Planned pleasures: alcohol assemblages for ‘generation sensible’

ABSTRACT

It has been suggested that a pivotal explanation for the drastic decrease in young people’s alcohol consumption is the younger generations concern with taking responsibility for a variety of areas in their lives. Emanating from this, the overall aim of this article is to consider how alcohol and drinking situations are enacted among a group of emerging adults in Sweden from this ‘generation sensible’, and how they describe the relation between alcohol, pleasure and control. The study is based on 23 qualitative interviews with people aged 19–23. Inspired by assemblage theory we analyzed how important human and non-human elements congregate in described drinking situations. The analysis showed that alcohol is enacted as a strong psychoactive substance and described like other (illegal) drugs, rather than being seen as more harmless and acceptable. Pleasure in drinking is made possible through control and planning, and in downplaying the importance of drinking and the transgressive power of intoxication. We suggest that the risk-taking element in drinking is stigmatized among groups of emerging adults. It is concluded that while alcohol is described as unimportant to several participants, alcohol assemblages are not, therefore participants work hard to shape drinking situations to counteract loss of control.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol
• pleasure
• control
• emerging adults
• assemblage

Introduction

The drastic decrease in young people’s alcohol consumption in Sweden as well as internationally has rendered much scholarly attention (e.g. Pape, Rossow, and Brunborg 2018; Raninen and Livingston 2018; Vashishtha et al. 2020). Several reasons for this change have been presented: e.g. a performance-oriented environment where excessive drinking may be categorized as a failure of the self (Goodwin and Griffin 2017), and a societal focus on increasing capacities for competing in main areas of adult lives leaving little or no time for drinking (Caluzzi et al. 2022). It has also been suggested that the pressures of work and commodification shape young people’s drinking practices (Pennay et al. 2023), and while some groups of young drinkers still engage in hedonistic drinking (Fry 2011), it is calculated against anxieties about the future (Batchelor et al. 2020). Emanating from this, and similar results from research focused on young people and responsibilization (see e.g. Ekendahl, Månsson, and Karlsson 2020; Franzén and Gottzén 2022; Törrönen et al. 2019), it can be concluded that the younger generations today seem concerned with being in control over and taking responsibility for a variety of areas in their lives. However, research has also shown that the majority of emerging adults in Sweden drink alcohol, and that almost 40% of the consumption occasions among this group can be characterized as binge drinking (Guttormsson 2019). Given the idea that alcohol traditionally have played an important role in young people’s lives (Beccaria and Sande 2003) and been described as a pleasurable ‘time out’ from everyday life pressures and responsibilities (Measham and Brain 2005), the overall aim of this article is to consider the varied ways in which alcohol and drinking situations are enacted among a group of emerging adults in Sweden from what has been named ‘generation sensible’ (Burgess, Yeomans, and Fenton 2022). Since it has been suggested that the ‘time out’ benefits have been challenged by social and economic pressures for this generation (Caluzzi et al. 2022), it is highly relevant to further the understanding on what they ‘get out of’ drinking and ask what makes drinking pleasurable? The relation between alcohol, pleasure and control is therefore the focus of this article.

This study is part of a longitudinal project where we have followed a group of young people in Sweden during 6 years from 2017 to 2022, interviewing them at five occasions about aspects relating to alcohol and health. The participants have moved from being underaged, not being able to buy alcohol at bars or at the government monopoly retail stores, to turning 18 and 20 and being able to buy alcohol legally. They have grown up in an environment with a fairly strict alcohol policy, in what has traditionally been characterized as ‘dry’ alcohol culture in which alcohol intake is usually related to intoxication (Järvinen and Room 2007). We have previously noted that as our respondents got older, and moved from being adolescents to emerging adults (Arnett 2000), their relation to alcohol changed: e.g. the majority had started drinking in some way at interview occasion four (19-23 years old), and their views on alcohol became less black-and-white during the course of the project (Månsson, Samuelsson, and Törrönen 2022; Törrönen et al. 2023). In this article, we aim at deepening the understanding of this change by also exploring how emerging adults describe pleasure in drinking. More specifically we ask: (1) how alcohol as a substance is enacted by the participants, (2) what alcohol assemblages emerge in accounts about drinking, and (3) how pleasure evolves in relation to these assemblages.

Responsibility and pleasure as relational elements

In the context of neo-liberal ideals, which have been suggested to be highly influential in the lives of current youth generations (Brown et al. 2013; Kelly 2017), individuals are expected to take on responsibility for their health, increasingly engaging in a ‘personal policing of pleasure and risk’ (Coveney and Bunton 2003). Relevant in this reasoning is to dwell on the tensions between neo-liberal ideals of self-management and pleasure through the use of alcohol. Intoxication has for example been described as a calculated counter-reaction to the neo-liberal ideals of self-governing (Griffin et al. 2009), and pleasure as a way to defend the liberal subject’s right to autonomous pleasure-seeking decisions (Coveney and Bunton 2003).

