Against Alcohol (2022)
thefitzwilliam.com
thefitzwilliam.com
He also simultaneously cites the Arab world as an example of an alcohol-free society, yet makes no mention of the relatively low productivity rates there.
No one should feel compelled to drink and I support people who want to reduce their alcohol consumption. In the meantime, I have yet to see a compelling argument for heavily restricting alcohol.
To be fair, unproductive citizens are society's problem in many ways, and he is part of society...
Edit: Thanks for downvotes.
My opinion is western society has the most productive economic apparatus in History, maybe alcohol isn't so corrosive after all
Yes, in <pedantic>known history</pedantic>.
And yes, if you ignore the negative externalities such as destruction of the environment, high obesity and other first-world killer diseases like heart attack, stroke, etc.
Of course, other / developing countries are greedy and eager to emulate all that unsustainable shit, and are coming up fast on the radar screen often ignoring the remedial measures (for what they are worth) that the former countries are applying.
provably better physical health
provably (much) better mental health
BONUS: more saved money than you'd think
alcohol fucks up your sleep, your mood, your liver, your social interactions. it's straight up poison save for extremely moderate quantities that almost nobody settles for when having a drink.
nothing better than waking up monday morning feeling like you got punched in the stomach all night and barely able to hold a straight thought with the impeding stress of having to go to work and perform. so you get painkillers, insane amounts of coffee and maybe some other drug your GP blindly prescribed you and you go on about your day barely holding together the mess that you are
Prove that. I would bet you $100 right now that there is a "silent majority" (even though I dislike the term) that has no problem whatsoever with keeping their drinking under control and to reasonable levels. I am among them - I keep it to a single drink and can go weeks with them in my fridge without taking a swig.
You assume that alcohol is the problem; whereas often, even though I could be wrong; excess drinking is more often a symptom of other problems (stress, anxiety, depression, social pressure, etc.) Getting rid of symptoms does not heal the problem.
Edit for @AtlasLion ("posting too fast - please slow down"): I'm at the point where, at my levels, I feel that it is alarmism. I get that drinking alcohol is never risk-free, but by the same logic, standing outside under a tree is never risk-free. A car ride is never risk-free. Using a cell phone in public is never risk-free. Meeting a stranger is not risk-free. Taking a vaccine is not risk-free. Getting married is certainly not risk-free. It's that kind of risk in my mind.
Are you me? But really, in my experience, (and I’m nearly double the legal drinking age) we are the minority. When I was college age (even though I didn’t do the standard US 4 year stint, but was adjacent to it and all the fraternity etc shenanigans that come with it) it was about rage bingeing. Now amongst my professional friends and colleagues, some of whom are parents, I am the _only_ one either not drinking or stopping after just one. I prefer driving myself everywhere because inevitably someone wants another round when I want to get back to my kids before bedtime, or we’re on the way home from a remote trip and I don’t want to ride with someone that’s already sloshed and wants to bring a “road soda” with them. I kind of dread work trips because while I do like many of my colleagues, there is way too much alcohol consumption, like, late nights every night for a week straight.
People become skilled at hiding their inebriated state, and like pathological liars, believe themselves that they “aren’t that drunk”.
I do hope it’s just the bubble I grew up in because I want to think there’s a pathway to teaching my kids there is a responsible way to enjoy it without making it a competition, identity or escape. But it’s hard for me to believe my experience is very far outside the norm.
> excess drinking is more often a symptom of other problems (stress, anxiety, depression, social pressure, etc.)
I believe it.
> Getting rid of symptoms does not heal the problem.
Looking the other way while people are actively hurting themselves with the wrong medication or dose doesn’t help either.
I’m not saying we need a teetotaling prohibition. But I actually am grateful that there is a two drink limit at the breweries where I live (even if it was installed for the wrong reasons) because it cuts down on the bs I described above.
Like many things I’m sure it comes down to education, not to mention other cultural things like religion and puritanism, paired with youthful rebellion breeding dysfunctional coming of age.
