Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows | Hacker News Reader

Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

nytimes.com

194 pointshorseradish292 comments

My older brother is an alcoholic. I suspect it's somewhat cliche to say, but when he's sober he's the nicest guy I know - almost nobody else I'd rather spend time with - and when he's drunk, he's chaos.

The past few years he's been really struggling with sobriety - on and off like a roller coaster. The pandemic was an absolute nightmare for someone like him - in between jobs, trying to stay sober, trying to find the right balance of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, and all with a limited budget and shitty health insurance.

It breaks my heart that I can't do it for him.

Has he tried antabuse or something like that? Those pills make you vomit when you drink and are quite effective in harnessing the body's natural anti-poison response system to curb drinking.

Coprinus comatus mushroom has a similar effect. Just thought others would find that interesting as I do.

For some reason we, as a society, have decided certain health problems are moral failures to be treated with shame and cured through willpower alone rather than modern medical intervention.

"For some reason" there are temptations to addiction all around us, and alcohol is only one. We can't treat being human as merely a medical condition. Human cultures have adapted using shame as a tool.

> Human cultures have adapted using shame as a tool.

A rather poorly targeted and counterproductive one.

Note that you immediately assumed a puritan view, that addiction is solely an individual moral failing.

> there are temptations to addiction all around us

I used to be a heavy drinker. Shame and guilt were absolutely enormous factors in my decision to quit drinking. I'm just n = 1, but it seems crazy to me to suggest that shame doesn't work. It works really, really well on me! If you want me to stop doing something, then getting me to feel ashamed about it is a very effective strategy.

For many other people it might only lead to reclusion and self loathing, which leads to more drinking, which leads to more shame, and so on.

I have no trouble believing that, but it feels like across a lot of domains it's currently popular to say things like, "these old ways of human interaction don't work, therefore they are bad in all cases and should be replaced with new ways" when the truth is closer to, "these old ways of human interaction don't work sometimes and we should be open to other modalities, but the old ways remain quite effective in many cases."

If I had to choose one word to describe the current era's discourse, it might be "over-correction."

I agree, people tend to want to throw babies out with the bathwater. There is a trend of rejecting that which worked for previous generations but which also came with costs or compromises we no longer find acceptable. Rather than find ways to correct, like you say, instead we over-correct.

I do think shame as a tool is a crude one, and people can and should try do better. The trouble is shame is easy and doing better is hard. Many of us literally don't have the tools to do better. It requires higher choices, understanding interpersonal dynamics well enough to behave in un-intuitive ways, and personal sacrifice in order to coexist and connect with people who are suffering. If the average person had these abilities I don't think we'd need to have this conversation.

I don't think shame should be encouraged, but I doubt it makes sense to actively discourage it without an alternative that makes sense to people and is readily practiced. That's a hard problem.

With my kids I encourage them to think of what the other person is experiencing, think about why they'd invoke shameful words about someone or something, and generally try to reframe what they're thinking about. That alone can be helpful in thinking more constructively rather than destructively. Usually shaming something occurs out of discomfort, fear, and/or insecurity. Once you begin to recognize that addiction like alcoholism often stems from bad experiences, a lack of connection, a lack of community, etc - you begin to think of the person as someone burdened with more than most humans can handle, and recognize the necessity for support rather than your own desire to reject them or their habits.

Again, not a trivial thing, but one I believe is typically going to be more helpful than reaching for shame.

Maybe I'm wrong but at least shame indicates that people care. No reaction or concern whatsoever would probably be the worst reaction of all.

The medical condition is a predilection to addiction, alcohol or otherwise. Shame doesn't cure cancer or make you recover from a common cold.

You don't have to think of addiction as a moral failing when you treat it as a behavioral problem. There's not necessarily a genetic or chemical cause or cure - in the end, addiction is a behavior.

That’s begging the question, because behaviors can absolutely have chemical causes.

Predilection to addiction isn't a recognized medical condition like diabetes or heart failure. There is no diagnosis code for it. Some people seem more prone to addiction and there may be some genetic risk factors but anyone can become an addict.

I have a very serious family history of addiction. Many many alcoholics on both sides, hard drug abusers and ODs in younger generations too. So I don't drink. Pressure is immemse in college but still not an excuse. Addiction is a medical problem, but it's like obesity: a medical problem that arises from choices. So there is some individual responsibility. And shame may not help addicts but it sure stops people from becoming addicts.

while shame can be useful at the margin for curbing incidental misbehaviors (like peeing on the seat), it's often ineffective and counterproductive at tackling larger psychosocial issues like addiction. you don't shame people out of gambling, they just hide it from you. i know someone who's clearly an alcoholic and they simply isolate themselves for large parts of the day and then hangs out with other heavy drinkers at night.

this is incidentally why 'cancel culture' doesn't work either. you have to do the hard work of active engagement[0], and that requires empathy, not (mis)judgement. shame has a small, limited place in our prosocial toolbox, but backfires reliably when mis- or over-used (and it's too often misused to enforce arbitrary conformity).

[0]: intentionally avoiding the term "listening", because that tends to be shallowly dismissed, with everyone thinking they listen well simply because their ears work

Human cultures nave also historically adapted slavery, misogyny, and other "tools".

That doesn't mean that shame is an acceptable nor an effective form of addiction treatment.

Also doesn’t mean it isn’t.

> Human cultures have adapted using shame as a tool.

As you said temptation to addiction is all around us, and alcohol is only one…well shame is just another one of those tempting addictions and it happens to be the addiction de jour.

Yes but to what end? I don’t think shame is nearly as effective a “tool” as you imagine. What are some examples of things that humans have commonly shamed one another for throughout history? Most of them, with the benefit of hindsight, were nonsense and the shame solved nothing. How many gay people were “cured” by the shame they endured? How many people with depression? Or obesity? Or AIDS? Or epilepsy? Or leprosy? Or PTSD? Or diabetes? Or dyslexia?

And that’s to say nothing of the other ridiculous ways shame is wielded: when a man wants to be a stay-at-home dad, when a person doesn’t want to become a parent, when someone emigrates to another country, when someone is in a relationship with a person of another race. All of these people have been “shamed” yet none of these behaviors have abated.

What would you think of a manager who uses shame to “motivate” their employees? Or a teacher who uses shame to "motivate" students? You’d probably think they’re awful at their job. We know that putting people down is a terrible an ineffective way to motivate them to move forward.

So why do we still think it magically works when it comes to addiction? It doesn’t.

People often turn to drugs when there are other problems in their life they can’t deal with. Drug abuse is not just about the physical hook.

Many people have never realized that self-destruction can feel liberating.

There better ways to destroy one's ego than destroying the mind and body.

The "liberation" from self destruction is more of a temporary numbness, a borrowed liberation from tomorrow, that disappears once the hangover starts clearing up. It's a false sense of liberation. Speaking from experience.

I was not implying that that feeling was good or advocating for it. Just that that feeling appears, even if misguided, and we need to understand it to understand self-destruction loops

People also turn to drugs because they were irresponsibly prescribed opioids and developed a chemical addiction.

This idea that addiction is something that only happens to people who "just can't deal with life" needs to die.

Hmmm, in America the most common intervention is AA, whose doctrine is that willpower alone is not sufficient, that you must appeal to a higher power. We also know this intervention isn't any more effective than someone just trying get over it on their own, yet it persists, and is even court ordered often. There will be replies to this post about how AA "worked for them" or something to that effect. Which doesn't mean anything.

My brother struggles with alcoholism and has been on and off the horse, with AA as the main thing all the time. The primary impact it seems to have on him is that all he wants to talk about is AA and alcoholism. It becomes his identity. "Alcoholics do this, alcoholics do that, alcoholics are like this". If I thought that was helpful then fine, but it seems more rewarding identities would be possible and less limiting.

I think the identity of "recovering alcoholic" is quite harmful.

One of the things we've learned is that success with behavior changes happen when you normalize them. If someone is a "survivor of X" as their identity, X is still kind of controlling them. They are still defined in relation to that X. They are "James the rape survivor" and not "James the talented craftsman".

There's a very good reason that the term "I'm in recovery" is commonly said by people with substance issues.

Relapse is just around the corner, and most people don't know what will bring it on. It has happened to men and women stronger than you or me. Saying "I'm in recovery" is a way to remind yourself of that, and learn to be OK with taking things a day at a time. If a relapse happens, it's not the end. You're still taking it a day at a time, and tomorrow you'll make a plan to call your accountability partner, or structure your day to avoid those triggers.

Telling yourself "I'm recovered" makes the relapse much more damaging.

in America the most common intervention is AA, whose doctrine is that willpower alone is not sufficient, that you must appeal to a higher power. We also know this intervention isn't any more effective than someone just trying get over it on their own, yet it persists, and is even court ordered often.

I listen to old Lovelines from time to time and I thought it was weird when a caller asked Dr. Drew why he only suggests AA for alcohol addiction and never anything else. Dr. Drew, and even Adam Carolla, both got oddly defensive and started attacking the caller, as if even bringing up the question as to if alternatives exist was to question their authority to even speak on the matter. It just gave me a bad taste in my mouth for them to treat this twelve-step program as unquestionably the only way to deal with addiction.

But between that and the fact that AA is often court mandated, like you say, it makes me wonder why AA is put on this pedestal and people aren't given more treatment options.

Rehab and addiction therapy is not accessible to everyone, both geographically and financially.

I don't know about shame or moral failure, but alcoholism is obviously different from cancer or a broken leg in that you can control it yourself, even if it might be very hard for some.

A lot of other conditions also benefit from a more holistic approach, things like obesity, heart problems etc are easy to prevent, hard to cure.

I don’t think it’s “obviously different”. A generation ago people said the same thing about depression and suicidal ideation: you can control it yourself. Just be happy.

It’s a lovely sentiment for those of us who don’t suffer from it because it makes us feel like we are immune from the problem. It could never happen to us because we have the mental fortitude to overcome it. It’s a nice thought but it’s nonsense.

Wanting to drink may be like a depression or a cold, but proceeding to buy and consume alcohol is something you actively do.