In a similar line of reasoning, focused on rational decision-making, Measham and Brain coined the term ‘controlled loss of control’ in their influential work on substance use in the early 2000s (Brain 2000; Measham 2002; Measham and Brain 2005). The ‘controlled loss of control’ is presented as a response to the contradiction between hedonism and ideals of moderation. In their research, they argue that young people in Britain at that time had a ‘hedonistic yet bounded drinking style’ (Measham and Brain 2005, 274). In their work, they highlighted the rationality and intentionality behind intoxication. This reasoning was employed in much subsequent scholarly work, focusing on rationalizations of alcohol and other drug using experiences: e.g. ‘determined drunkenness’ (Hutton 2012), ‘calculated hedonism’ (Fry 2011), ‘bounded consumption’ (Szmigin et al. 2008) and ‘staged intoxication’ (Lindsay 2009). The focus on a rational neo-liberal subject has however become increasingly troubled within the growing area of scholarships inspired by new materialist theories (DeLanda 2006; Deleuze and Guattari 1987) seeking to understand alcohol and other drug use and pleasure. In this research, scholars have explored how ‘rather than pleasure being ‘chosen’ by a subject and sanctioned socially by the group or wider discourses of advanced liberalism (in risk-taking and ‘controlled loss of control’), it is enacted in particular sociomaterial arrangements’ (Dennis 2019, 17). Pleasure thus becomes a relational achievement, involving socio-material arrangements (or assemblages) of substances, people, space and time. Emanating from this, Duff (2014, 636) describes how ‘[t]he affects produced in the event of drug use reside neither in individual bodies, places or substances, but rather in the dynamic interaction of places, substance, bodies, contexts and subjects’ – in the assemblage.

Previous research within this area has among other things focused on alcohol assemblages in the night-time economy (Cañedo and Moral 2017; Savic et al. 2022), asking, for example, how people, music, atmospheres and space influence drunkenness (Bøhling 2015), how pleasures of drunken one-night stands are dependent on socio-spatial context as well as the narrative environment (Pedersen, Tutenges, and Sandberg 2017), and how young people stage different affective atmospheres using space, place and light to shape drinking occasions (Wilkinson 2017). These studies do not assume that alcohol consumption has stable and predictable effects in any given situation. Instead, the focus is on the interaction of various human and non-human elements that shape this consumption situationally through relational assemblages (Demant 2009; Dilkes-Frayne and Duff 2017; Duff 2016).

It is from this theoretical perspective that we have investigated how alcohol and drinking situations are enacted among emerging adults who have been described as ‘sensible’ (Burgess, Yeomans, and Fenton 2022), ‘responsible’ (Pennay et al. 2023) and ‘sober’ (Pape, Rossow, and Brunborg 2018). In assemblage thinking, sensible, responsible and sober may mean different things in relation to what other human and non-human elements they get their meaning. The focus is thus not on human rationality, but rather on relationality (Dennis 2016), affect (Duff 2014; Månsson et al. 2024), space and time (Dilkes-Frayne 2014; Farrugia 2015) as well as human and non-human objects (Bøhling 2015) as constitutive elements. When paying attention to different socio-cultural and material elements that are at play in alcohol consumption events, it is possible to explore how different affects of alcohol and drinking are produced (Duff 2013).

From the perspective of new materialist theories, alcohol consumption and pleasure are considered as processes where objects (e.g. alcohol) and subjects (e.g. people) ‘enact’ specific realities. Where the research subject is seen as emergent, ‘whose form and capacities are co-constituted by assemblages of human and non-human forces, which together shape not so much what a subject ‘is’ but rather what a subject can ‘do’’ (Dennis and Farrugia 2017, 5), it is crucial to study the ways in which the human and non-human forces as ‘processual relations work to expand or limit what people can do or how they can become-with drugs’ (ibid.). Emanating from such a theoretical viewpoint this article investigates what elements interact when emerging adults describe their drinking situations in order to understand what alcohol becomes in these situations and what people become with alcohol. By investigating these enactments, the article aims at tapping into broader social trends around risk-taking, control and pleasure, where alcohol serves as a ‘prism’ through which we aim at capturing participant views on appropriate and acceptable behavior.

