Two standard alcoholic drinks a day no longer safe, health officials say
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Alcohol as a solvent is very similar to many inhalants as a drug. Closer to paint thinner than nitrous oxide. Similar cultural affection to hallucinogens, pot or even pure methamphetamines would be less harmful.
Some things are hard to perceive odd when it's everyday phenomenon. Women wearing high-heels is be another very odd cultural artifact.
Imagine a sci fi story where people stare into a glowing rectangular box for hours on end per day. There are whole industries surrounding the production of these glowing rectangles, and the people who are particularly good at changing the colors get paid far more than anybody else. Major efforts by the academic and altruistic class have been made to provide glowing squares to people who are starving to death, thinking that the inedible glowing squares might cause them to grow food.
EDIT: staring at a computer screen all day is also associated with quite a few negative effects -- whether working or playing.
As someone who lived in a region with heavy meth use, I can tell you that I would much rather deal with drunk people than meth heads. Also, your sentences before this one don't make any sense, "alcohol as a solvent is very similar to many inhalants as a drug" what does that even mean?
> Imagine a sci-fi story where you encounter human settlement that consumes solvent
In your sci-fi story you forgot to mention that this solvent people drink also tastes very good, produces a sense of euphoria, lowers social inhibitions and reduces stress.
> Women wearing high-heels is be another very odd cultural artifact
No, same as your sci-fi story it would not. The reasons behind high heels are sad and ridiculous, but rather obvious. High heels make you look taller, give more definition to your legs and make you look a bit helpless and fragile. All of this is in tune with making females look more attractive in a male dominated society.
Methamphetamines were used legally long time before they became illegal. Paul Erdős was probably the most famous (amphetamine and methylphenidate) user. Using meth when studying was also common.
Methamphetamine derivatives have reentered the society in the form Adderall and other drugs.
Methamphetamine was invented in 20th century. So "long time" is a few decades max.
And you are perfectly welcome to never drink it. I find the negatives acceptable, so I do drink.
Would love some data on your claim about meth, because I grew up near communities that were hit hard by meth, I just can’t believe that.
Ethanol LD50 - 12g/kg Meth LD50 - ~55mg/kg (in mice / rats)
Note this is the result of a quick google search and should be checked for any relation to accuracy.
Meth (actual meth, not a different amphetamine) can be prescribed. It's typically under the brand name Desoxyn in the US. There's people who take it for ADHD. It's not really all that different from the rest of the stimulants prescribed for that purpose when used as directed and in an appropriate dose.
As with many things, the benefit/harm relationship is highly related to dose, as well as the rest of the lifestyle associated with it.
Adderall is the new reintroduction of meth into the society.
Mind you, buying shoes that don't have at least a vestigial heel is pretty hard. A whole society that intentionally damages it body mechanics...
Of course there are exceptions, for example if a minor gets heavily drunk just once it dramatically increases the chance of alcoholism later in life as it affects the developing brain a lot more.
[1] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/rich-people-drinking-...
[2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170511095038.h...
This type of anecdata is meaningless for assessing anything. Not only is your sample size tiny and biased based on where you live, but there's selection bias due to the fact that some types of alcoholics don't go to church AA meetings.
> The difference is that…
As usual, there are likely many differences, rather than just one. Studies have shown that wealthy people drink more, likely because they can afford to drink more. They're also more likely to seek and afford healthcare, therapy, gyms, healthy food, etc., not just lawyers.
The biggest predictor of recovery from an addiction is whether or not the addict has a safety net. Rich people can buy a safety net (if they don't have close friends, they can pay for life coaches, therapists, and more). Poor people either have it or they don't.
I could easily believe that genetic predisposition to addiction is the same regardless of wealth (I'd actually be somewhat surprised if it weren't true), but the reality is that rich people have a lot more support to help them through their struggles than poor people.
Many of these don't apply to wealthy people who drink regularly, simply because they have more resources to avoid the consequences. Thus they may not be classified as alcoholics, where the same degree of consumption would classify them as such if they had fewer resources.
I'm not sure what the implication here is - that wealthy people can afford better healthcare? Or that wealthy people have superior biology that allows them to ignore the chemical effects of ethanol?
If the former, what kind of healthcare are wealthy people getting that nullifies the effects of ethanol?
They may have a 6-figure job, where the boss doesn't care if they come in late or hung over, or even drink on the job. They may live in a nice condo nearby, and walk or bus to work. They can dress nicely and go out to nicer places, and not get asked to leave for being a little rambunctious.
I've known many people who fit this description.
A person with a minimum wage job who drinks the same amount is spending a much more significant fraction of their income on alcohol. They have an hourly blue-collar job where the boss isn't going to allow them to come in late or hung over. They live outside the city where they can afford it, and have to drive every day (potentially problematic). They can't afford to eat healthy, which adds to their health problems.
Health isn't only determined by biology and healthcare.
Wealthy people can hire people to do sober-required tasks for them, while they do the gladhanding and back-slapping and the strategic disinhibition of potential customers, suppliers, or partners.
This should be available to everyone and it's a tragedy it isn't.
Its like you give the obese a little blood thinner, which is like a medicine for them. But not for the rest.
I certainly appreciate public health officials for their efforts; not dying of cholera when I drink water is a nice feature of modernity, but them jabbering on about how many drinks you can have before you have "health effects" is just a lot of horse shit. I'm pretty sure oral sex is more dangerous than consuming alcohol at such levels (it's statistically mildly carcinogenic).
There are obvious things these people could be doing which are tremendously more useful: assessing the human health impacts of ... pesticides, herbicides, widespread use of soy protein (which is highly estrogenic and has almost certainly had a huge negative impact on human health), BPAs and so on. Such things should be reassessed by public health officials, and are likely vastly more dangerous than people having a couple of beers, but somehow we keep getting obsessive advice from teetotal nitwits.