Or are you saying alcoholics lack free will?

Then I suppose drug addicts should be immune from prosecution if they commit crimes to get drugs?

I'm from Russia and this is a very common treatment over there. Rather than pills, they give you an implant of sorts. In Russia we call it "getting coded". Works for some, but others just keep drinking.

Is this available in the US?

Google Disulfiram but there are some newer things out there as well.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

To anyone hoping to learn more about alcoholism medication, I highly recommend /r/Alcoholism_Medication. That subreddit, The Sinclair Method, and Naltrexone saved my life. More details in some of my recent comments too if you are interested.

These are pretty often contraindicated in cases like this, especially when the patient is also managing anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds.

Are you a doctor?

No. I did attend medical school a while back though, when I certainly knew more about the specific reactions involved here.

Has he looked into, researched Ayahuasca yet? Legal in many places now including Canada, and plenty of anecdotal evidence that it helps break addictions/dependancies.

I'm into drugs as much as the next guy. Ayahuasca, peyote, and similar things are just hallucigenics. It's all BS from people who don't know what it feels like and link it to spiritualism. Religion might be dead in the 21st century, but spiritualism is definitely taking its place.

Tell him to try kratom if he hasn't.

Kratom is snake oil.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health...

It's been working wonders for me (for over two years now) and so many other people, both in pain relief as well as alcohol withdrawal.

That article doesn't really say much. What's the relevant part of it that leads you to believe it's "snake oil"?

Edit: Plus if you're in the situation described in the OP you don't really worry about "dry mouth" or "dizziness" or other minor side effects (I've personally only experienced nausea when combined with nicotine).

It's not snake oil - with the right dosage it definitely produces opiate-like effects while avoiding the deadly dangers of opiate/alcohol overdose.

However, it is just another addictive drug with it's own unpleasant side-effects. And tastes like earwax. If someone can substitute Kratom for Fentanyl or heavy drinking, I would consider that a win. However, for the average person picking up a Kratom addiction is not a good idea.

Recently (within the last two years) I had to help someone suffering with alcoholism/DTS and I was horrified by the abysmal outpatient support the medical system here provides. If he didn't have health insurance and a ride I would not have been able to convince him to go, and he could have died.

It's very hard to argue with his contempt for hospitals and doctors when all they do is give you an overpriced potassium IV (very painful) then push you out the door and tell you to find an AA group.

I don't even know what the solution is, but I do know the current way of doing things is inadequate and probably getting a ton of people killed. It's very sad.

>>then push you out the door and tell you to find an AA group.

What is it exactly you want the hospital to do if your friend won't stop drinking?

Maybe there is something more going on than some person making a conscious decision to keep drinking? I'm not sure what the hospital should do in this exact situation but simply 'pushing someone out of the door' is very likely to have one result and this is the same person coming back through the same door time and time again.

so you don't have any idea what 'they' should do, but clearly it's the hospitals fault.

Maybe the 'they' that should do something is you?, but I guess it's actually easier to blame 'them', because 'they' should do something.

Even AA doesn't want people that won't admit they have a problem. because 'they' can't do anything for them either. The problem lies with the drinker, if they don't want to stop, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

How do you fix a problem that the patient won't admit they have?

What I was trying to say that it would be in the hospital's interest to offer a better solution since it will be that very same hospital that this guy will inevitably return to.

I guess you are in the camp that thinks everyone can help themselves? All I would say to this is that there's lots of evidence around you that proves this idea is wrong.

OK, tell me specifically what a hospital - or anyone else - can do, to 'help' a patient that won't help themselves? Lock them up and dry them out against their will? Should we lock up drug addicts to keep them away from drugs? how about forcing blood pressure meds down the throats of people who are on the verge of a stroke, but won't stay compliant?

My guess is you have never worked in primary care, if you did, you would have a very different opinion about the limits of how much you can help someone that won't help themselves, or even admit they have an issue.

Easiest thing in the world to say is 'someone should do something', and what you usually mean is 'someone else should do something'.

This person is right that hospitals, or health care systems in general should be working on this. It's more complicated than simply not helping people who won't help themselves. The difficulty is that no one knows the best, most effective systems or approaches for doing this, and emergency medicine resources are stretched very thin here in the United States. Emergency departments were designed for the stabilization of life threats, but in our modern collapsing medical system, limiting their scope to this falls short of community needs. There are many people whose only contact with the medical system will be the ED, and finding ways to treat and integrate them into more sustainable programs should be a goal. There are promising advancements being made, however, in initiating standard of care treatments in emergency department settings. On the opioid front, we can start suboxone in the ED, which has proven a pretty effective method of stabilizing people and increasing their participation in treatment down the road. (1)

As someone who is working on this, I don't think it's unfair for people who aren't experts in the field to recognize and call out the fact that something should be done differently. The experts agree, and many of us are trying to figure out a better path forward.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527523/

Referral to psychiatric consultation would be a start. There is a reason why people resort to harmful behaviours and without addressing this you are never going to cure the underlying problem.

I guess the alternative is to do nothing and expect people to cure themselves purely through sheer will, as, more or less, what happens now?

Please explain how this is working?

Your comment illustrates a large part of the problem. If society believes addiction is mostly a willpower problem, then effective services to help address it won't exist.

That service exists, though. The hospital specifically referred them to AA.

AA is a religious organization. Not everyone wants to be “saved”. Nor should they have to be in order to get treatment for alcoholism.

IMO it's a cult.

I spent a lot of my childhood at AA meetings with my alcoholic mother. I am also an alcoholic and struggled for years because the only answer I was ever offered was AA/NA. I tried it for myself a few times (usually to please others) but was always instantly turned off by it's cult like attributes. I eventually found help through a few different paths.

disclaimer: my half-sister's mother was in a cult (Alive Polarity Fellowship) for 20 years.

This might sound rough, but don't you think some brainwashing could help your situation?

Well, there was this in my post > "I eventually found help through a few different paths."

So thanks anyway but I don't need any help, especially brainwashing. My mind is too analytical to respond to it anyway ;)

Share what helped, please.

Not only is it religious, its not founded in any empiricism or medical study. Here's a decent article laying out the critiques, the opening paragraph is what everyone should keep in mind: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/the-surpr...

> Say you’ve been diagnosed with a serious, life-altering illness or psychological condition. In lieu of medication, psychotherapy, or a combination thereof, your doctor prescribes nightly meetings with a group of similarly afflicted individuals, and a set of 12 non-medical guidelines for recovery, half of which require direct appeals to God. What would you do?

AFAIK, AA doesn't make you swear on the Bible or profess one's faith in Christ before you're allowed to join a meeting.

You can ignore the religious stuff and still make use of AA's highest-impact features:

- regular meetings, no appointment required

- being open and vulnerable in front of other people who understand the hell of addiction in ways your partner or family won't.

- having an accountability partners to call during moments of temptation, and having that reciprocal commitment is a far stronger deterrent to relapse than calling a crisis hotline offering scripted responses.

The alternative to AA isn't a crisis hotline, but medical treatment with empirical support for its effectiveness

What medical treatment? 12 step is fundamentally about community and connection (opposite of addiction), there is no pill that can give one that.

You can't ignore the religious stuff. It's baked into the program. Daily prayer is considered a non-optional part of the 12 steps and atheists and constantly derided as being arrogant and unlikely to stay sober. They're a reason why atheists have found it necessary to create separate meetings and why regional intergroups often exclude those meetings from public meeting lists since they consider it to not be "real" AA.

With respect, I believe you have a common misunderstanding of 12-step programs... AA is not an inherently religious organization, nor does it require any religious/supernatural beliefs.

I'm an atheist, and I've been to years of AA meetings. There is no requirement of religious belief for participating. The concept of a "higher power" is an important part of dealing with our narcissistic ego defenses, but it's not necessarily a religious concept. God just happens to be a convenient implementation of a "higher power" that works for a lot of folks.

Now, there are plenty of people in AA, attending and running meetings, who DO have religious beliefs. A lot of AA literature is written by people who have religious beliefs... The people who founded AA had religious beliefs. So I think it's understandable that religion appears a lot in the mix.

Plenty of modern AA groups explicitly address the "God not required" issue... Maybe it helps that I live in a big city, but I've never had a problem with being an atheist and participating in AA.

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-an...

AA barely works, though.

I know lots of ppl with years of sobriety through AA so I would say it does work for some. It existing as a choice free of charge around the world for ppl suffering is a good thing.

I know lots of people who haven't been attacked by bears since they bought a bear protection talisman so I would say that they work for some.

Yeah except those people don't intrinsically enjoy being attacked by bears despite that it will kill them, and the attacking bears aren't featured as a prominent aspect of the social fabric visible in everyday life, on nearly every corner, tv ad, social event, and otherwise.

Isn't the first step admitting you have a problem and wanting to fix it? There's not much one can do without patient consent (which I don't think is mentioned here).

Even then, the most the hospital can really do is counsel and recommend inpatient treatment at a specialized facility. I really hope the 'pushed out the doors comment was a slight exaggeration. They should have at least talked about the treatment options, given them a brochure/info for a treatment center. It's not much, but that's basically all they can do.

It is. But that's making the assumption that step 1 is where most people fail. I suspect that's not the case.

Well, anyone with a problem fails that step for some period of time until they realize it. But sure, once in or trying to be in recovery, that occupies the rest of their life.

This whole thread is making assumptions as it wasn't mentioned if the person would consent to treatment.

I do wonder if people would be more inclined to address and solve their problem if they felt people around them and society at large cared for them. Most alcoholics I’ve known have struggled with a sense of not mattering, not being cared for, of their problem being inconsequential because they don’t matter, etc. Telling people like that to recognize their problem and want to get better is almost pointless.

I am an alcoholic sober for several years. It is fundamentally a willpower problem. Even if insurance or the government paid for inpatient rehab, as soon as you walk out the door it’s only willpower that stops you from continuing to drink. The same goes for being given medication that reduces cravings for alcohol or makes you sick if you drink. You can always just not take it.

