WE’RE HEALTHIER THAN EVER. BUT ARE WE HAVING FUN?

The party girl is disappearing and nobody's talking about it!!!!

Everybody I know is incredibly healthy right now. Everyone has a morning routine, everyone is tracking something, their sleep, their steps, their cortisol, their gut health, their glucose. People are up at 6am, dry brushing, taking supplements I can't pronounce, going on little mental health walks, in bed by 10pm sharp. And honestly, good for them. I mean that. Nobody needs to lose an entire Sunday to a hangover that starts as a headache and ends as an existential crisis.

But I do have a question. Are we still having fun?

Because somewhere between wellness culture and soft life and whatever the internet is calling self-care this month, being a little bit irresponsible has become deeply uncool. Not dangerous, not destructive, just regular, slightly chaotic fun. I noticed it properly a few weeks ago when I tried to get a group together for someone's birthday and it took four days and eleven messages to find a date, because one friend had a 7am pilates class, another one is "not really drinking right now," and a third just sent a voice note explaining, at length, why she's been sleeping so well since she stopped going out. Not one of these things is a bad choice on its own. But put them all in the same group chat and suddenly a birthday becomes a logistical negotiation, and the party girl quietly leaves the chat.

I used to be the friend who organised things. Now I'm the friend who has to convince people that one drink on a Tuesday isn't a personality crisis. And look, I get the appeal of staying in. There are few pleasures greater than being freshly showered, moisturised, horizontal on your couch while everyone else is posting blurry stories from some bar where the drinks are overpriced and the bathroom line never moves. Actually, this weekend, that was me. I stayed home, my brother went out, and the next morning I couldn't get him off the couch for lunch while I was up, showered, full of energy, being insufferably productive about it. And I remember thinking, is this what it feels like every Sunday, if you just don't drink? Is this the secret? for an hour I actually considered it. and then I looked at my polly pocket skirt laying on my bed and I remembered how good I look in it, and that a night out is the only time I ever get to wear it

Because as much as I love staying home, I love getting dressed with inappropriate levels of optimism even more. I love standing in front of my mirror thinking tonight could change my life. It probably won't. But it could. And that possibility is basically the whole appeal. Then the next weekend someone texts "just one drink?", which is one of the biggest lies ever told, and I'm interested again, energetic Sunday or not.

I've always had horrible hangovers, the disrespectful kind, the kind that make you feel like your body is filing a formal complaint. So a few years ago I tried to become one of the responsible girls, the ones who go home at a decent hour and wake up dewy and emotionally available. I got better at it, genuinely. Two drinks, alternate with water, home before it gets embarrassing. But somewhere along the way I watched most of my group do the same thing, and the versions of us that used to stay out until sunrise for no reason at all quietly disappeared, one birthday at a time, until "let's stay in" stopped being the exception and became the plan by default.

Somewhere in there, the word "fun" quietly changed meaning too. It used to be a compliment. She's so fun used to mean something good, something you wanted people to say about you. Now it comes with a slight edge to it, like it's short for she hasn't figured her life out yet, or she'll grow out of it. Meanwhile "I've been so disciplined lately" gets said with the same pride people used to reserve for actual achievements. I've caught myself doing it too, bragging about my sleep score to a friend like it was a personality trait and not a number an app gave me. We've quietly agreed that self-control is the personality now, and fun is just something you used to be into, like a phase, like skinny jeans.

I also think people got confused somewhere about what going out is actually for. Everyone talks about it like it only exists for two reasons, to get drunk or to meet someone, some guy, some situationship, some plot twist. But most of my best nights had nothing to do with any of that. They were about being in a room with my actual friends, the ones I already have, dancing so badly it should be illegal, screaming lyrics none of us fully know, filming each other doing something we will regret and treasure in equal measure. I have a video of my best friend attempting a cartwheel in a club three years ago that I will hold over her for the rest of her life, and honestly, that video means more to me than most of the "real" things I did that year. Nobody warns you that this is where the good material comes from. Not from the mornings you show up early. From the nights someone had to hold your hair, or find your phone, or explain to you the next day what actually happened, slowly, while you cover your face with a pillow.

And don't even get me started on the morning debrief. Everyone wakes up with a completely different version of the same night, and somehow all of them are true at the same time. One person remembers nothing after 1am. Another remembers everything, in disturbing detail, including the exact thing you said to your ex on the dance floor that you were really hoping had been forgotten. Someone always has a voice note they don't remember sending. Someone always has to explain, very slowly, why there's a stranger's number saved in your phone under "DO NOT CALL, VERY FUNNY GUY." You end up laughing so hard piecing it together that it almost becomes a second version of the night, better than the first one, and I genuinely don't think a green juice has ever made anyone laugh like that.

To be clear, I'm not asking for chaos every weekend. That's not the point, and honestly I don't think I could survive it anymore anyway. I just think there's a difference between choosing to stay in because you genuinely want to, and staying in because going out has started to feel like something you have to justify to people who no longer drink. One is rest. The other is slowly disappearing from your own life while telling yourself it's self-care.

And I think that's the actual problem, not that people got healthier, that's genuinely great, but that fun somehow became the thing you have to apologise for. As if the best version of you is always the one that says no. No to the last drink, no to the spontaneous plan, no to anything that might cost you tomorrow's routine. Some of the best nights of my life started with someone begging me to come out when I was already in my pyjamas, already committed to staying home, and I still don't fully remember how I ended up outside twenty minutes later in a tiny bag and an outfit held together by confidence. Those are the nights that turn into stories. And nobody has ever told a good story that starts with "so I had my tea and went to bed at 9:45."

Nobody's going to remember the week you hit every macro. But someone is always going to remember the night you almost didn't come out, the video that's still in three different group chats, the friend who's still not over him and started crying when that one song came on. This is the healthiest, youngest, most resilient you're ever going to be. Feels like a waste to spend all of it in bed by ten.