for years but would always light up when I’d had a few beers and since that was pretty much all the time, I wasn’t able to quit smoking until I quit drinking.

I haven’t touched either in almost 27 years and I’m so much better off for it.

No. Paying money to ingest poison is extremely unappealing

I don’t think this is unusual for your generation. GenZ seems risk adverse. It is surprising that you all drive before age 18. Many won’t actually call somebody or someplace using your voice.

No tobacco because ew and no alcohol because headaches

No to both.

No to smoking because it stinks, it’s expensive, and it deteriorates everything around you and inside you.

And no to drinking because it has ruined the lives of everyone around me, which in turn partially ruined mine as well.

Polish drinking culture is devastating, even among Gen Z. Lost too many of my friends to alcohol - somehow each and every one of them who started went into a downwards spiral and became a shell of their former self.

My home stopped giving me the feeling of safety as my parents’ alcohol-induced fights stripped it away. Same thing happened to my university dorm, as 9 times out of 10 I’d come back to a room that had vomit everywhere and my drunk roommate laying unconscious on the floor.

I don’t know if I’m a magnet for these kinds of people or what, but because of that I’ve been against alcohol ever since I first learned what the word meant.

Grew up in a house with 3 smokers. I breathed second hand smoke for more than 30 years. (Total, not consecutive)

I won’t ever smoke cigarettes, smoke cigars occasionally, (been more than 4 years, but I still have a bunch in my humidor.

I will say that after I finally left that environment, it took about 6 months to realize what cigarettes actual smell like on clothes from the perspective of someone who isn’t noseblind to the smell.

Good damn I didn’t know how I just have smelled to other people, doing smoke around other people who don’t want to be around it please, that caused me more problems than I ever knew

Not nearly as much as I once did. I quit dipping about 15 years ago and started drinking a lot less after getting diagnosed and medicated for ADHD.

I do enjoy a good cigar and a glass of Macallan occasionally but that’s too expensive to be a regular habit.

Tobacco: no absolutely not, I hate the smell and just don’t see the point.

Alcohol: extremely rarely, I have a well stocked bar at home, and used to drink alcohol a few times a month, but in the last few years two things happened.

1. I got a driving license and a car, I was 35 and got it late. I have a zero tolerance for alcohol and driving, no light beer, nothing, if I am going to drive I will simply not drink any alcohol. And since I got the driving license and car I want to be able to get in the car at any point in case of emergencies and not have to worry about having had alcohol.
2. I realized that alcohol was just simply annoying to me, I get hot, have trouble sleeping and the next day I am really tired and slow to get going, even after just having drunk a small ammonit. I apparently am a lightweight, and that it perfectly fine, alcohol doesn’t mean much to me, so I don’t feel like I am missing anything. I like the bottles of alcohol I have so I will save them for a bar shelf that looks cool. I do participate in toasts or celebrations when I know I won’t drive, I even have four bottles of cheap champagne with customized ribbons for Trump, Putin, Musk and Orban to toast with when the world is spared their existance, but that is the extent of my alcohol consumption.

Quit self-medication years ago because it’s lethal, killed my whole family, and right now we should all be hoarding money to keep it out of the hands of the oligarchs and tyrants trying to seize our land.