Material and methods

Sample

This article is part of a longitudinal research project with five interview rounds, investigating health and declining alcohol consumption among young people in Sweden. In all, 56 participants have been interviewed on one or several occasions in the project that commenced in 2017. The participants were initially recruited from secondary and upper secondary schools, non-governmental organizations and social media platforms (for more information on recruitment, see Törrönen et al. 2019). We aspired to recruit participants with varying drinking habits, gender, age and ethnic and socioeconomic background (based on parents’ occupations). The participants relation to alcohol was categorized in three ways: abstainers, light drinkers or heavy drinkers. Participants were categorized as light drinkers when they consumed less than four drinks on an occasion (monthly or less often) and avoided intoxication, and as heavy drinkers when alcohol was used for intoxication at least once a month. The sample for this analysis consists of the 23 participants (10 men, 13 women) characterized as light or heavy drinkers in interview round four. While their socioeconomic background differed, most of them studied at the university or was in the process of applying (19), three were working and one was unemployed. At the time of the interview, the participants were between 19 and 23 years old. While the participants have thus passed the age of 18 (a legal marker for the beginning of adulthood), it is clear that in Sweden (like other similarly industrialized countries) people in their early twenties do not consider themselves as adults (Arnett 2000). Instead, this period is better described as a time of emerging adulthood, not really being an adolescent but not yet an adult, which is characterized by change and exploration (e.g. in our material going into university studies or getting a first job, moving away from home).

Interviews

The interviews took place during September and October 2021, and lasted between 40–80 (median 50) minutes. They were conducted over Zoom (7), telephone (14), and face-to-face (2). The semi-structured interviews covered four main themes: life situation and influence of the pandemic (e.g. ‘How has the pandemic influenced your life?’), relation to substances (e.g. ‘Describe a typical situation when you drink alcohol?’), health (e.g. ‘How has the pandemic influenced your well-being?’), expectations for the future (e.g. ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’). The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim by a transcription company. The interviews were conducted by authors Samuelsson and Månsson, who conducted interviews also in previous interview rounds and had thereby established rapport with the participants.

Analysis

The interviews were initially read carefully and repeatedly to get an overview of the material. To tease out how participants related to alcohol and drinking situations coding attended to elements such as human (e.g. ‘friends’) and non-human (e.g. ‘wine’) objects, spaces (e.g. ‘student venue’), time (e.g. ‘weekend’) and expectations (e.g. ‘having control’). Based on this, we then analysed how these elements/codes congregated or assembled in drinking events (see also, Dennis 2019; Duff 2014) described by the participants, resulting in three themes: staying in control, making temporal, spatial and social arrangements, and downplaying the act of drinking.

Ethics

The project follows ethical standards for qualitative research in social science (Silverman 2010), and ethical approval was granted from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (ref. 2016/2404-31; 2021-02158). In the results section, the identities of the participants have been de-identified by substituting real names and excluding sensitive data. When translating excerpts from Swedish to English, we aimed at keeping the original wording as faithfully as possible, this however means that some modifications are made to obtain conceptual equivalence rather than a strict lexical translation (Birbili 2000). Translation have been discussed among the authors to avoid losing or misinterpreting important information.

Results

Outlined below are three identified themes that emerged in analyzing accounts about alcohol, drinking and pleasure. Quotes presented in the text are illustrative examples, and should be seen as representative of trends in the material. When quotes have been altered or de-identified, this is indicated by the use of square brackets.

Staying in control: alcohol as an intense psychoactive substance

One of the foundational codes in the material is ‘control’. Participants repeatedly talk about control in relation to several aspects of life and state that they ‘don’t like to lose control’ (Adam), ‘always want to have control’ (Leila), and that they ‘feel better from having control over everything’ (Nora). Control was emphasized when we asked about alcohol consumption, and participants generally agreed that drinking can create a sort of ‘time out’ from this control (Measham and Brain 2005). In their accounts, drinking can make people open up and talk about things that they usually would not, enable difficult emotions to surface and make people more sensitive. This enactment of alcohol is also one of the reasons why light drinking participants are skeptical about heavy drinking. Like Naima (22-year-old woman, light drinker) in the quote below:

Naima:

I have noted that many people become very different when they drink alcohol. If you are very social and outgoing as a person, you become almost the opposite when you drink alcohol. And the other way around, when you are introvert, you become very extrovert when you drink alcohol. I think alcohol brings out that which you hold inside. It makes it easier to bring it out, it brings out your emotions and thoughts. It’s like this wall you have between yourself and the world gets a bit more transparent. And I’m a very extrovert person, which leads to me being introvert when I drink alcohol. I don’t become a fun person, instead I have a lot of emotions when I drink alcohol. Which, I think, is the reason I don’t like to drink maybe because I don’t want to be grumpy, I don’t want to think about bad stuff, or talk about my feelings when I’m partying at a club. But then if you drink the right amount, and think it’s good, that leads to me becoming a bit more extrovert, dancing more, getting more out of the night, I think. Which is not necessary, but sometimes I want to be more extrovert and then I can drink some.

