It's funny because manual drinkers like myself don't like the system either. I had to install a mod to drink the right amount of water to quench my thirst instead of overdrinking 1/4 bottle. 

At this point I'm unsure, you should still be able to play the game, your memory isn't full at the time of any of these crashes. You can try doing a full reinstall to make sure it's not an install issue causing it.   First, uninstall the game, then go to "Steam\steamapps\common\ProjectZomboid" and make sure there are no leftover files or folders there.   After that, go to “%UserProfile%\Zomboid” and delete everything there except the “Saves” folder.   Then just install the game again and see if that helps.

I think Auto Drink should apply to all liquids. It makes the game more enjoyable than having to manually drink mixed beverages. This update just made the game more tedious. It's really annoying to have to drink mixed drinks manually. What was the point of adding the mixed beverages feature if we can't use Auto Drink with them? There are already so many things to keep track of while playing that I often forget to drink unless it's automatic. If any developer reads this, please stop making unnecessary changes that only make the game less fun and more tedious. It feels like the game keeps leaning toward selective realism by adding only negative inconveniences while ignoring realistic features that would actually help the player.

Doesn't matter about vanilla, it worked fine in .17 and .18, so there's a performance-related regression issue(s).