That said, most people don’t become addicts in a vacuum. Many people become addicts only because a life under the influence beats their life otherwise. Unfortunately it’s a lot harder to fix someone’s life than it is to get them sober. But the poor sober life is, in my opinion, the actual underlying condition which leads to addiction. We don’t really have a framework for treating that as a society nor through the medical system.

I'm not sure what can be done here. Having had a very close relative (as close as it gets, but I don't wanna associate anything precise publicly) being an alcoholic for decades, watching them succumb, degenerate and eventually die over a long and horrifying period, I don't see how the medical system can be the solution to this problem.

The motivation to stop drinking and continue to stop drinking has to be mostly intrinsic. There can be additional extrinsic factors (like doing it for your family) strengthening the intrinsic motivation, but without a strong and constant inner will to stop nothing will.

My relative took the final bottle of Whiskey on a lonely Christmas day. It took 2 months of suffering before it finally ended for good. No medical system can prevent the loneliness and dark times. And relatives also have their own lifes.

Addiction is a terrible problem and it's great that there is help for the persons motivated to seek help, and AA is a good initiative for that. But not everyone can be helped.

I think the issue is mismatched expectations. General, ie university hospitals are normally not a place to treat addictions of any kind. You have rehab clinics, psychologists, AAs, church for those who need such authority and so on. These tend to be on their own, separate, not in hospital.

Emergency services is set to treat physical damage to the body, not psychological issues of any kind.

Church is only good if someone is already a believer: We shouldn't be pushing religion as a solution to addiction, though. That is one of many issues with AA (Yes, I know it works for some people, but it fails so many)

It's not about faith. It's about community and being part of one that at least gives a tiny crap about you (as opposed to the general population).

Lies. They don't exactly accept folks that are openly atheist and tell them their rules for life are crap. You have to act like the religion is correct, even if you don't believe it.

A lot of them won't accept you if you are queer in any form. I'm bisexual, and refuse to act like half of me doesn't exist.

Some of them won't accept you if you do not dress well enough, though I realize some are more lax.

Some consider me a sinner simply for being divorced: Others, because refuse to birth children.

I'm not in that group they care about, in other words.

"A lot of them won't accept you..."

There are tons of religions out there. You have to find one that works for you. Atheist? Join an atheist group. There are options.

Again, though, you are pressing religions. I've looked, and I'm not willing to change myself for a religion. Kinda by definition, atheist groups aren't religious groups.

I'm from Indiana: How many atheist groups do you think are in a town of 3,000? or 50,000? You know, in person spaces.

I'm no longer in Indiana, but I no longer share a native tongue with locals and religion isn't a big thing here. I'd just go and get actual medical care here and do hobbies I like. These aren't atheist groups, just non-religious.

"Kinda by definition, atheist groups aren't religious groups."

Kind of by definition they could be. There is still debate by scholars as to what defines a religion. But something as simple as shared beliefs and world view can meet that definition, especially if it deals with the presence or absence of rituals or objects related to supernatural beliefs.

"you are pressing religions."

Nope. Follow the comments back. I'm not pressing people to get into a religion. I'm merely clarifying why AA includes religion - for the sense of community.

I'm an atheist, and I've attended years of AA meetings. I've never even remotely experienced anything like what you described. But I live in a big city on the West Coast.

AA reflects the character of the people and culture who are implementing it... If those people are judgy religious assholes, then I can't expect their AA meetings would be much different. But it would be a mistake to assume that your local sample defines the entire movement.

A potassium IV should not be painful in the sligtest, it should just be a tiny pin prick when it's going in. Something went wrong if that was hurting.

Strange, where is the sources backing up that it should always be painless? Found lots of resources pointing towards that many do in fact feel a burning sensation from potassium IV:

- https://cms.galenos.com.tr/Uploads/Article_21792/EAJEM-16-14...

- https://www.webmd.com/drugs/drugreview-6224-potassium-chlori...

- https://www.nyspana.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NYSPANA-P...

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730072/

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3063479/

- https://musculardystrophynews.com/forums/forums/topic/17193/

- https://www.nursingcenter.com/journalarticle?Article_ID=3535...

Yep, pain at the infusion site is an incredibly common complaint with potassium IV. The person you replied to is talking confidently outside of their expertise.

I have a friend in the UK, similar situation. After years of receiving no help I took it upon myself to figure out what was causing his self-sabotaging behaviour. I can't say I made any great discoveries other than figuring out his trigger points and devising strategies to avoid them.

Obviously everyone is going to be different but my friend's issues stem from being lonely and isolated a lot of the time. Simply me being around for a couple of days a week has helped. He still drinks but in a much more controlled manner and, ironically, I found that ensuring he always has a supply at home has helped with this too. It's taken away the constant panic in his mind - for want of a better explanation.

Could you expand on "I found that ensuring he always has a supply at home has helped with this too"?

I guess you mean that when they'd go out to a pub or bar they'd spend too much, which means that social pressure of embarrassment and bar-staff weren't effective controls. Did the extra money spent add to the pressure?

What I'm curious at is that makes it sound like they're somewhat controlled within their home, or just haven't got an easy source. If that's the case I wonder how small nudges around the home (putting alcohol in a tricky to reach cupboard or out-of-sight) would help.

He would buy his drink daily, not always from the same place and not at the same time. So some days he'd buy a bottle of cider, other days a bottle or two of wine, a bottle of spirit, etc. In other words, his alcohol consumption was erratic and the fact he had to go out and buy it everyday sometimes led to unintended outcomes such as mixing with the kinds of people with similar issues, having small accidents, being robbed a couple of times, and so on..

I don't know what went through his mind every morning but I'm sure that buying his daily alcohol fix was a top priority and everything else was secondary.

I figured that if he got up everyday without this nagging thought in his head then it may help him regain some semblance of control? Because I bought the same brand of drink and in enough quantity to ensure he wouldn't need to go out any buy anymore each day, it also helped him establish a steady routine. In a way, it made it boring for him but not to the point where he'll resort to his previous behaviour. The fact he isn't paying for it is also a motivating factor, obviously.

A year on and he's now in a routine where he doesn't drink before 3pm and then only one 1 ltr bottle of 5% strength cider. His health and general mood have both improved and, most importantly, there have been no hospital visits.

I describe him as alcohol dependent rather than a full-blown alcoholic because his drinking is more a learned habit rather than pure addiction. I'm not sure my strategy would work so well otherwise and I would certainly caution against it.

Wow, that's impressive. You made it made it boring for him. I appreciate the caveats but from my arm-chair perspective it looks like you're doing the right steps here.

Hmm. How much experience do you have with alcoholics? To me this sounds very naive. I have seen various forms of well meaning enablement that follow this exact pattern. The drinker still buys drink for themselves on top of their "ration" while maintaining a facade of moderation for the one buying them drink. If someone is meeting them a couple of times a week, then they plan bigger binges around those visits.

I have had the pleasure of clearing out the private stashes behind the washing machine or garages full of hidden empties despite the claims of a gullible enabler about the progress being made. 1l of 5% is barely going to wet the whistle of a dependent drinker making me less inclined to believe this is a unicorn case of magical moderation. If there is one thing that happens very early in problem drinking, it's all the fucking lies about drinking.

Well, I did point out that he isn't a full-blown alcoholic which is a big difference to the kind of issue you're alluding to.

I did have the dis-pleasure of living with a proper alcoholic many years ago and she was exactly the type of person to have hidden stashes around the house. Alas, she was also the kind of drinker who needed to hit rock-bottom before she would even accept she had a problem and nothing I could do would be of any help to her.

She was a 'functioning alcoholic' able to hold down a job, be presentable and sociable. Also clever and devious enough to hide her problems from others to the extent that I left the relationship being perceived by others as the bad guy.

So yes, your points accepted but for the naivety on my part.

Something people don’t expect from alcoholics is that they become extremely effective at masking their issues. If they’re intelligent, they might even trick a lot of people around them into thinking they have a chronic illness or something - no one suspects a thing. In the way they speak and behave to hide their problem they show a sort of cunningness you don’t often see.

That’s not to say alcoholics are bad people. The need to drink is just an insane motivator for some. It makes it extremely hard to help them because it becomes nearly impossible to trust them, and that alone can be a massive strain on a relationship.

But I have no trouble believing a relationship would end with you looking “bad”; this sort of thing is part of hiding their problem and protecting their habit. You getting thrown under the bus is a strategy to draw attention away from evidence that her being an alcoholic was destructive to your relationship.

This is obvious to some people but has been a real revelation to me as I’ve gotten older and seen alcoholism around me more. It’s extremely insidious and difficult to navigate.

I think this is an extremely fascinating reply, and potentially very effective. Speaking from personal experience on the other end. It’s difficult to describe the energy that takes you to the store, but prevents you from doing everything else in life. Something like anxiety-constrained motivating, but taken to the extreme.

Not GP, and not battling any major addiction (luckily), but this reminded me when I got fit/lost some weight (~20 pounds or so) a decade ago.

I simply (not easily) cut out snacks (candy/chips/sugary drinks/etc) but my main vice was ice cream. So I kept a pint of my favorite kind (mint chip) in the freezer. I don't know how I got the idea, but my reasoning was that it gave me a singular focus on what to avoid, instead of navigating 50 traps, there was just 1. If I was at the store I didn't have to be tempted by anything as I already had my favorite at home.

No idea if it is the same idea as GP describes, but it reminded me.

I've dealt with an alcoholic for almost my entire life. Unless that person decides to stop, there is nothing a hospital (or anyone else) can do. It's sad and it's hard, but it's the reality.

The sad reality is that they roll them out the door like that with suggestions to find an AA group is that there really is no other solution. ER staff are busy and can use their time more wisely by helping the ones they can help. We like to throw a lot of money at rehab facilities, but even those have very poor track records. The most cost effective treatment is to prevent people from getting into that situation in the first place.

I am so glad I got married and had a kid. My wife doesn't drink - and honestly it's way less fun to drink - even have a glass of wine with a meal - when someone else isn't. Plus with my daughter I don't drink when my wife isn't around because I'm always worried something is going to come up and I'll have to drive her some place on short notice.

