The Drunkard’s Progress: Alcohol in 19th Century America | Hacker News Reader

The Drunkard’s Progress: Alcohol in 19th Century America

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19 pointsbenbreen12 comments

Yes alcohol is bad.

Then again, it seemed like it was the only drug that helped with my panic attacks, and generalized anxiety.

Benzodiazepines(mainly Klonopin) helped a bit, but dealing with MD's is tedious, and expensive, and there's nothing more irritating than a doctor whom forgets to fill refills, or wants to see you for another expensive office visit before the script is written. (I happened to run across a ethical doctor, but I'm definetly in the minority. And I only found him after seeing utterly useless "professionals".

I knew after my breakdown that if I wanted to make it to middle age, I would only use alcohol when absolutely needed. Meaning very light drinking during social events, or none at all?

I tried to only use the poison when absolutely needed.

As my grandfather said, "Moderation in everything!".

(I think I'm Shadowbanned. Up, or down vote me. To lazy to go to incognito mode on my laptop. By the way, I belive shadowbanning because you refuse to kiss a moderator's ass is childish, petty, and un-American. It's mean girl, middle school tactics. It's not clever, it's weaselly, and weak. At least tell the person that got their panties/ego in a bind to get lost?)

Alcohol isn’t a great solution for anxiety, it works short term but over the long run tends to increase feelings of anxiousness. Benzo’s are extremely dangerous and only typically used as rescue medication... if you’ve only been dealing with MDs you should seriously consider trying to find a psychiatric specialist who can provide more nuanced care.

Since you didn't mention it, have you tried cannabis or CBD? If you live somewhere that it's legalized it's worth a try. Among people I know the results are mixed, but it can help with anxiety.

In any case, edibles especially, are a lot healthier than benzos or alcohol, and not addictive in the same way.

Treating anxiety with cannabis is like throwing gas on a fire.

It seems to depend on the person? I've seen some anxiety-prone friends freak out on thc, while others felt better like they never had before. It's weird!

I disagree, it depends on the person.

Some people do not become anxious from cannabis, that is true.

The problem is recommending a drug with one of the most common side effects being anxiety to a person who has severe enough anxiety to have sought treatment for it and been prescribed benzodiazepines. While it might work it might also trigger a panic attack.

If you haven't yet, try both vitamin D3 and magnesium supplements. They're correlated with generalized mental health issues and some deficiency in both is common.

This makes me wonder about old-timey drink. I vaguely know what 'grog' is, and I can sort of guess what they mean by 'punch', but what is 'flip', 'slings', and is 'pepper in rum' really what it sounds like?

Wikipedia can help with the first, which is an interesting concoction which sounds like hard work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_(cocktail) : " a mixture of beer, rum, and sugar, heated with a red-hot iron ("Thus we live at sea; eat biscuit, and drink flip"). The iron caused the drink to froth, and this frothing (or "flipping") engendered the name. Over time, eggs were added and the proportion of sugar increased, the beer was eliminated, and the drink ceased to be served hot."), but 'slings' WP entry is rather vague, and while I can find various combinations of pepper and rum in Google, I'm not sure any of them are what is meant.

Traditionally, grog was a British Navy mixture of rum and water in 1:4 (ish) proportions. Circa-late 1700s.

If you are in Silicon Valley and want to experience a flip, try out 'the haberdasher' in san jose. So good. If they have a good thick stout on tap, get the 'beer flip' - I can't tell you what's in it, other than it's cold and sweet and slightly carbonated and involves a whole egg and some stout. How good it is depends a lot on what kind of stout they use; the best I've had was with a peanut butter stout.

Their 'fenway flip' is also pretty great.

The rest of their drinks are pretty good, too, and the bartenders are very knowledgeable if you come on a weeknight when they aren't too busy.

All of them roughly map onto the more modern category we typically use for anything involving mixing spirits with something acidic, sweet or bitter: cocktail. "Sling" still survives via an old-timey British cocktail, the Singapore Sling. Says Wikipedia: "a sling was originally a North American drink composed of spirit and water, sweetened and flavored."

As for pepper in rum, I had to look that up too. I suspect that Benjamin Rush would've been referring to something similar to this, because Jamaican rum was so dominant in the British colonies: https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/pepper-rum

Edit: Confusingly, this source from the 1780s [1] says "rum, whisky, brandy, gin, stinkibus, bitters, toddy, grog, slings and fifty other liquors, all come under the denomination of spirits." But this is presumably what Rush had in mind because it's direct from his book: "After a while nothing would satisfy him but slings made of equal parts of rum and water, with a little sugar." [2]

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=VyRTvziJuecC&dq=sling%20sp... [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=PnZVb3esMk4C&dq=sling%20sp...

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