Interviewer:

To spice it up a bit?

Naima:

Yes, like saffron. If you have a lot of saffron in your food, it will taste weird. But if you have the right amount, it tastes really great.

In this description, alcohol interacts with one’s personality which can result in a rather drastic change of becoming ‘the opposite’ of your true self. Similarly, alcohol is said to ‘bring out’ emotions that you may actually want to ‘hold inside’. This illustrates how alcohol in itself is seen as a powerful element. In a life where control is emphasized, Naima points out that she is careful not to drink to the extent where she invites alcohol to take over her personality and her control (cf., Demant 2009). Instead, she is looking for a more moderate ‘spice’ during some occasions where her emotions and personality are not altered, but rather boosted. By drinking ‘the right amount’ the transformative power of alcohol can be reduced and she can enjoy it while still being her authentic self. This is also related to space – when alcohol is entangled in a night out assemblage of a club, dancing, friends and having fun, pleasure is described to emerge in ‘spiced up’ interactions with her friends. Naima does not want to be introvert, emotional and talk about her feelings, she is not looking to undergo transformations to become the ‘opposite’ in this space (cf., Cañedo and Moral 2017). This is also closely linked to how pleasure, or rather displeasure, is described. For some participants the powerful agency of alcohol to change behavior and bring out emotions is something that is described to make them refrain from drinking alcohol. Like Noor (19-year-old woman, light drinker), in the example below:

Interviewer:

Can it still happen that you drink so you become intoxicated?

Noor:

Actually, that hasn’t happened in a really long time. It was a party I attended a while ago, then I got really drunk.

Interviewer:

What happened then?

Noor:

It can sometimes happen that I really … I don’t dare to drink now because when I drink, I sometimes become really, really sad. And I don’t understand it myself and then I always accidentally start talking and start sharing things that I really don’t want people to know about.

Alcohol is in this quote acting on its own, producing completely unwanted and ‘opposite’ behavior. While it has been noted before that alcohol can ‘bring out’ emotions, here it is described as a fundamental reason to refrain from drinking (too much) since the loss of control over emotions is too overpowering. In both Naima’s and Noor’s descriptions alcohol and intoxication thus form an opposite assemblage to everyday life assemblages, which makes you do things that you would never do when you are attached to your sober self and its relations. The motivations for control in these examples primarily relate to emotions and go beyond that previously noted in the literature as important aspects for bounded drinking styles (e.g. personal safety, health, security in Measham and Brain 2005; Szmigin et al. 2008).

As seen above, participants describe alcohol consumption practices as assemblages that produce both pleasure and displeasure. The balance between these affects is repeatedly recognized by participants, and the risk of displeasure is often translated into terms of ‘loss of control’ when alcohol takes over. A range of different elements are identified as important in balancing on the ‘right’ side of sustaining pleasurable affects while drinking: such as people (e.g. fun crowd/potential perpetrators), decisions (e.g. drinking the right amount/doing something embarrassing), places (e.g. rented venue/rowdy night clubs) and bodily reactions (e.g. dancing more/having a black-out). This is described by Amina (19-year-old woman, light drinker) below:

It happens every now and then that I might drink a little more, especially when you are together with a fun crowd. But then it’s like I don’t want to put myself in a tough situation where I might have had too much alcohol, I’m in the city and I don’t know how to get home. So, for that reason too, I’m very cautious about alcohol. You never know what kind of people are around that might be closing in on you. What if someone happens to steal something when I’m sitting there, and I’m top drunk on alcohol. I think I will continue to be limited and careful about alcohol in the future.

Here, the pleasure of drinking becomes fragile and dependent on potential elements that might assemble to make alcohol consumption risky. In an effort to minimize these risks, and have fun while drinking, participants generally work hard to try and control these elements to make the drinking situation safer (Pennay et al. 2023). It is however clear, that the main practices carried out for this is related to being ‘careful about alcohol’. In Amina’s example, she is trying to prevent physical risks of being robbed or not being able to get home by drinking less. There are also participants who describe preventing practices related to social risks. Like Kevin (19-year-old man, light drinker), who says that he acts as a ‘dad’ to his friends when they go out, drinking less ‘to have some control and responsibility […] since I don’t want them to make stupid decisions’. His main concern is that people who drink might end up in discussions and hurt each other, and therefore he wants to ‘have more control over his surroundings and their behavior’. For these participants, drinking situations are thus described as a state of shared control (Cañedo and Moral 2017) which primarily aims at reducing the risks of being drunk for others by limiting their own intake, illustrating a collective agency and the importance of the peer group to handle acknowledged risks. In all, these accounts illustrate how participants strive to stay their authentic self while drinking alcohol and not let alcohol take over (cf., Demant 2009). Alcohol is enacted as an intense psychoactive substance that needs to be handled with care to be enjoyed.