I think if it were just me on my own I might drink more ... and I always kind of worry that I'd get a taste for not the drink but just that mellow relaxed feel no pain that comes with 2 or 3 drinks. That's trouble for me I think.

Always having meals with the same people, being consistently worried you’ll be responsible to drop what you’re doing on short notice to drive someone. I’m glad I did not marry or have kids.

For some, it's the worst thing imaginable to have to put something other than themselves first.

For others, finding something more important than themselves is what gives their life meaning.

Having a spouse and a family is super sweet. Constant emotional support and social fulfillment. An endless stream of small sweet positive moments. The ever-growing feeling of satisfaction that comes with watching your children grow, mature, and succeed. The pride that comes with improving and being a good parent or a good spouse. Having someone who is there for you and has your back 100%.

I'm not saying being single, childless, nomadic, or any other kind of lifestyle isn't also sweet too, or that marriage and parenthood is for everyone, but don't let a few negative comments from one person's anecdote be your definition of parenthood or marriage. When done well, they are two of the most fulfilling and rewarding endeavors you can embark on.

You also can definitely have meals with other people as you like lol.

Although I don't relate to your comment at all (I'm married for 26 years, have two kids) I don't know why someone downvoted you, so I upvoted.

Different people have different priorities, and it is great when people realize marriage or kids are not right for them and ignore the social pressure. There are too many people who get married or have kids who aren't suited and it is bad for everyone involved.

If I've learned one thing about myself being married with a kid on the way, it's that I lack a lot of intrinsic motivation to do anything productive. Left alone I'll video-game and drink my way into an early grave. I need something to be responsible for to keep my self-destructive instincts in line.

I only started working out consistently because a couple of years into marriage my wife made an ultimatum that she didn't want to have kids with someone who doesn't exercise. And as pissed off as I was in the moment I couldn't really argue with that. Being a dad (which was something I wanted) demands a certain level of health/energy to do well, never mind longevity, and I was rationalizing not working out on a weekly basis ("I'm too tired, won't be able to watch my form." "I'm still kinda sore from last time." "My foot hurts a little, better not push it", and other sorry excuses). To be fair I'd never worked out consistently in my life. I needed that kick in the ass to form the habit from scratch as an adult.

Likewise I've steered myself away from many self-destructive impulses in the last few months simply because my soon-to-be daughter deserves something better than a tired, beaten-down bastion of mediocrity for a father. It's even helping my career, as I have to set an example for her and being a tuned-out clock puncher isn't what I want for her.

Call it a pathetic lack of self esteem, or a natural lack of inhibition, but I've always been wired this way as long as I can remember. I need the responsibility, and even if I resent it in the moment I know by taking it on I'll end up in a better place, and the people I'm responsible for usually do better as well.

Just offering an alternate perspective. Different people are wired differently.

So happy that you needed that snarky comment to reinforce the idea for yourself.

I used to drink alone because I was bored. I used to drink socially because everyone, or it seemed like everyone, was doing it. Ones partners drinking habits can have a huge impact on ones own drinking habits.

Is this some glitch in the Matrix? I could swear I saw this exact post on the front page a couple of days back, with at least a couple of the exact same comments! What even is happening!

Edit: No, it's either a bug in HN, or the post's been bumped for visibility. Screenshot of a search I did just about now: https://i.imgur.com/Sr1S3eB.png

Edit edit: Actually, could be a bug too, the relative and absolute timestamps on the post and comments don't match at all! :-O

Probably just part of the "Second-Change" initiative.

> HN's second-chance pool is a way to give links a second chance at the front page. Moderators and a small number of reviewers go through old submissions looking for articles that are in the spirit of the site—gratifying intellectual curiosity—and which seem like they might interest the community. These get put into a hopper from which software randomly picks one every so often and lobs it randomly onto the lower part of the front page. If it interests the community, it gets upvoted and discussed; if not, it falls off.

- Show HN: Second-Chance Pool (news.ycombinator.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

- https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

That's the second chance pool in action. If the moderators think that a submission looks good but it didn't gain traction, they might put it into this pool to be offered a second chance. You can inspect the pool here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner.

Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedback from my manager. He'd tell me full of glee that "certain colleagues" went to complain behind my back.

And since then it was non stop screaming at the kids, my partner ... it was hell. I'm not even ashamed to admit I was opening bottles of wine at 10AM and downing them in 30 min.

When the wife & kids went abroad for a week to stay with her parents and I took a week off from work I didn't even drink a drop of alcohol. It was purely to cope with the stress, for which alcohol does work very well! But it was a truly horrible time. And IMHO if you weren't at home with toddlers you didn't experience true suffering.

Ten months in to the job I got laid off and spent a year basically doing nothing apart from be there for the kids and the household.

Since then I did however develop bad sleeping habits and I still tend to wake up at 3-4AM to start work, which I actually enjoy if it wasn't for the fact you're destroyed as from late afternoon.

It's been a really rough 2 years. And I really enjoyed the 5 minutes between the pandemic and WWIII.

Dude that sounds horrible. I feel you. Keep up the fight and try to concentrate on what is really important, you and your family. I had one wife and two dogs, now I don't. The 'pandemic' most certainly accelerated that outcome. Stay positive!

I am so sorry. When we talk about collateral damage from the pandemic, nobody thinks of the parents who had their kids home for months. In Australia, the lockdowns were quite severe. My wife and I were aware that while we were suffering, our kids were too. Their lives were completely turned upside down. Sadly, kids lack the needed brain capacity to deal with emotions and serious changes in routine, so it compounds the stress.

To top it all off, for us, we were renovating and being without a working kitchen, bathroom, toilet for months and weeks on end, it compounded things for us. I don't know how we survived or how others did. We live in an era where we are afforded the ability to have flexible working hours, starting early and finishing early. Or chopping/changing hours and days. Your colleagues were wrong to criticise you, the metric of performance should never be measured based on hours working, but the output and quality of your work.

I once worked at a place where someone was fired because his number of commits was lower than the other developers. He was a brilliant developer and always got his work done. But apparently his commits were too small (he liked to lump a lot of things into commits, instead of several smaller ones).

Did you end up finding another job?

Thanks :) In all fairness, while the colleagues were assholes I was out of my depth at the job and there was no support so getting fired was the right solution. Money was never really an issue and I did start an awesome new job 2 months ago. And the kids are thriving.

The only thing that would have made those 2 years worse is renovations! We've gone through 2 of those, luckily before the pandemic. So I very much feel your pain and hope it's all working out for you now.

>I once worked at a place where someone was fired because his number of commits was lower than the other developers. He was a brilliant developer and always got his work done. But apparently his commits were too small (he liked to lump a lot of things into commits, instead of several smaller ones).

Bloody hell, I can't imagine how dysfunctional other things must have been if this was allowed to happen without someone pointing out what a daft rationale for firing someone that is.

Yeah, that right there is getting gold in the Olympics for "measuring the wrong thing".

My work tried measuring commits and PRs briefly as a metric. At the time I was doing a bunch of semi-automatic upgrading of repos with some tools is written for a substantial number of our micro services. So I looked about 300x more productive than the second most productive employee because I was batching hundreds of PRs using our GitHub API.

It prompted the IT guy who was supposed to set up and demo the tool to higher ups come over and show it to me, we had a pretty good laugh. I like to think the absurdity of my numbers is what caused the idea to be scrapped.

As with many disruptive events the impact and costs are extremely unevenly distributed. I first noticed this back in the 80s as a teenager here in the UK, we went through a horrible recession with mass unemployment. The 70s were no joke either, but my parents both had jobs which they kept, so we were fine. As it happens I had a great pandemic, we have a nice house with a garden backing on to a park and my kids are late teens.

My heart goes out though, if it had hit us back when we lived in a small flat when the girls were little it would have been a whole different story. This is why, while I'm a free market capitalist at heart, I also fully support social welfare and one payer healthcare. I've been very lucky, but many aren't. The idea that all you have to do is work hard and be self reliant just doesn't take into account things that can happen to you that are completely out of your own control.

"And IMHO if you weren't at home with toddlers you didn't experience true suffering."

Hahaha that's just life (laughing at the statement, not the situation). For the past few years, most days I get off of work and immediately have to start watching the kid for several hours while my wife works. Of course they're too young to do (safely watch) many of the chores or projects I have to do (mechanic work, handyman work, mow the lawn, etc). I get one day a week "off" to do all those chores and projects, although it's not unusual for part of that day or one or two of those days per month to require me to watch the kid too. I haven't gone fishing or participated in certain hobbies since the kid was born.

I feel you, I ended up working from 8pm to 4am when my kindergartners were at home. I’d sleep until 10 (my partner got the kids up in the morning) and then watch them while my partner worked.

I only have one kid, but similar situation for me.

I learned something about jobs during this time. The effort and stress involved is not proportional to the pay. Some jobs are just hell and you can go next door and make the same thing in a pleasant environment.

I ended up taking about half my skills off my resume. I'm no longer a full stack dev, I'm a backend engineer. I removed the stuff about DevOps and project/product management. Then when interviewing I found a role that paid the same as my previous job but required me to only wear one hat rather than 5 of them.

Life is much better now.

Yeah, I dialed back significantly and found that everyone was still super impressed. I approach everything gently and only work a few hours a day now to keep my energy and creativity up.

I’m very privileged to have the ability to work as little or as long as I want most days (within reason, and there’s always exceptions). I often still have trouble relaxing in the afternoon until the clock hits 5.

But I spend much more time planning and thinking, which actually lets me get more done when I do work.

Why are we fighting ourselves by trying to be creative after lunch when we should be taking a nap? I’m seriously considering getting a day bed for work.

Did your colleagues get jealous because you used the alternate schedule well or simply because you had an alternate schedule?

They got jealous because they're toxic dickheads. Who does that to people?

Hard to say without knowing their complaints. Not sure how I’d manage to be productive when collaborating with some of my team members if they were not there during Norma working hours but were there during the middle of the night.