And finally, like with anything else it’s the dose that makes the poison, and not a binary question of allowed or banned, but where a sensible limit can be found.
I don't want to reveal my age on Hacker News, but I'll just say that I reached the legal drinking age within the last five years, and have never had any issues with alcoholism. I have no idea what a hangover feels like (or have ever had trouble standing) despite my primary drink of choice being whiskey (80 proof, give or take). Even if we may appear to be Unicorns...
> I do hope it’s just the bubble I grew up in because I want to think there’s a pathway to teaching my kids there is a responsible way to enjoy it without making it a competition, identity or escape. But it’s hard for me to believe my experience is very far outside the norm.
That is sad. I would hope that the "Squeaky wheel gets the grease" analogy applies here, but I'm not sure. The NIH seems hopeful even if the numbers are still bad: "In 2018, two-thirds of adults aged 18 and over consumed alcohol in the past year. In 2018, 5.1% of adults engaged in heavy drinking in the past year, 15.5% engaged in moderate drinking, 45.7% engaged in light drinking, and 33.7% did not consume alcohol." 5.1% is still a lot of people, but it shows that the heavy drinkers are about... 8% of all drinkers.
However, the negative view would be that 1 in 7 people in my home state (Minnesota) has had a DWI on their record at some point. DWI does not strictly speaking require 0.08% or even alcohol specifically though. The average first-time intoxication level is 0.148%, repeat offenders 0.166%, which takes... a lot of drinks. If I was a 100-lb woman, that would take about three to hit. But for me, that would take more like... six or seven. Which I freely admit does make my struggle lower than others - my weight makes the intoxication level from one or two drinks very small compared to others.
> Looking the other way while people are actively hurting themselves with the wrong medication or dose doesn’t help either.
I personally wish that our Age ID system was expanded so that there was a hashed database of driver's licenses not permitted to purchase alcohol or who could only purchase small amounts, that a court (or a voluntary listing) could add a person to. The hashed list would then be downloaded for offline use weekly by breweries and alcohol stores. If a person's ID went through the hashing algorithm and matched a hash on the list, the sale would be denied or restricted (to say, one drink). This would not put any impositions on people who do not struggle with drinking, would not harm anonymity or privacy, but would assist with self-control for those who need it or are interested.
This is especially important because 10% of Americans (or, about 14% of the drinking population) buys 60% of the alcohol.
But like my wife has had a bottle of a beer she loves in the fridge door For pushing 6 months now untouched. We have a bottle of cider we both love from gatlinburg that’s been in there for over a month, opened.
I’ll routinely have a bottle of gin take me several years to finish. Sit in the freezer for 2-3 years as I randomly put a dash in a tea.
This all or nothing mindset is bs. If an individual has problems with addiction and self control then definitely do the all or nothing.
Otherwise? Leave well enough alone.
Alcohol literally breaks down into Acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde causes DNA damage, cancer, liver damage.
Yes, there are other causes of alcohol addiction (stress, anxiety, etc..). But also Alcohol changes our response to those underlying symptoms, that can then become the problem. ( I start drinking to reduce stress -> alcohol causes a physical reaction in the mind/body to increase stress -> I drink more alcohol to reduce more stress).
There is an "iron law of prohibition" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition) which posits that as law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases. Such was what happened in the original Prohibition in the US; beer and wine were ditched in favor of more potent hard liquor, which was often poorly made and possibly dangerous to consume.
There seems to be some contradictory opinions on Prohibition's overall effects, but what I seem to gather is that, while drinking overall went down, access to alcohol was still fairly easy (as alcohol isn't difficult to make), and the problem drinkers became more disruptive (due to consuming stronger, often poorly made stuff).
Why should my own enjoyment of life be curtailed, simply because others can't behave themselves? That would be punishing me for others' failings, and that is unjust.
Unless you missed the coercion in the last decade, and more recently in the last three years.
And somehow there will always be someone that tries to justify the ever slippery, 'for the greater good'.