Making temporal, spatial and social arrangements: drinking as planned pleasure

In the context of viewing alcohol as an intense psychoactive substance, participants describe the pleasure of drinking as possible through a process of planning. The participants repeatedly talk about assemblages of time and space in which responsible and sensible capacities can emerge, and where the likelihood of affects emerging during and after alcohol consumption become beneficial for pleasure. Below, Alma (19-year-old woman, light drinker) gives an example of this.

Interviewer:

What is the difference between a party where you are sober and one where you chose to drink?

Alma:

Well, I guess it is if you have something planned since before and you know that … Maybe an invitation to a party has arrived, that you know that now my good friend turns 18 or 19. And they have rented a venue here. And you know the date, to actually be able to plan ahead. Then I can usually do it [drink]. But I think it feels unnecessary when you just don’t have anything to do a Friday night and someone just comes up with the idea that let’s go home to this person and have a party. Then it usually becomes boring. Then I don’t think it is worth wasting both money and how you feel the next day just to sit there.

Alma’s account compares two assemblages of relations, and while they can appear to include the same elements (alcohol, friends, party), the experience of alcohol and the achieved affects of drinking are described as different in the two. Of importance for her experience are the particular social (‘birthday’), spatial (‘rented a venue’) and temporal (‘know the date’) arrangements that assembles in ways to minimize the chance to ‘waste’ money, time and health (Lindsay 2009). The assemblage of a friend’s birthday party can be seen as a set of actions that produces a particular atmosphere where drinking alcohol is accepted and not ‘boring’ (like on a random Friday night). This clearly illustrates how these two assemblages produce different experiences of alcohol, making the quality of these affects ‘situational’ rather than dependent on pharmacological properties of the substance (Gomart and Hennion 1999). Planning the drinking situation ahead, and being sensitive to a variety of human and non-human elements, thus seem to increase the likelihood of producing pleasurable affects, which is similarly described by Marco (22-year-old man, heavy drinker) below:

If on Monday I say ‘we’re going out Friday’, well, then I know that we have decided Friday – that’s when we’re going out. Then it hasn’t been that I’ve been drinking to suppress myself, then it’s because I have decided to, and I have prepared mentally that we’re going to drink. This is also a thing I need, as it seems. I hate when there’s spontaneous drunkenness.

Marco’s wish to plan his drinking further illustrates a central aspect in the material – that the only acceptable reason for drinking is to ‘have fun’. To problematize other drinking motives (e.g. ‘to suppress’ feelings) is perhaps not surprising (see e.g. Järvinen and Bom 2019). What stands out is however that participants repeatedly describe how they work to fit their drinking situations into this ideal of responsible drinking through planning. Marco, who describes that he previously used alcohol to handle anxiety, now tries to control his drinking motives by making relevant temporal and social arrangements. What this illustrates is how the assemblage of human elements (‘we’) and non-human elements like time (‘Friday’), space (‘going out’) and expectancies (‘prepared mentally’) increases the likelihood that affects emerging during alcohol consumption are conducive for what is perceived as ‘healthy’ drinking reasons. Thus, participants work to assemble this in ways that co-constitute responsible capacities with alcohol. For some participants (primarily heavy drinkers) this resembles more classic ‘time out’ behavior (Measham and Brain 2005) where the temporal arrangements of drinking consist of making alcohol part of a weekly routine. Like for Pedro (23-year-old man, heavy drinker) below:

Interviewer:

What do you think you get out of drinking?

Pedro:

I have fun [laughs]. I guess it feels more like a relaxed thing to do after you have studied the whole week, and then worked. Because I usually work one day, then we drink the day after, sort of. Then it’s more that you relax, it’s like a day off.

For Pedro, drinking influences his capacities to affect and be affected – to have fun, relax and have a break from studies and work. Like for Alma above, it is not merely the pharmacological effects of the drink that does this for him, it is rather in its interaction with ‘the immaterial, symbolic attributes of alcohol […] in demarking work time from playtime’ (Bøhling 2015, 135) and the temporal practices of drinking after the workday that produces pleasurable transformations. Pedro also emphasizes how the affective state is intertwined in pleasurable drinking, saying that ‘if I feel anxiety over studying and stuff, then I don’t want to go out and drink. Then I want to relax and stay at home’. This is similar for Felicia (22-year-old woman, heavy drinker) below:

I want to look forward to it [going out drinking] a lot almost the entire week, and to think it’s very fun and to be very stoked. If I don’t feel that at all, but rather ‘what the hell, really I just want to be home and watch the TV’, then I won’t have fun out either.