Offsets all requests and fixes from them by a day.

Sounds more like a problem with how stories/tasks are split.

Being part of a team means being part of a team and communication and connecting with the team to be a coherent whole, not just logging in and staring at your ticket todo list and not speaking to anyone.

If you're blocked because you can't get an answer from a teammate within the next few hours, you're doing it wrong.

There were quite a lot of discussions about this. The one ticket that was the nail in my coffin was rewriting a a 2000 line function written by some guy who left years ago, full of if / else ladders in god damn Zend framework.

Nobody could really explain what it was supposed to do. Calculate some commissions based on conditions x,y,z. The input was a CSV that nobody could give me an example of. Every time I talked to someone it was "Ok I have 2 min before my meeting what do you want".

Because it was all remote work it was super easy to see who I contacted when in Slack and was info was communicated. Timestamps of all the commits.

After a few days of trying and failing I just threw in the towel. It's not worth it.

Not sure if they were jealous. They were very young and most were very talented & driven. When you're 25 and living with your parents you can't grasp what it's like to have a wife and kids on top of the job. It was a combination of really bad timing due to the pandemic and me just being a bad fit in the team, and management was garbage. One of those kids was really talented and I learned a lot from him ripping me to pieces in the pull requests.

Sounds like a bad job and even worse colleagues and a terrible manager. I found that alcohol just makes everything worse. Yes it relieves stress in the moment but that stress rebounds 2x the next day, then 3x the day after that and so forth compounding itself.

Having young kids changes your sleep schedule. I am sorry your job treated you that way. I also tend to wake up at 4am-5am as I have kids. I just try to make it to 8 or ideally 9pm before I go to sleep. Also consult with a sleep doctor, alcohol acerbates sleep apnea which can cause poor sleep. Practice good sleep hygiene as best you can.

> And I really enjoyed the 5 minutes between the pandemic and WWIII.

I chuckled. I'm glad you still have your sense of humor. But from another perspective, yes, it's quite sad for humanity. I remind myself that disease and war were far more widespread in centuries past.

This is how I compartmentalise the awful situations across the world, no matter how bad things get they were much worse in the past and we still managed to endure. I include a nuclear exchange with Russia and extreme climate change in this category because apparently humanity got down to as low as around 40 families at one point in our history which is about as close to extinction as you can get and still come back.

The other side of this is that even though there was more bad things happening in the world in the past, the average person would have known about far fewer of them by virtue of lack of access to information. I don't feel shame in going days or even weeks ignoring the news sometimes because humans aren't built to mentally function with a 24 hour news cycle pumping a firehose of the world's doom and gloom into our heads, let alone psychologically manipulating us into scrolling past ads all day.

> I remind myself that disease

Yes but no time in the past did we decide to prohibit people from working for more than a year. At no point in the past did we decide to keep kids out of school...

If we didn't have zoom, we never would have done these lockdowns.

It's impossible to describe to non-parents how high maintenance toddlers and very young children are. There are no words.

> And IMHO if you weren't at home with toddlers you didn't experience true suffering.

You're entitled to your opinion, but the lockdowns affected everyone differently. I know parents who thrived with their toddlers, but they didn't have the same issues at work where people were complaining about when they were working. But I also know people who's marriages ended due to longstanding issues that were magnified by being locked down.

Some single people did fine. Some of us also turned more to alcohol to try and cope with the loneliness of having to work at home, not be able to go out, and in the worst of it not being allowed to gather with more than one or two other people.

> I know parents who thrived with their toddlers,

With both spouses expected to continue full time working, and no child care coming in? Politely, I doubt it.

> I know parents who thrived with their toddlers

Doubt. You just aren't hearing the war stories.

You sound like a variation of me. Right after lockdown I started a new job (that I really wanted) and had a toddler and a pregnant wife. I've always been a drinker, but my drinking started getting earlier and earlier in the day and I would go until bed. I'm also a marijuana smoker and I reverted back to my previous self of smoking from sun up to sun down.

On top of my substance abuse issues, my wife had a rough pregnancy and didn't (feels like still doesn't) understand that if I'm WFH I still have a job and can't just take care of our kid at random times throughout the day, so I was trying to juggle my job and my wife's requests. It didn't get any better after our second was born, because my wife had PPD and now we had two children to deal with.

Eventually I had to leave my job because I couldn't deal with it all and was missing deadlines and just not being performant. I'm terrified to go back to work because I know my wife isn't able to treat my job like a job and thinks I just have it easy sitting on a computer all day. The random requests might end, but her resentment for me won't and I'll have to hear about it all night when I get off. Hence, I doubt the substance abuse will stop anytime soon.

To top it off, it is so damn difficult knowing that all these single people I work with, or married without children, have absolutely no idea what I'm going through and frankly they don't care.

All in all, I agree, the last 2 years have been fucking rough, and I expect the following 2 to be rough as well.

PS Your post triggered some venting I needed to express. I am happy with my life and wouldn't change it but it is still so fucking hard sometimes.

Sounds like you should seek couples counseling. If you’re unable to find a way to explain to your wife how WFH should work, and your wife doesn’t or won’t understand it on her own, there are likely larger issues at play and a few sessions with someone who can mediate might help you guys.

> single people I work with, or married without children, have absolutely no idea what I'm going through and frankly they don't care

Not only did they not care many of them actively shamed you for expressing your feelings. "I don't like it either but I'm just doing what the experts say" and "Are you an expert? No? Then stay in your lane!".

What we did over the last two years is despicable.

I'm so glad to hear these stories finally surfacing. I had a one-year-old and a pregnant wife when lockdowns started. It was absolutely brutal, as we both had full-time jobs, and obviously there was absolutely nowhere to go or no-one to turn to for help. It has most definitely coloured my opinions of the usefulness of lockdowns. One of the most dismaying long-term effects of what parents have been made to go through is what I consider the abrupt decline in acceptable parenting techniques - how many young kids have now been deliberately stuffed in front of a TV or given a tablet to keep them quiet, while parents try to hold down jobs? Part of what made our lives so hard was my refusal to do such things.

It's a spiral as well. Drinking helps with the stress in the moment but increases anxiety so then you drink more to cope with increased stress and anxiety...

Somewhat by chance, I quit alcohol around March 15, 2020 a few days before our first lockdown. I haven't had a drink since. It was just the right time for me, but I am VERY happy I was not still drinking during all those difficult times.

Sort of similar experience...

Not that I was heavy drinker in the first place, but something strange related to alcohol started to happened to me during lockdown/covid. The very thought or taste of alcohol makes me sick and if I do drink, I am out of commission for several days. And I talking about just a single beer or a neat whiskey.

Perhaps it's related to being in the same location 24/7? Perhaps I have less anxiety because I don't have to deal with people in person as much? Perhaps I'm subconsciously aware/appreciative of how fortunate/privileged I am given the situation? It's been rough, but I know others are struggling and seek solace and tranquility in their insobriety. Perhaps I just outgrew alcohol?

I used to like enjoying a beer after a long day at work or during recreation. Two years on, I simply don't miss it at all.

I hope that anyone dealing with this struggle and disease can find the strength, support and help they (and their families and friends) need to fight this demon.

I quit at the start of 2020 as well. But we had a kid on the way and I'm not sure how I'd mix that with drinking.

Not surprised at all to hear this - there was a period (maybe a few months into the initial lockdown) I was regularly hearing my neighbours completely lose their shit on a regular basis. Not even the same people either - random, different people each time.

WFH + high stress + forced close proximity + drunkenness is a recipe for disaster

The whole world that stayed home is stressed, depressed, not recovered. This includes high functioning adults, kids, teenagers. I am in this group as is most of my friends.

> The whole world that stayed home is stressed, depressed, not recovered.

Generalising about the "whole world" based on your depressed friend group is not very productive.

Each case is very individual. I am still on WFH, but now its my own choice, to have more free time (and a bit of stressful crunch if too many issues meet at same time). I've spent more time in past 2 years with my small kids than I would before covid in maybe 10 years of daily office work & commute. First 3 years are invaluable time for personality building.

For that only, regardless of all extra free time to do chores, pick up packages, go for walks/runs/exercises etc. it was worth it, very special time and bonds created.

But yeah without kids craving for all attention they could get it would suck much much more. Even though it was hard, much harder than go for a break from kids to the office like many dads used to do.

Arguments went up in my household. Part of it was we realized there were a lot of annoying little things that forced close proximity brought to light the other part was increased irritability from drinking way more.

Once I stopped drinking the arguments went back to a normal level or maybe a little below. Not waking up hungover on a Saturday really makes the weekend nicer.

I stopped drinking during the pandemic. I think for good. I wasn't drinking much. A bottle of wine or two at the weekend with my wife. Never really liked beer that much. It's hard to articulate exactly why I stopped

I think there was some sort of insight into how boring and mechanical it had become, how little I was gaining from it, the drip drip negative effect it had on my body and crucially, how my drinking enabled and encouraged others to drink.

Me continuing to drink was also making me feel morally very queasy when I personally knew two people who drank themselves to death. Not close friends. Both close enough for it to sting. One of them was an incredible talented music producer and a great loss to the world.

It's a very shit drug. The only reason I ever started drinking was to be inside the 'in' group and to have fun with friends.

It's abundantly clear now that alcohol isn't necessary for that at my age.

The only downside has been watching with crystal clarity how boring and dull when intoxicated people become at gatherings.

Better drugs for inhibited teenagers please. Microdosed kombucha for the win.

I switched almost entirely over to non-alcoholic beer in pandemic. It wasn't particularly health or problem related, but just that I like the taste of beer, but don't need the alcohol and two real beers would leave me slightly hungover/tired the next day while NA beers don't.

Athletic Brewing makes good non alcoholic beers!

Yup. If you take out social pressure the "benefits" of booze are pretty low. Many people only drink because other people around them are drinking. That is not really a good reason to take a serious drug.

The last two years have been some of the worst of my life.

I know it’s trite to say, but hang in there because things always get better.

I hope you're right. Doesn't feel that way.

Why?

