Confessions of a Binge Drinker | Hacker News Reader

Confessions of a Binge Drinker

theatlantic.com

32 pointsnbj91422 comments

There's a individual, social/cultural, and interpersonal context that a raw number threshold ignores completely.

As the writer points out, seven drinks over the course of a multi-hour fine dining experience with friends is far different from a college freshman downing seven shots of tequila in his or her first hour of partying.

Other variables that matter:

* physical - weight, body fat, alcohol tolerance, fatigue, illness

* sex - men and women respond differently

* experience level - has the person ingested alcohol before in a variety of ways?

* emotional state - is the person using alcohol to self-medicate? to "get drunk" deliberately?

* social context - drinking at a social occasion is quite different from drinking alone

There are probably several other factors that a person could name.

The point is, there's no exact threshold above which red lights go on and drinking becomes "excessive" or "binge". It's a matter for the individual to judge, in a social context.

Another major change is stomach contents. It's vary different to down 7 shots on an empty stomach vs 7 shots after a full meal.

PS: 5 shots in a row classifies someone as a binge drinker. But for most people 7 glasses of wine over 2 hours results in the same level of intoxication.

7 glasses of wine in two hours is just under one full bottle of wine an hour. That's a significant amount of wine.

edit: What I'm trying (probably poorly) to get at is that almost anyone who kills a bottle of wine in an hour knows that they're drinking heavily.

Average wine bottle 750ml average glass of wine 5-US-fluid-ounce (150 ml). So 5 glasses / bottle. Drinking 1.4 bottles of wine over 2 hours is significant, but not all that much. Assuming that's all you drink for the night AND you drank during a large meal. For example my BAC would probably peak at around .07 which is below the drunk driving limit in Virgina. (Yea, I am a big guy.)

PS: His comment was simply that 5 drinks in a short period is not exactly reasonable definition for binge drinking.

Sorry, there is no way you can drink 1.4 bottles of wine in 2 hours and blow a 0.07. Sorry, but this is a huge problem and the reason there are so many people who drink and drive. If people realized they were over the 0.08 limit, they probably wouldn't drive, however, many people think they are under when they are not.

7 glasses of wine over 2 hours ~= 6 glasses of wine in 1 hour for a reasonably healthy person. A 140 LB male drinking 6 glasses of wine ~= BAC of approximately .16. I weigh twice that .08. However, a full stomach can significantly delay the amount of time to takes alcohol to enter the blood stream. Not that I would actually drive like this, I do these calculations using the 140lb model to play it safe.

In a fasting individual, it is generally agreed that 10% to 20% of a dose of alcohol is absorbed from the stomach (the volume of alcohol affects the absorption) and 75% to 80% is absorbed from the small intestine. Because of this peak blood alcohol concentrations are achieved in fasting people within 0.5 to 2.0 hours, (average 0.75 - 1.35 hours depending upon dose and time of last meal) while non-fasting people exhibit peak alcohol concentrations within 1.0, and in extreme cases up to as much as 4.0 hours (average 1.06 - 2.12 hours). http://www.intox.com/t-Physiology.aspx

PS: Again, this assume 'standard' glass of wine many people poor more than twice that into a single cup and call it a glass. If your actually going to drive play it vary save and or drink beer with alcohol content printed on the label.

Being 280lbs certainly helps you out :) With that much wine, the ABV makes a big difference as well. I crunched the numbers using 12% alcohol content, 35 ounces (1.4 750ml bottles), 2 hours and 280lbs to get 0.091, so still not hammered, but with 14% ABV it was over 0.122.

Sure, I prefer the 9-10% ABV side of things because they tend to be sweeter and 5ounces @ 10% = 1 standard drink equivalent so I can just use the chart. Still, I think people are pushing up the alcohol content to compensate for weighing more.

Traditional wine glasses are 1/6 of a bottle.

Modern wine glasses (especially the ones sold supermarkets in the UK) are ⅓ of a bottle each.

Wine, which was 15 years ago 7-10% alcohol is more commonly 14% today.

Thus our 'glass of wine' is regularly 4 of your parents or grandparents'.

You know, you're not supposed to fill a wine glass to the brim. There's supposed to be plenty of extra room in a wine glass - it's important for aeration and for properly bringing out and concentrating the aroma of the wine.

My cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir glasses could probably hold an entire bottle of wine each, if I wanted to fill them up, but that'd be ridiculous. The proper pour remains about a sixth of a bottle - bigger wine glasses just mean the public's grown more aware of the effect of glass shape on taste.

No disagreements on the increased alcohol content in wine over the last generation or so - blame Robert Parker and his popularization of a certain type of dark full-bodied red. 'Good' has gotten associated with 'boozy'.

I wish the author hadn't spent so much time on 'I beat the CDC score required to binge drink, therefore it must be wrong' to get to the actual point. It made his argument seem incredibly nit-picky.

While 'the number of drinks imbibed is the wrong way to measure drinking' is an interesting point, I wish he had actually spent time discussing the actual research / anecdotes that he mentions, which should have been the meat of his article.

I usually expect more from the atlantic.

> If, as the CDC suggests in a new report, binge drinking leads to violence, spread of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, and risky behavior, then why am I doing just fine?

Because these studies never apply to 100% of the subjects.

That is his point. He is saying that while the generic definition of binge drinking [X drinks in Y time] shows an increase in those problems, it does not paint anywhere near the whole picture. Instead, he argues, a more important factor is the context in which those drinks are consumed and this context should have the most importance.

The point being made, although not very clearly - as I read it: It's not the drinking, it's the drinker. We all know people who are 'nasty drunks' and we all know people who behave just fine, even after a full night of drinking.

Drinking enhances your emotions. If you're emotionally unstable, getting drunk could well lead to an outburst of feelings and depending on how well you can manage your expressiveness, lead to ill-advised sexual encounters or violence.

If you're emotionally in balance, chances are you can keep that balance getting drunk.

There are probably health issues to drinking too much, but fixing social issues by throwing a blanket maximum number of drinks indiscriminately over everybody.

So, I made a little web app for fun, that could consider trying next time you're drinking. It's dedicated to all of you who, like myself, get to a certain point in the night and then cannot stop drinking more.

http://www.drinkpacer.com

unfortunately once I get into this state I also stop using the app.. so... it's a work in progress :)

and yes, native android/ios apps are planned :)

The point of this article has less to do with drinking than people realize. It has to do with his establishments. They promote binge drinking, and the CDC discourages binge drinking, so he has to find a way to reconcile this to his very white, very educated patrons who also read the Atlantic.

Deleted comment

A body's biological soup doesn't care if it's Superbowl Sunday or a wedding or a funeral; when you intoxicate it with excessive quantities of alcohol, there will be effects.

I don't think anyone is arguing that, his point seems to be that there is a discrepancy between the effects ascribed to it, are not the actual effects.

Seven drinks in four hours, at a nice restaurant with friends? Of course he didn't get into a fight.

Though I didn't kill or sleep with anyone - I regret last night right now.

Confession of the binge drinker who wrote this article: I don't understand statistics, or why anecdotes aren't the same thing as data.

Up next from this genius: "I smoke but I don't have cancer, so suck it, ALA!"

Yeah, complaining about the CDC's definition just make him sound like someone trying to cover up a problem. Maybe he doesn't have a problem with alcohol, but it's possible to read this essay as "I drank too much at least 4 times last month, and take the opportunity at events to get shitfaced, but I'M FINE."

FD: I have had a binge or two myself in the last month, I'm just not impressed with this article.

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