I disagree that it's true for all people. When I was young and in college with mild social anxiety, yes, alcohol was an excellent social lubricant and made for much more enjoyable nights.

But now that I'm in my 30's and comfortable being open in just about any social situation, I don't find that alcohol adds much. I can lower my inhibitions on my own.

Anecdotally, we're on hacker news, none of us should be that removed from hackathons where mid 20 year olds stay up if not all night until 2am and start by 8.

Anecdotally, at 35 I still sometimes wake up at 2 and stay up until sunrise thinking of cool new ideas.

Some people are extroverts, get charged meeting new people, doing exciting things, get endorphin rushes dancing until the sun rises.

There are sober people at burning man.

Or staying late at a party and speaking with the last few people to leave, really opening up to them.

The way life turned out though, I'm not in touch with any of those people anymore. The idea of >"You get tired, you say goodbye to the people still staying out, you go home, drink water, and go to bed." sounds amazing, because I have energy to do personally rewarding things the next day without feeling wiped out and hungover.

Well if that is the standard, alcohol pales in comparison with MDMA.

Only if your sober friends are also boring homebodies

> You get tired, you say goodbye to the people still staying out, you go home, drink water, and go to bed.

Sounds like the perfect ending to a nice evening, where's the problem? Fear of missing out?

This is what I wanted to say but could never find the words

There are a lot of assumptions in this reply that are absolutely not true for plenty of folks. More of a summarization of your sober friends, maybe.

If no one had the drunken outlet, how might the inhibited baseline change?