Small kids. Non-stop work. No help from parents or the government. In my country if you're a freelancer, you got zero pandemic-related stipends. Has ended in divorce. Traumatized kids. I'm an emotional wreck, but I try to hide it and soldier on. There's only so much people can take before they give up.

I wish you the best and hope things get better for you.

Child of (now many times) divorced parents. It's often the right choice. Just try not to bad mouth the other parent in front of them. That hurts worse than having two Christmases.

Ya, I know better than that.

Similarly when the divorce stats for this period come out in a year or two it will be stunning I have more friends/neighbors/professional acquaintances who got divorced in the last 2 years than in the previous 10.

The last 2 years have been very good for some, and very bad for others. Few had a normal one.

Yeah, some people have called it the great quickening. Basically, all the couples would have ended up divorced at some point, and it only accelerated the process.

> The last 2 years have been very good for some, and very bad for others.

This seems like a great way to put it. Personally I've loved my time during the pandemic. Chilling at home with my SO and some marijuana after work is my happy place. Seems like the pandemic forced a lot of people to spend more time with their family which caused them to realize they had settled down with the wrong people.

Maybe next time we get a pandemic that needs people to stay at home a lot we should issue everyone vouchers good for a free decent beginner's musical instrument and enough free lessons with an instructor over video chat to teach them enough of the basics to get them to where they can continue learning from books and YouTube without an instructor.

That might give people something to both distract them from the pandemic and take up time that might otherwise go to less healthy pursuits. When you are practicing 40 hours a day (69 hours a day if your instrument is bass) there isn't much time to drink.

On the other hand, I suppose it might also lead to an increase in murders and divorces due to how annoying it can be to be in a household with a beginning musician if there is no place they can practice out of earshot of the rest of the household, so it might not be a net win.

Good point about music. I have used the pandemic as an opportunity to get back at playing the keyboard. I have put it right next to my desk, so if I have to take a break from work, I can play it.

From what I've read, a fair number of people had the same idea. E.g.,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/23/a-new-obsessio...

https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2020/le...

https://www.wpr.org/more-people-are-playing-instruments-duri...

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58556770

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/five-tips-learning-play-musica...

Studies have shown that taking up an instrument does have excellent mental health benefits:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6368928/

https://consequence.net/2020/07/musical-instrument-mental-he...

I agree with the principle of what is being said.

I was lucky in that my boss pretty much said the busy work was nuts. Go for a walk. Take some pictures. We can talk about our experiences before we do the stuff that must be done. (We were kept on payroll since we were expected to be available the day things opened up even the slightest and there was only so much professional development that we could do.) In other words, we were given a hobby to distract us from the pandemic and we built our own support network.

Unfortunately, the government was stuck dealing with the big picture: how to control the spread of the virus and how to handle the immediate fallout. They gave people money, but they did not offer much guidance in how to cope with the change. In a way it was not their place and in a way it's difficult to do so due to the diversity of the population, but some guidance could have helped.

> Maybe next time we get a pandemic

... we will never repeat what we just did. Forcing people to "stay the fuck home" for more than a year with absolutely no shred of hope. Filling them with fear mongering and stories of doom... Good news was forbidden.

The public health policy for covid was perhaps one of the greatest "bad decisions" society has ever made. The fall out from the last two years of bullshit will be studied for decades and centuries to come.

I discovered Kudzu[0] and alcoholism a while ago and hope it might help somebody here or their friend or loved one. Kudzu apparently is an amazing drug for helping people quit drinking. I hope if anybody here has trouble, or knows someone with trouble, they try introducing it to them if it makes sense to them. Here is a BBC article[1], but they only did 500mg instead of 2g. Apparently it works by helping you feel drunk faster, speeding up the time delay effect and thus making you not want to drink as much.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510012/

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35381041

From the nih link

> Drinking was recorded using a custom built end table that contained a digital scale beneath a ceramic tile insert in the tabletop (Ohaus model #B10P with I5S controller). Participants were instructed to always keep the beer glass on the table except when taking a sip. The scale was connected to a computer in an adjacent room that ran a customized program that sampled the scale at 5 Hz and detected any weight changes that exceeded 1 gm. This rapid sampling of the weight permitted a real time assessment of drinking topography that included gross measures of volume and number of beers consumed but also provided details on a more micro level and included the number and size of sips taken, latency to opening a beer, and consumption time of each beer. Additional details and photos of the device can be found in Lukas et al. (2005). Breath alcohol levels were assessed using an Alco-Sensor FST breathalyzer (Intoximeter, Inc., St. Louis, MO) both before and after the drinking session; values were not collected during the active alcohol acquisition period to avoid interacting with the participant and allowing natural drinking patterns to emerge.

I would buy this product for my desk to measure water and coffee intact. Bonus points if it could detect the type of drink automatically based on some measured physical property. It might work well as a cup/bottle instead of a coaster.

I drank so much during the first few months of the pandemic that I had to give up drinking altogether. The hangovers and mood swings from drinking regularly were too much and just not worth it for me. I love booze but I didnt drink until I was in my mid 20's so it was easyish for me to stop. I imagine a lot of people were on the edge of very dangerous drinking habits and this pushed them over the edge.

The stat from the article that blows my mind is that over 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in a 12-month period. The CDC categorizes it with "accidents", so it's easy to overlook when looking at leading causes of death in the US.

I notice that "the pandemic" is quickly found as the root cause and no analysis at all is done to identify if the response to the pandemic is to be implicated as well.

I'd wager that waking up one day and discovering that one's job is not essential might be stressful. Being forbidden from going to the beaches and parks might have contributed. The stress of learned helplessness from countless bureaucratic decisions later proven baseless could be analyzed as well.

Well you clearly didn’t read the article because the entire thing is talking about all of the sorts of causes you listed.

I disagree. The thesis reads "but the full impact of the pandemic’s collateral damage is still being tallied". The point above was regarding the response to the pandemic being considered as equal or greater contributors to the rise in alcoholic deaths.

The failure and successes of the response should be distinctly studied to determine a better course of action for the next pandemic.

I do worry that public health has a measurement problem where they only focus on things they can measure/estimate and things that they do cannot estimate they ignore instead of putting in an unscientific guess.

> The failure and successes of the response should be distinctly studied to determine a better course of action for the next pandemic.

For sure. I bet the authors agree. But wouldn't one necessarily need to answer "Did X meaningfully change during the pandemic?" before answering "How much of that change is attributable to which specific causes?"

This is a finding answers the first question and makes it a lot easier to fund research into the second. Every political strategist, economist, sociologist, historian, epidemiologist, and public health official wants answers to the same questions as you -- even while some anticipate a different answer than you might.

It just takes a minute to get there and there's some preliminary research to publish along the way.

Who ever said the response to the pandemic was supposed to be without painful consequences? If the response to cancer is chemotherapy, that can be way more painful and inconvenient than the cancer itself, at least in the short run...the hope is to solve the problem so it doesn't end up killing you.

Bringing this back to tech and software development, it seems to be a standard human failure that discussing "which of these option is least bad" is really hard to do.

People want to argue for a course of action which is all sunshine and rainbows and against one that is evil and wrong. Even something totally boring like what DB to use can flare up because no one likes "in the big picture they're all a bit crappy, this one has a small chance of being better but may turn out to be a hindrance but it's not that important let's just pick one".

Once you get to the level of human health, the economy and politics there's very little chance to discuss things objectively.

You can check the study yourself (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790491). They simply looked at alcohol-related mortality across the entire US in 2019, 2020, and provisional data from the first half of 2021. There is no basis on which to make a statement comparing localities that implemented strict lockdowns versus those implemented less strict lockdowns. The only event that definitely affected the entire country equally is "the pandemic" broadly. They can't draw conclusions the data don't support just to make it more palatable to you.

Saying this should definitely be studied doesn't mean every single paper that gets published needs to only study this. It's not even clear it's really possible to get the data. How do you measure the strictness of different responses? Do municipalities publish alcohol mortality individually or is only the aggregate data available?

I think psychlops suggests seeing the pandemic as a catalyst rather than the cause.

So introducing a catalyst to a stable reaction and then not attributing the increased reaction rates to the catalyst...

You’re coming across like you’re trying to miss the point. The entire article is attributing increased reaction rates to the pandemic.

>You’re coming across like you’re trying to miss the point.

My response needs to be read as a response to nautilius's attempt to interpret psychlops' root comment.

Yeah, that still doesn't change that impression, though.

I don't understand. My comment is to show that a catalyst can be a cause. How is everyone else reading it?

Please avoid shallow dismissals of other commentors. Everyone here is a real person who has feelings.

Remember the human.

I'd argue the parent commenter committed this very sin; shallowly dismissing the article's conclusion to push their preferred narrative (ie, pandemic restrictions == bad).

Well of course it’s the response. Surely no one thinks that the virus itself causes alcoholism?

I think “the pandemic” here means both the spread of the virus and society’s response to it.

As long as we're pushing preferred narratives (in your case: public health measures = bad), maybe it's because hospitals and treatment rooms were full of unvaccinated individuals and people who declined to social-distance or wear masks, preventing alcoholics in distress from getting the acute treatments they need. Certainly a lot of cancer patients died that way[1][2][3][4][5].

I know a lot of people who took advantage of the pandemic to sort out their lives, including getting sober. Public health authorities from day 1 were taking into account the affects of lockdowns on mental health, thankfully following the evolving science instead of internet conspiracy theories.

[1] https://khn.org/news/article/covid-overwhelmed-hospitals-pos...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/21/how-unvac...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-20/covid-19...

[4] https://www.breastcancer.org/managing-life/staying-well-duri...

[5] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-20/hospital...

None of my experience matches this account. The last paragraph is laughably perpendicular, in fact.

I don’t think we can solve that here, but it’s interesting how people can end up seeing things so differently.

> Certainly a lot of cancer patients died that way.

This was not my experience, n=1 of course. My SO came down with lymphoma in November 2020. All of the appointments with the oncologist and all of the appointments for treatment took place at a cancer center dedicated to treating cancer patients. Other procedures generally took place at locations that did not offer emergency services (think biopsies and port installation).