Planning for alcohol intake is here described as an active element for the pleasure achieved in the event of drinking – it is not separated from the drinking situation. This is also illustrated by participants saying that ‘dressing up’ makes the night out more fun (Wilma), or that part of the fun with drinking is keeping in touch with friends during the week to make plans (Nasir). For these participants, the event of drinking is expanded through planning – it spans out over a longer time period than that of actual alcohol intake – which is dependent on elements like particular clothes, conversations with friends, and moods. For some, this increases the pleasure of drinking, while for others it eliminates the possibility to drink since they cannot find time in their busy schedule (Caluzzi et al. 2022). Take Wilma (23-year-old woman, light drinker) for example. She describes that although she would like to plan for a night out drinking, it is difficult to find the time for this in what she describes as a healthy and responsible life.

Now, I chose not to [drink] for health reasons many times. […] I don’t want to stress, I try to have a balanced everyday life, feel good. I think I was afraid to become super stressed out when I started studying again. So, I’ve been super focused not to let that happen. Like, OK, I have to study on a Sunday not to be too stressed out during the weeks […] and I want to get up early to get that over with. And to do that you have to sacrifice something else. […] It’s not as important to me to have like one super fun night out, it’s better I have a good everyday life [laughs], like always.

In Wilma’s account (and Alma’s above), the event of drinking expands into the next day, making it a stress factor as it interferes with a myriad of obligations (e.g. studies, work, health) seen as more meaningful. Wilma thus chooses to put efforts on having a good everyday life, where she temporally values weekdays over weekends, indicating ‘time in’ instead of ‘time out’ behavior (Woodman 2021). The intense psychoactive substance that is enacted in the above examples puts too much at risk (e.g. stress, mental health, physical well-being, loss of control over emotions and situations), not making it important enough to consume regularly.

What this theme illustrates is that pleasure in drinking emerge in planned situations with friends, where participants have prepared both mentally and schedule-wise. In these descriptions, responsible capacities are accentuated and ‘healthy’ drinking situations emerge: namely, fun social situations at designated venues that does not influence other parts of study or work-life. For many participants (but not all) ‘controlled’ and ‘planned’ drinking meant moderate alcohol intake. However, participants strategically ‘curate’ their alcohol assemblages in order to maximize the pleasure and minimize the risks irrespective of how much they drink (Moore 2010; Wilkinson 2017).

Downplaying the act of drinking: pleasure in social bonding

The unimportance of drinking alcohol in both private and social settings were accentuated in the material. While it must have been difficult to some extent for participants to convey this message, since many interview questions focused on alcohol (e.g. what they consumed, when/where they consumed it, reasons for drinking), it was striking in the analysis that many, primarily light drinking, participants tried to tell us that drinking alcohol was very insignificant in their lives. For example, at the end of the interview with Nasir (22-year-old man, light drinker) we asked about his relation with alcohol, on which he replied: ‘I just care very, very little about it.’ Similarly, after asking Leila (21-year-old-woman, light drinker) numerous questions about her relation to alcohol she summed it up very clearly:

Let me give you a very good example. When me and my friends are at [grocery store] and are about to do the weekly shopping, we always buy a large pack of coke, so we have [laughs] … That’s more like our thing.

While both Leila and Nasir say that they can have a cider or a beer at a party, they describe that they do not drink to the point where they become drunk (among other things because they don’t like to lose control), and they can just as easily drink a coke instead of an alcoholic beverage. For these participants the question of why they sometimes drink can be hard to answer. Like Adam (18-year-old man, light drinker), in the extract below, struggling to make sense of why he drinks:

Adam:

Like I said, I don’t think it tastes good and I don’t like to lose control. So maybe a glass or two when you are out and it’s a party, but not more. It’s more for the … for the social bonding.

Interviewer:

What would you say that you get out of it, if you have a glass?

Adam:

I guess I get … The social bonding is a little bit more fun. I guess that’s it. I don’t get a whole lot out of it. I’m sober many times at parties and when I’m out, simply because I don’t have the energy [to drink] or can’t afford it. But I have just as much fun then, but it’s … I don’t really know.