On the other hand, if someone's waking up on a Monday with a hangover because they had 300 ml of whiskey on a Sunday night, they're not representative of the general population, they're an alcoholic.
This is what i call the American approach. While the rest of the world enjoys a couple of glasses of wine with friends or at dinner and that's the end of it, the American will down three full bottles of wine by himself and proceed to destroy family, health, relationships. And then blame it on the wine.
All societies struggle with drugs that become a drag on the entire group. Opium in China, opium dens, crack, heroin, etc...
I think there is a rate of decay. Alcohol kills you just slow enough for people not to care.
Alcohol has just flown under the radar because it is bad, but not quite bad enough to kill people off early and reach the threshold where the majority of people realize it is bad. Alcohol drags on, and kills body just slowly enough that you can be productive and hit 50 before dying off. Then since you are 50+, everybody can chime in with explanatory excuses to cover their own drinking and say "he should have ran more", "should have eaten better".
[Edit] Know we aren't supposed to talk about downvotes. But I am surprised that any post that is against alcohol, even on the basis of health, gets a negative reaction. When I post about alcohol being bad, I get a lot of responses from 'functional alcoholics' making pro-alcohol arguments.
Like the pro-alcohol group aren't just chilling, it's like an overwhelming anger.
Like "stop trying to take my alcohol away from me, I don't need it, it's just for fun, I'm ok, don't take it, I'm perfectly fine, I hate you"
Also, I don't see anywhere in the article where the author says "these restrictions should do the trick". They talk about a few attempts to restrict alcohol, but mostly their conclusion is "we don't know yet if this is working" or "we don't know this would work here." They're not shying away from the complexity.
They end by just advocating that individuals stop contributing to alcohol's position as a "normal" thing.
We are all in this together, our behaviors are all shared problems. The more important lesson from prohibition is that prohibition just doesn't work. There may be other ways to disincentivize the behavior though. If there was a way to do it, we would all save tons of money on health care, have less drunk driving deaths, less deaths due to various violence, get more done, etc etc
We could also provide incentives for people to stay inside and play around with their phones, that will encourage less drinking. Also, it seems like, when people get together, they often drink, so maybe we could make assembling in large groups illegal.
Finally, I've read that breathing exercises like left nostril breathing can induce altered states similar to drunkenness, and also that taking OTC pills like sleeping pills can cause inebriation. We should ban all psychoactive OTC pills and keep a close eye on people doing yoga.
But as people die these terrible deaths, you continue to make fun of the situation. Consider.
It’s common in our culture to parrot about letting people make their own decisions… where does that take us when it comes to things like covid? When a culture promotes a harmful practice we should call it out. Just like we call out injustice, certainly it is unjust to support a drinking culture that results in so much harm.
> In north Africa and the Middle East, alcohol-related liver disease constituted the lowest proportion of age-standardised prevalence and death rates.19 This finding could be expected, because alcohol is prohibited in many of the countries in this region, which could lead to both decreased use and the possibility of under-reporting.
> Among GBD regions, the highest proportions of cirrhosis deaths due to alcohol-related liver disease were in central Europe (44·0%), western Europe (41·7%), and Andean Latin America (38·1%; figure 4; appendix p 41). The proportion of cirrhosis deaths due to alcohol-related liver disease was lowest in north Africa and the Middle East (5·3%) and in Egypt specifically (4·8%), and highest in Belgium (53·5%; appendix p 41).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1...
Also see these maps:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t...
From this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7650014/
In essence, if it costs a country $100M to deal with all the negative externalities from alcohol, but they only receive $50M in tax revenue today, it's time to double the tax.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_labour_pr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...
Even more ridiculous is that last I've heard, there is still alcohol being consumed in muslim countries.
I am firmly opposed to prohibition. As many have pointed out, it just doesn't work. Regulation and taxation, sure. And definitely anyone who is considering quitting should be encouraged and supported. No matter what else, support systems for those addicted (and victims of abusers) should be in place.
But prohibition did not, and will not, work.
