My Year in Drinks: 2020 Wayne Curtis 2020 was the year we reconsidered our relationship with drink, both collectively and individually. Collectively we drank more but spent less on liquor. According to a survey of 1,540 Americans recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the frequency of drinking rose 14 percent in 2020 over the previous year. We drank less in bars, which were being shuttered, and more at home, having gone into survivalist bunker mode. We filled our liquor larders with cheaper comfort brands. While volume consumed was up, overall revenues for liquor companies were down. Individually, how we related to alcohol was impossible to categorize. Some of us stepped up our home games, hosting outdoor get-togethers for our pods, acquiring exotic liquors to mix cocktails we might otherwise pass by. But others abandoned drink altogether, including one friend who announced early on that she was going dry.