In this case, Mitchell & Webb performed a sketch on the power of having just shy of two drinks. The Inebriati is "a group bound by the creed that humanity is better and more noble after very nearly two drinks than at any other time."
Video here: https://streamable.com/wtsn
Sitting and having drinks, even sitting and having a LOT of drinks occasionally, with your close friends, is good for you because it helps decrease your stress.
(I'm not equating these two)
You're talking about being drunk. The person you're replying to is talking about having a drink.
Personally, I've stopped using alcohol completely. At first I just tried to drink less, but that's difficult because using it lowers inhibition and makes it more likely to be overused. It's much easier to just stop entirely and remove any possibility of a bad decision. I've found that I actually enjoy mocktails, alcohol-free beers and soft drinks when I go out and don't miss alcoholic drinks one bit. I know I won't get a hangover or be in a compromised mental state at any point. It feels great.
Even though I only did this for personal reasons I do now see many more of the negative effects of alcohol as an outside observer. I hope that within my lifetime I'll see much less use of this drug much like what's happened with tobacco.
Fructose metabolism happens mainly in the liver, just like ethanol metabolism. It doesn't affect the brain in the same way, though, which is why a blood-fructose level isn't a test the police will give you for driving poorly.
It may be that ethanol-containing drinks are safer than fructose-containing foods and drinks, health-wise, but we find it harder to cut down on the latter. If you're giving up ethanol for health reasons, you might want to also swap glucose for fructose, and maltose (glucose+glucose) for sucrose (glucose+fructose). Only eat foods with a small amount of naturally-occurring fructose, like fruits.
And what do you think is the point of alcohol free beers and wines?
And my second belief (again generalizing, how I see it, etc.) is that alcohol-free beers are so that you can fit in when at the bar (where again, socializing is the main value) and choosing not to drink alcohol.
You have apparently never tasted wine with a sommelier or wine enthusiast, because I can assure you it is 100% about the wine. Socializing is minimal
>with the socializing eased by the alcohol
...the alcohol in the spit bucket?
...but you don’t consume the alcohol at a wine tasting so this doesn’t make any sense. If you aren’t consuming any alcohol what is left but valuing the taste?
Perhaps these are technically not "tastings" according to some gatekeeping organization.
Also true: Water purification is still a challenge even today. Plenty of cities don't even have drinkable water in people's residences.
Given a choice between a lot of the tap water across the world's cities and basically any strength of beer, I'd go for the beer if I had any doubts about local water quality. That tap water often requires boiling and/or filtration. Overly clever local water sellers often bottle the unfiltered tap water and sell it. I've had that experience as well.
Are they going to make grape juice illegal, too?
Prohibition tried to ban booze, and it failed for those reasons.
I see it as a good reason to legalize things invented recently rather than making alcohol illegal. The prohibition and the war on drugs should have taught people something.
If anyone's into fancy alcohols and wants to ensure they're sticking to safe drinking limits, I made a free iOS app called Good Spirits just for that purpose: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/good-spirits/id1434237439
You set a weekly drink amount (with suggestions based on government recommendations) and check in every time you drink, and the app tracks your progress and lets you know how you've been doing over the course of the week/month/year. For convenience, you can automatically pull your recent beer check-ins from Untappd.
The source code is available under the GPL here: https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits
(I think I'm pretty much the only user at the moment, but it's been invaluable in tempering my craft beer obsession!)
It's this really insidious subtext of "What we tell you is reality."
Yesterday the alcohol was safe, because that's what we knew it was. Today the alcohol isn't safe, because that's what we know it is. That's how a human's understanding of reality works. So we report things in the same way.
When of course it's really the media itself to blame.
I also agree that most of the scare is media neglecting their public interest responsibilities in the name of sensationalism.
'But Anne Kelso, the NHMRC chief executive, said the guidelines were “not telling Australians how much to drink”.'
Isn't that exactly what you are doing? (And should be doing?)
A (UK) pint (568ml) of beer at 5% ABV will have 2.24 standard drinks.
A 175ml glass of wine at 12.5% ABV will have 1.8 standard drinks.
Important advice is to have at least one day a week with no alcohol at all.
{Defensiveness}
It's easy to pronounce something bad. But always you must ask how it compares to the available alternatives.
It's inconceivable to me how anyone but the most uninformed could have ever thought that something that melts your liver would be safe in any concentration. For decades I've rolled my eyes at the "one glass of wine a day" or whatever phrase was used in the current era.
Best watch your peanut consumption as well.
Point is, there are likely many things in a day that are consumed that are not tha great for people, but they don't even know. Some are even thought to be good for them.
My intuition would be the opposite of yours. I think our body is reasonably well equipped to handle low dose exposure, but large doses at once are more likely to cause irreversible damage.
Is a pack of cigarettes high enough to kill you if you smoke it all at once ? I know quite a few friends who get through a pack a day.
I didn't say 365 cigarettes at once. Everyone knows its too high a dosage that might actually kill a person, just like a high enough dose of caffeine or alcohol.
I don't think a cigarette a day is low dosage. While you might not die of a heart attack or get lung cancer directly from smoking, it might still increase the risk of serious diseases given other environmental conditions, your fitness level, diet, etc. The 2 drinks a day has to be seen in a similar light.
Ethanol metabolizes to acetaldehyde, which is a chemical that causes several unpleasant symptoms. Among these is the so-called "Asian blush". (Asians have a higher incidence of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency.)
Any amount of alcohol you drink in excess of your liver's ability to express acetaldehyde dehydrogenase will cause damage. If you get a hangover, it was too much.
This isn't the same as being unsafe though, is it?
For me: safety means not causing permanent damage.