To Adam, the pleasure of alcohol is ambiguous – he does not really like the taste or what it can do to you, but he still thinks that it affects social bonding (Moore 2010). When participants like Leila, Nasir and Adam talk about the pleasures of alcohol they reason in similar ways; it is primarily the experience of being part of assemblages that allow for relations in a bit more joyful and relaxed ways that is accentuated. At events that include alcohol – whether the participants drink it or not – they describe how enactments of bonding and deepening of friendships are made available (MacLean 2016). As seen above, participants are however careful to describe that this is not accomplished through changes in personalities achieved by alcohol, but rather that alcohol is part of such assemblages where more communicative affective capacities emerge. It is apparent that events with alcohol are enacted in a different way than those without:

Interviewer:

How has it been with alcohol since you moved to [new city]? Has it become more or less since you moved?

Kevin:

No, I wouldn’t say that I drink in a way that it can be more or less. It’s more like, we have gone out, me and the people who live here, so that we would bond more and get to know each other a little. That happened like once, but it wasn’t like we were drinking. It was like two beers then. I would say, it hasn’t been more or less, but more like you should stick to a little something that doesn’t affect … I mean I won’t get affected in any way if I drink two beers or three beers. It’s more like instead of having a coke or something, then we can have a beer.

While Kevin downplays the act of drinking (‘it wasn’t like we were drinking’), alcohol still acts as an important element in creating a setting where it is easier to get to know each other. In his account, emphasizing how drinking does not affect him, it still seems important that they were drinking beer ‘instead of having a coke’ to accomplish this atmosphere of bonding. Such atmospheres appear to be related to moderate drinking assemblages that oppose transgression, risk-taking and edgework that has previously been described as important in social bonding (Lyng 2004).

However, heavy drinking participants also describe activities where they talk about being drunk with their friends at clubs and bars, dancing and being social. Similar experiences of alcohol assemblages as social emerge in these accounts. As illustrated by Marco below:

For me drinking alcohol puts me in a social bubble that I like. Meeting lots of new people, distracting me, and then I get a lot of affirmation from people all the time. I can be the most charming person I want to be and then, all of a sudden, I get lots of affirmation for that. So, it’s not the feeling of alcohol that makes me calm, it’s that I suddenly let go of my social boundaries or something, and become a person that people like more.

Similar to the light drinkers quoted above, Marco downplays the transgressive power of alcohol, and instead accentuates the social process (‘social bubble’) it’s part of. For him, the affects produced in drinking situations (being ‘charming’, ‘calm’, ‘likeable’) are co-established by people and their reactions as he reframes heavy drinking away from excess, uncontrolled behavior and chaos. Thus, the participants generally describe how they want to keep drinking near the assemblages of everyday life sociality; they aim to modify social relations into being more relaxed but not transgress or radically change them.

While drinking alcohol, and the physical effects of it, is downplayed here, these examples illustrate how alcohol is still considered an important element in events aiming for social bonding. Participants generally comes to the conclusion that it is not drinking alcohol but rather the sociality that is expected in events with alcohol that is central. Similar experiences of social bonding do not seem to be as easily assembled outside of these alcohol centered assemblages.

Discussion and conclusions

All participants included in this article drink alcohol. Although they belong to what has previously been called ‘the sober generation’ (Pape, Rossow, and Brunborg 2018), it has been noted before that a large share of those who did not drink alcohol during their early adolescence start drinking at some point (Månsson, Samuelsson, and Törrönen 2022). Our results further emphasize that drinking has become more integrated in the lives of this generation as they grow older, but that the described alcohol assemblages produce alcohol as an intense psychoactive substance that needs to be handled with care. The themes described above illustrate how pleasure in drinking is made possible through control and planning, and in downplaying the importance of drinking and the transgressive power of intoxication. Compared to previous studies focused on pleasure as a ‘choice’ made by a subject (Measham and Brain 2005), we here suggest that pleasure is enacted in particular socio-material arrangements (Dennis 2019).

In participant accounts, alcohol makes people lose control over their personality, emotions, surroundings and structured everyday lives. As such, it can create unwanted social, physical and mental effects on the consumers and their peer groups. When handled with care, it is however described to create a social lubricant which can open up for social bonding. For this to be achieved, it however seems important that participants stay their authentic selves. These results might suggest that alcohol is described like other (illegal) drugs, involving similar risks and benefits, rather than being seen as more harmless and acceptable (Burgess, Yeomans, and Fenton 2022). While some, primarily heavy drinkers, speak of drinking as an experience of ‘time out’ from everyday life, most participants are careful to describe that drinking should be kept within the same controlled manner as other parts of their lives. It should not change one’s personality, it should not make you lose control, it should not be spontaneous and chaotic, and it should not be consumed for other reasons than to ‘have fun’. In accounts about alcohol and pleasurable drinking situations participants thus become healthy, structured and responsible subjects. They become authentic persons who strive for unaltered relations. Following such considerations, it can be suggested that the risk-taking element in drinking has become stigmatized – at least among some groups of emerging adults. What has earlier been described as normal drinking behavior in populations of emerging adults (e.g. loss of control in Measham and Brain 2005), is considered both shameful and unhealthy by our participants. The heavy drinkers in the material also take distance to the transformative power of drinking in terms of transgression and excess. Similar to how scholars have suggested that processes of normalization of illegal drug use is differentiated between youth groups (Shildrick 2002), the results presented here might indicate a de-normalization of out of control and heavy drinking in some groups of emerging adults. This suggests that these emerging adults do new kind of boundary work in relation to drinking.

