From someone who loves beer and whiskey, you are way too invested in judging other people's life choices.
I will hear you out on beer, but Whiskey can become extremely pretentious actually - hell, even beer can when you start getting into craft brewing and so on.
But not really store what your point is, this thread is discussing a very real shift in society - not sure how this is judging other people’s life choices. At an individual level it’s all good and well to make whatever choice you want about what you drink or don’t - but when a massive cohort of societies behaviour is changing at an unprecedented rate - and when this has a very real impact on the very social fibre of society (alcohol production and consumption has been central to human culture for pretty much as long as we have recorded history).
What about it being too expensive? Bars and similar are taking the mickey. Even at the liquor stores pricing is OK but not great, R100+ for a six pack.
It is getting expensive, but I don’t think that’s it.
Good booze has always been expensive - that’s nothing new - and all forms of entertainment have become expensive, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped them. Record attendance for movies for example has been widely reported here, and that’s damn expensive.
Beer, as used in your example, is also not particularly much more expensive than Coca Cola, or Energy drinks, or vape juice for that matter.
Designer weed consumptions has seemed to take off during this same period, and there ain’t nothing cheap, or healthy about that (at least in comparison to drinking).
Lots of very decent wine is still available at under R100.00 a bottle. Not exactly expensive.