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Comment by andrei_says_ | Hacker News Reader

Ganja has, and is being used in a lot of meditation and yoga practices to help with focus, perception and attention. It’s use has in many ways helped develop many of these practices throughout countless generation.

Representing it as a substance which clouds the mind is only due to ignorance of its intentional use for the opposite.

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That's an excellent point, any substance that alters your brain chemistry such as Marijuana, Alcohol, or Coffee can have a positive or negative impact. We are rich complex beings and everything we put in our body adds to that. I think many of the harmful substances can have a positive effect if used in a healthy way. We need to let go of either demonizing them for their negative effects or deifying them for their positive effects. Once we realize they're complex supplements that can be an enjoyable addition when used in certain circumstances while still respecting their potential for abuse we'll have made a big step forward.

Alcohol has virtually no positive health benefits. Ethanol is potently toxic and will cause DNA damage throughout your body and kill a number of other cells in the way.

But alcohol consumption is ridiculously evolutionarily beneficial. The ability to digest ethanol has evolved independently twice, and each time it swept to dominate ~95 percent of the population in less than 500 years.

It's interesting that you don't state HOW it is beneficial.

It is an energy income method, albeit not the best. In reasonable amounts it strengthens social bonds in group. And there might be few more. There ya go. Wanna grab a beer?

Nah, I'd prefer to avoid cancer thanks though.

From few beers per week? I don't think so. What about the happiness coming from evening spent in intense social bonding?

Downvote? Cute, does that equate to social pressure to consume ethanol? Any alcohol consumption increases the incidence of multiple types of cancers, the primary metabilite (ethanal/acetaldehyde) causes damage to DNA. I can bond with people over my passion for the sciences, I prefer to avoid increasing my risk of cancers. No NMDA antagonist needed.

"The evidence indicates that the more alcohol a person drinks—particularly the more alcohol a person drinks regularly over time—the higher his or her risk of developing an alcohol-associated cancer. Even light drinkers (those who have no more than one drink per day) and binge drinkers have a modestly increased risk of some cancers (3–7). Based on data from 2009, an estimated 3.5% of cancer deaths in the United States (about 19,500 deaths) were alcohol related (8)." https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...

Just for some added shits and giggles: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dar.12596

It's not necessary to know /how/ to know that it /does/, but it's probably related to the sanitation of drinkable liquids.

So you think mechanisms aren't important? Forget about engineering then.

> evolutionarily beneficial

Hardly convinced by your arguments since among Asian populations there is large genetic propensity not to be able to break down ethanol properly.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1580147/

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