While the notion of ‘controlled loss of control’ (Measham and Brain 2005) has become increasingly criticized for not acknowledging the influence of alternative agencies in alcohol and other drug consumption practices, scholars (e.g. Demant 2009; Dennis 2016) have suggested that the theoretical framework can be revised to include non-human elements and that a reformulated notion of ‘controlled loss of control’ is still useful (Cañedo and Moral 2017). As the participants in this study are very concerned with staying in control when they drink, this perspective can be valuable for understanding their drinking activities. Looking at the participants strive for control from a socio-material approach, Dennis (2016, 137) claims that control can never be ‘a matter of self-control, of being in control or out of control, but rather control is very much shared with the assemblage involved’. This is also recognized by the participants in this study in their way of making spatial, temporal and social arrangements through which they describe that control can be enacted in alcohol assemblages. It is also clearly illustrated how control becomes shared in the way participants drink less to take care of each other, and avoid reaching stages where they become ‘grumpy’, ‘introvert’ or overshare emotions which might cause for a bad experience for themselves and others.

Pleasure in drinking is generally described as dependent on controlled and planned events, although participants acknowledge that alcohol assemblages do alter ways in which control is performed – it needs to be enacted together with others in the drinking event. While alcohol is described as unimportant to several participants in this study, alcohol assemblages are not. In states of shared control, peer groups interact and take care of each other which opens up for deeper relations. For this to be possible, it however seems as the importance of alcohol needs to be played down, while at the same time being described as a powerful element. Following these considerations, we argue that for the group studied here the concept of ‘controlled loss of control’ might not be compatible with their descriptions of alcohol and pleasure. Instead, they seem to describe a ‘controlled attainment of control’, where they work hard to curate alcohol assemblages to counteract loss of control. Thus, it can also be concluded that space, time and socio-material elements are ‘not passive backdrops to young people’s drinking practices and experiences’ (Wilkinson 2017, 753). Instead, participants in this study are active in shaping their drinking occasions, and thus in influencing the drinking experiences for themselves and others. They actively do specific kind of boundary work towards drinking, developing drinking practices that makes it a safe tool for bonding. This does however not mean that pleasure in drinking has disappeared in participant accounts, rather that descriptions of pleasure echoes dominant narratives about responsibility and control also pivotal in youth accounts about illicit drug use (Ekendahl and Karlsson 2022).

A limitation in this study is the possible tendency of the participants to frame themselves as responsible and reliable individuals in an interview situation with adult researchers. Methodologically, we strove to overcome these issues by using open ended interview questions, asking participants to elaborate on for example contextual aspects and events. Similarly, since this is the fourth interview round with the same participants, this has most likely increased their willingness to speak openly about their everyday lives and drinking. We can however never know whether interview material tells the ‘true’ story, and this might not be the most crucial issue here. The results still highlight important aspects on dominant cultural and symbolic meanings of alcohol, and the cultural expectations on how to justify pleasure in alcohol consumption. However, in the course of a longitudinal project, it seems likely that those who live more unstructured lives in general are more likely to drop out of the study, and the results in this article should therefore be interpreted with some caution as the specific emphasis on control may be influenced by this sort of constraint. The results are nevertheless supported by previous research indicating that young people are very concerned with control and responsibility (e.g. Burgess, Yeomans, and Fenton 2022; Caluzzi et al. 2022; Pennay et al. 2023). In this study, alcohol becomes a threat to a conscientious lifestyle and needs to be handled with care to achieve pleasure in drinking. While this can certainly act as benevolent from a public health perspective, with decreased drinking and more responsible drinking activities, it should be further investigated how this also taps into a broader discussion on the decrease of mental health in this generation. When elements such as alcohol are enacted as risky primarily because they might cause loss of control, this illustrates how emerging adults might struggle with well-being in a world that can seem uncontrollable.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd: [Grant Number 2016-00313 and 2020-00457].