At no point during diagnosis or treatment were we turned away nor did we face long wait times. This was before the vaccine was available, so everyone was unvaccinated at the time. The biggest barrier was getting seen for "a weird pain in my back that is preventing me from sleeping" without going through the emergency room and contracting COVID while waiting.

I'm not trying to blame all our problems on social media, but I think a significant confounding factor that should be considered in any analysis blaming bad unrelated outcomes on the pandemic, is that TikTok exploded in popularity right around the same time as the start of the pandemic(in the US, at least).

Wouldn't that be because of stay at home orders? I thought most people used TikTok in 2020 to keep connected, especially teens

That’s an aritificially hostile take, isn’t it?

Most people read “the pandemic” as the global event that started around the beginning of 2020 and certainly that’s how this article and it’s title are using it.

Even if you don’t read the article, it feels like a leap to assume that they’re suggesting that the virus itself somehow made people drink more irresponsibly or made people collectively more vulnerable to alcohol. Has anyone suggested that? Would anyone?

Of course it’s referring to the totality of the experience: the virus, the anxiety, the necessary closures, the precautionary mandates and other parts of “the response”, etc etc

I'd say it's mainly that those who have been heavily advocating all of the lockdown measures throughout the pandemic have behaved more or less like there were no side effects and we should do them for the greater good (basically virtue signaling). The other isle has advocated that maybe we shouldn't cause that kind of turmoil in society just to spare a few years of lifespan of the elderly (which is a harsh take but doesn't make it untrue).

And just thinking about stupid concepts like outdoor masking makes me want to crack open a bottle of vodka.

> those who have been heavily advocating all of the lockdown measures throughout the pandemic have behaved more or less like there were no side effects

That's so alien to me.

I don't know who gabs around the water cooler with you, but I've never met a person who would say that and can't imagine that many involved officials would. The exception really only being people who are known for big theatrics, and those aren't good people to measure others by for any politicized issue.

Most people I've known and most people I've seen have argued that it was a hard governance problem with no painless paths through it, but that there was convincing evidence (to them) that the side effects of issuing precautionary guidance/mandates were more bearable than the catastrophic effects of less action.

But obviously, we must be moving around and watching/reading things in very different circles.

While outdoor masking is silly, the your rage seems disproportionate if that is the source. I've been accused of 'virtue signaling' during the pandemic, but supporting family members whose immune systems were largely disable from chemotherapy makes putting a mask on seem like a small sacrifice. Your take on 'spare a few years of lifespan' is perhaps not untrue, but is an easy 'internet take' when there is anonymity. It is less cute when one is face-to-face with the disposable person, or to someone who watched a family member die.

I'd find it harder to tell a young healthy person they had to lose years of life, their job, their house, than to tell a 70 year old or obese person we aren't doing that to spare them.

And you're right, rage is the correct word. Me and lots of others are enraged that years of life were taken. The old people in America already got enough at everybody else's expense. I want my 2 years back and I won't stop being angry until I get it. And a whole lot of people my age feel the same.

“Old people in America” were heavily impacted but. I can tell you don’t work in health care, as they aren’t the only people that suffered either directly or indirectly . My grandfather, who served in WWII until he was shot, never said he “wanted his time back”(inherently flawed logic). Years of his life and a chunk of his health was taken for something he hated doing but needed to be done. My other grandfather left Eastern Europe in the 1930s and I can remember friends of his that had numbers tattooed on their arms— my aunt was permanently childless for reason I didn’t learn until I was older. Since forever, senseless things happen to people. Some become victims.. Wearing masks and no dinner-and-a-movie sucks. Loss of jobs is real. In the absence if mask mandates and shut-downs, would the economy have flourished under the pandemic? I dont know. I am confident it wouldn’t have been a panacea for the young or old. We have it really good here, in the context of what is going on in Europe right now I think about this a lot. I hope you find happiness.

You're correct, but also, "the pandemic" in that sense is so broad that it's not super helpful. It often feels equivalent to saying "the culture of the 60s produced Jimi Hendrix". What culture? What about it? Just artistic trends, or economic factors, or political factors? (which are themselves hand-wavy terms, and not all inclusive). It feels lazy

Right. If the headline said, "Alcohol-related deaths spike when people lose their jobs" it wouldnt be a surprise. The pandemic was unique and had many complicating factors that impacted lots of groups in different ways.

I was agreeing with your comment until:

>>the necessary closures

Are you suggesting that the state needed to force private establishments to close, and that - putting aside the human rights implications of this abridgement of private-property/free-association rights - we can definitively say the net effect of these closures was positive?

Yes, sadly it appears this is likely the case.

It appears that the reaction to the virus has possibly caused so much more harm than the virus itself.

> It appears that the reaction to the virus has possibly caused so much more harm than the virus itself

Too early to know. It’ll take years before we know the full consequences of the anti-vaxx movement.

Not according to a number of experts it isn't.

Like you said, time will tell. The enquiry into it is just starting up in my country.

I'm sure experts from all sides will get together, and see what went wrong.

"Lockdowns Cost More Lives Than They Saved and Must Not Happen Again, Scientists Tell MPs"

https://dailysceptic.org/2022/03/30/lockdowns-cost-more-live...

Isn’t most of that stuff due to “the pandemic” lockdowns?

They should've opted for weed.

Anecdotally I know 3 adults in 3 different states who tried weed for the first time during the pandemic and all of them developed new-onset panic attacks and disassociative symptoms within less than 6 months of regular use and had to stop. Not sure if it was better than alcohol…

Yeah, I played around with it before the pandemic started and found it meh. When the pandemic was in full swing, I tried it again as an alternative to alcohol and found that it made things far worse. I think it just hits me differently than people that like the stuff. I have zero desire to ever use it again because all it makes me do is feel paranoid and nervous.

Weed is so much harder to dose than alcohol. And our conventions and traditions seem to have us overdosing on weed as the default.

Cultural acceptance of alcohol use is a strong confounding factor. It should be be in the same category as marijuana, smoking, and other harmful substances

What's the latest research on the causes of these predispositions to addiction? Any gut bacteria link? Any gene that can be suppressed?

Over pandemic I lernt:

- I love getting pissed at the pub

- I hate getting pissed at home doing nothing

- I love the taste of non-alcoholic beer

crazy how absolutely nobody saw nth-order effects coming

I'm trying not to armchair quarterback so I'm asking, what would you have done differently? Aren't there obvious priorities here that need to be dealt with and a deep analysis about potential pandemic responses and their n-th order effects would have been even more detrimental?

I don't think it's too outlandish to have taken a look at the measures taken as they were being proposed and then taken and say to oneself, "this is going to have nth-order effects, many of which are easily predictable, and we should weigh these accordingly." instead, anyone who approached things from this perspective was shouted down, told they were participating in killing people, etc. etc. these nth-order effects range from personal (alcohol-related deaths, children socializing/learning to read faces poorly, effects on education, effects on mental health) to economic (independent stores closing while big box stores flourish).

all of these things and many more were dismissed at the time in favor of taking radical actions which have yet to be proven to be effective. (but they had to be effective, because if we didn't take those actions, things would be worse now, right?)

I was yelled at by some people I know quite well when I pointed this stuff out. Only covid mattered to these people. Even when we knew it wasn't nearly as bad as the original models predicted society doubled down on the nonsense.

I find it interesting how otherwise smart people rationalise drinking alcohol because "everyone else does it".

My life was completely changed by Allen Carr's Easyway To Stop Drinking (available in audio books, hardback, Kindle etc). The author basically takes every reason people give for drinking and logically destroys it, often proving that the exact opposite is true.

There's also an interesting BBC documentary by Adrian Chiles called Drinkers Like Me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hsSC03VKZo) which disspells the myth that you're only an alcoholic if you drink in the morning, among other things.

I think in the future people will look back on drinking in the same way that we currently look back on smoking.

Interesting. So I both drink and smoke because I enjoy it and life is too short to not do things you enjoy (applicable to all things in life), even if it shortens my life-span by some years give or take. What is the logical evidence proving that I actually don't enjoy it?

I would recommend you read the book, but why do you think you enjoy it? Do you enjoy the taste, do you think it helps you relax, do you think it's necessary to enjoy social situations?

It's hard to justify reading the book if I don't think I do want to stop smoking or drinking.

It's enjoyable on multiple levels, just like gaming, commenting on HN, reading interesting articles, going for bike rides, eating good food and many other things.

I understand for people who have negative consequences for something would like to stop (when they're addicted), but if the negative consequences are small compared to the enjoyability, what's the point of stopping something?

I'm not going to try to persuade you (or anyone) from stopping drinking, I'm just saying that for most people it seems a bizarre oversight to not even consider it. You don't need to be so defensive.

I'm not defensive, I'm trying to explain my position (as a self-proclaimed "smart and rational" person) since you claimed there was no (logical) reason to have those vices.

You're making strong claims, and I'm just asking you to back those up without forcing people to buy a book that you say supports those claims. Otherwise there isn't much value in you making your claims here.

I'm sure (or rather, I hope) the book helps many who face addiction with those things and there isn't much to lose by helping more people finding the book if they are looking for help, so thanks for sharing it anyway.

I asked why you found it enjoyable and you didn't respond, so it's hard to explain the author's viewpoint when you haven't explained why you drink.

To give generalised responses to the three main reasons that people give:

- Do you enjoy the taste?

    - Alcohol is ultimately a foul-tasting poison. No one ever liked their first taste of beer. We start with highly-flavoured drinks like alcopops and after a while our body says "well you must have a damn good reason for imbibing this poison, so I'll stop warning you as much".

- Do you think it helps you relax?

    - Alcohol dulls your senses. I'd consider relaxing to be a sensation, and so in this respect it can't help you relax. On a deeper level, generally to relax you need to fix the thing that would stop you from relaxing - you have a headache and you take aspirin. Alcohol is not the solution to any stressor.

- Do you think it's necessary to enjoy social situations?

    - Think about children at a party. They turn up very shy and within 30 mins are bouncing off the walls. No alcohol needed. Adults are the same. And we all have multiple memories of social events that have been ruined by alcohol.

Nobody likes their first taste of black coffee or unsweetened grapefruit, either. The bitter tastes are definitely acquired, and tend to be liked by men more than women.

Chili peppers too. All of these initially-offputting tastes are strategies by the plant to make animals not want to eat them. However as humans we've decided they're tasty and that it's worth learning to like them.

The key difference between these and alcohol is that we know none of them are actually harmful (yes I know that coffee is harmful in large quantities).

This is quite different to drinking ethanol, a literal poison that sends the liver into panic stations the instant it detects it.

>- Do you think it's necessary to enjoy social situations?

I don't think it's necessary (for me). I am in social situations with and without alcohol often enough and it's easy to see I on average enjoy myself more when drinking in those.

Going to these lengths of rationalizing not drinking seems a bit absurd.

Especially the one about taste.

Someone says they enjoy the taste and the rationalization is essentially "you're wrong, it tastes bad, you just think it tastes good". Okay well if I think it tastes good, then it tastes good. What's the point here?

I suppose if I wanted to avoid drinking, I could seek out something like this to help give me a framework for thinking about it in a different way. It might help. A program like AA might help as well, and I might seek that out if I wanted to stop drinking. But just as going to AA if you're not trying to stop drinking would be pretty unusual and maybe even silly, these attempts at rationalization seem pretty silly, over complicated, faulty, and unnecessary to me.

- When I was a child I didn't like broccoli, brussel sprouts, or many other things that I like today. That doesn't mean that my body decided "well you must have a damn good reason for imbibing this poison, so I'll stop warning you as much".

- I guess the author can consider relaxing to be a sensation, but I don't think I'd be convinced by his argument to that effect.

- When I was a child I was not "bouncing off the walls" within 30 minutes of turning up at a party. If I didn't know people there, I was much more likely to try to find a quiet place to read.

There's nothing wrong with choosing not to drink, but society has made a decision that drinking in certain situations is acceptable despite knowing that it can have a negative impact on your health.

>> On a deeper level, generally to relax you need to fix the thing that would stop you from relaxing - you have a headache and you take aspirin. Alcohol is not the solution to any stressor.

So aspirin for a headache helps you relax but alcohol for an introvert’s social setting anxiety does not help you relax? What a strange line to draw between “stressors” that are acceptable to solve with drugs.

You're coming across pretty pushy.

> It's hard to justify reading the book if I don't think I do want to stop smoking or drinking.

I agree with you that the book might not be right for you if you don't want to stop. On the other hand, I didn't think I wanted to stop drinking, until I did want to stop, and then suddenly I wished I hadn't spent the last 10 years drinking. It ultimately didn't enhance my life at all. But I wouldn't have heard that message until I was ready.

That was my situation too - I wasn't drinking much and decided I'd do some reading to decide whether I should keep drinking intermittently or just ditch it entirely. Once I started reading then I couldn't believe I'd ever drank in the first place.

are you able to share any links to the info you read?

Not the commenter you were replying to, but Biology of Desire by Marc Lewis was a good one. There was also a lot of good info in The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes, but it's more of a rebuttal against 12 step programs.

Sadly life isnt logical. Some people cant open up at all without alcohol. Alcohol may be their only way to connect with people. It can help them relax as it relives stress, some enjoy that it breaks the ice on social situations etc.. Human isnt logical being.

These are all misconceptions that the book addresses. Alcohol does not relieve stress, it deadens senses. To combat stress you need to solve the problem that is causing your stress.

Alcohol does not improve confidence, it reduces inhibitions. Inhibitions are essential for being rational and making good decisions. See: people who have a drink and then injure themselves or get into fights.

"Inhibitions are essential for being rational and making good decisions."

I wonder if this is part of the reason high IQ individuals are more likely to binge drink and get drunk - to be less rational.

I've read the book (and quit smoking with his other book) but I think he fails to account for the diversity of individual reactions to alcohol as a drug. Some people have an easier time drinking (few problems with addiction, no negative changes to behavior, minimal hangovers) than other people (easily addicted, bad moods/behaviors, disruptive hangovers). It's pretty easy to craft a compelling negative narrative if you're the latter type of drinker. Not so much if you're the former.

The same with smoking. I was viscously addicted to smoking and quitting was a living hell. But I've know people who were occasional smokers who decided to stop one day and had no problem doing so.

Not here to proselytize about your lifestyle choices, and I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of smoking and drinking myself over the years. That said, as someone who works daily with patients whose health has been destroyed by excessive drinking or pretty much any level of smoking, it's always been striking to me how surprised people tend to be by the results.

A lot of people performing the calculus of "eh, what's five to ten years off the end of my life as long as I'm enjoying it now" seem to think it works neatly like that-- they'll die earlier from cancer or a heart attack, and that's it. I'm struck by how often they are surprised and upset by the fact that instead of that, they're living the last 30 years of their lives with irreversible heart, lung, liver, and vascular issues that leave them unable to do the things they've enjoyed outside of smoking and drinking. Just a thought.

The problem with the people you are talking about is that they didn't cut back as soon as they started to have minor medical problems. Having 4 drinks a day for a couple years in your 30s doesn't cause permanent liver damage that will kill you. But continuing to have 4 drinks a day AFTER being told that you are overweight and have elevated blood test results due to drinking can kill you.

This becomes even more important as you age. Someone who starts smoking heavily in their 60s is far more likely to get a blood clot than someone in their 20s

I fully understand what you're saying, but it's somewhat skew to the point I'm trying to make. The people I'm talking about are the ones who have already baked health effects of their habits into their calculus and claim to acknowledge them. For someone who has already bought into the idea that their smoking or drinking will shorten their lives, an elevated BP reading, finding themselves having trouble taking more than one flight of stairs, or even having some chest or leg pain when they're walking around are unlikely to be major wake-up calls. My point is that people may know the end result, but they generally don't have a sense of what the path to that result looks like and underestimate its effects.

I think that's assuming a lot about people to be able to quit cold turkey and being able to adequately identity the first sign of health issues. They've been dealing with health issues from their choices this whole time - if you're smoking you have a cough and your hands and teeth are yellowing, if you drink you wake up feeling like crap, so drawing the line at "as soon as they started to have minor medical problems" isn't really clear-cut. When is it a few extra pounds and when is it a beer gut?

Addiction is defined as encountering substantial consequences for substance use and continuing to use them. Someone who drinks or smokes a few times a year isn't the audience for this sort of thing. If you do it on a regular basis you may want to look closer for consequences, and spend some time away from the drug to see what life is like without it. After doing so if you find the drug makes your life better, or at least causes you no harm, go for it.

> Allen Carr's Easyway To Stop Drinking

You mean "Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking"?

He wrote Easyway books on a bunch of subjects including smoking, drinking and weight gain.

> rationalise drinking alcohol because "everyone else does it".

I don't think most smart people rationalize it at all. They just do it without a care. I drink a few beers once in a while and I don't have any concern doing that.

I also eat completely harmful sugary treats once in a while.

Heck, I even risk my life driving on roads at high (legal) speed once in a while just for fun. We call it a road trip.

> because "everyone else does it"

This is an extremely powerful force and should not be underestimated. Not just with alcohol but in all aspects of life.

In evolutionary terms, being well liked and accepted by the "in-group" even if it means being wrong tends to be more successful than being a smart outcast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

Glad to hear you were able to over come it for the sake of your own health.

No paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20220324080026/https://www.nytim...

I'm more and more convinced that people who don't have kids should have double the tax burden compared to parents, at least for the first 5-10 years.

The stress is unimaginable, and then some people have the gall to complain when parents try to do it well. Appalling behaviour. I would not tolerate such complaints as a manager, but thankfully I have never met such attitude in my life.

Kidless workers do have some more tax burden. If you presume that taxes are wisely spent, and some of it on education, equal tax payments result in unequal benefit. Not complaining, Just explaining. I live in a country that has decent, tax funded, public education; I understand you may not. But as a kidless tax payer, I fully support decent public education paid for with my tax contributions. I don't think tax should be used as a punishment, especially not since some people can't have kids, it's not their fault.

Arguably, if you consider things like military spend to be a benefit equally shared by those living in the country being secured: a couple paying taxes with no kids compared to a couple with two kids, are paying double the tax burden already. Anything spent on education, is (arguably) above that.

Careful what you wish for! ;)

That’s only one limited side of it. The very limited tax contribution you’re making towards their education pays off in spades for you. When you’re old, they’re fully funding your social security, providing you with healthcare, keeping you alive militarily for a long time after you have any practical value to society (well, it’s true). If they were not, and only people with children only could take advantage of the resources of the young and healthy, you wouldn’t make it to old age. Parents end up putting up the bulk of the capital to produce these highly profitable resources, and let’s face it, you’re reaping the disproportionate benefits, especially as you get older. Also, I don’t have any data, but I would wager the safe majority of childless adults are not due to infertility. I’m not saying people should be forced to have children or anything- but it’s hard to take seriously the argument that childless people are victimized by slightly excess taxes.

Not only that, imagine living in a country with terrible public education. I'm sure crime rates and other similar indicators would be way up. Not exactly a fantastic place to live.

Hear hear! I remember reading an op-ed a decade or so ago, where the author said she didn't mind her taxes going to public education, because she didn't want to die in case someone makes a fatal mistake due to their lack of education...

The first 5-10 years of ... what?

Would you then get those 5-10 years of extra tax refunded if you have kids at a later point? Or are you only going to endorse extra tax on sterile people?

Technically, parents would have 1/2 the income tax, so nothing needs to be refunded.

There is already the EITC, and you get deductions for them as dependents. As a parent, I don't feel a need to punish the childless. Money != time or stress.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787874.

Why should my decision to never have children be taxed at all? My carbon footprint is a hell of a lot smaller than most.

> Covid’s toll extends

> to cope with the stress of the pandemic

An euphemism at the level of "rapid unscheduled disassembly".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com