Prohibition does work, the important part is effecting a cultural shift in attitude towards alcohol, similar to how smoking was marginalized.
We don’t need to live with this crazy culture where drinking is glorified and a big social phenomenon.
It didn't. We tried it.
Look, I'm all for reducing consumption. I'm on board with trying to improve public health, or just health of everyone in general. But prohibition does not work. Didn't work for alcohol. Didn't work for marijuana. Didn't work for sex education.
So the question to ask is, what does work? And realize that an all or nothing, black and white approach is counterproductive.
Educate, inform, regulate. That's the best we can do, and there's a lot of room in the 'regulate' part to make inroads. Perhaps someday we'll get to synthehol, but we're a long way from that today.
A concerted effort and taking advantage of the current rise in sober culture can really help lower rates of alcohol consumption. We saw this so the decline in tobacco usage.
It’s not correct to say any prohibition does not work based on US prohibition in the 1920s. Prohibition for anything can reduce its access and use among people. It’s one of our best tools in preventing problems. This is a false belief in American culture that prohibition of substance does not work, it clearly does work in many countries worldwide in terms of lowering health problems due to alcohol abuses.
In the case of things like marijuana, sex education, these are cultural failures. In both cases, the culture was trending towards engaging in these. Prohibition must also enter the cultural attitudes to be greatly effective, but even a general prohibition over a long scale has an effect.
If people want to drink or smoke marijuana then legality does not matter very much and just pushes people into criminal activity.
So the idea that the only reason legal prohibition failed is that it didn't last long enough is refuted.
You want people to drink less, change attitudes, not the law.
Just because it is consumed, does not mean that it is generally accepted or expected. It's recognized as a sin, and is frowned upon.
prohibition actually succeeded in most of its goals, which was about reducing domestic violence and deaths from liver disease. The alcohol industry's billions in lobbying and advertising has done it's job to make people think it was a failure
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...
>contrary to popular perceptions about Prohibition and crime, that prohibitions were associated with lower murder rates — as much as 29 percent lower in some cases
>Per capita consumption initially fell to 30 percent of pre-Prohibition levels, before gradually increasing to 60 or 70 percent by 1933.” That suggests a 30 percent reduction, at a minimum, in consumption
>Prohibition reduced liver cirrhosis deaths — a commonly used proxy for all drinking at the time — by 10 to 20 percent.
Citation needed for that claim. It's also trivial to disprove just by looking at history.
Once you stop drinking, it becomes so easy to see just how much alcohol pervades popular culture. People drink constantly on TV. People pressure you to drink in social situations, too. Unfortunately, it often feels like you need a 'good reason' to stop drinking or alternatively admit you were an alcoholic. It's really unfortunate and ... silly?
Reddit's "stopdrinking" subreddit is also really good[2] if you are struggling with this.
Heck, I feel like people give me some respect for being able to avoid alcohol at an event packed with it.
Looking back on it, I always was jealous of the sober people at parties. They were having a great time and didn't need to drink or do drugs.
If we are going to plug our favorite ways of breaking addictions, I love Power of Habit by Charles Duggan. I can't give a summary because that would be doing a disservice, I don't recommend any summaries online either. Its a 300-400 page book on the brain science of the basal ganglia which is responsible for addictions. It can also be used for positive habits like exercise too. Its my number 1 or number 2 book of all time.
To quit smoking, I used acupuncture. It may be complete woooo, but it worked incredibly to stop by cravings.
People need to understand there is a physiological response even if the underlying idea is nonsense.
Also, dry needling can be freaking amazing. Would recommend for both acute and chronic issues at least 1 time. (If it doesnt solve it after doing it once, its not going solve it doing it 4 times)
I have alcohol in the house. I'll occasionally grab a beer to have with BBQ in the summer. I don't have a need to limit myself; I'm good after 1.
I enjoy alcohol in social situations. I don't have a problem stopping after 1 because that's all I need to feel satiated, and I can go months until my next drink.
Alcohol during my university years? Yeah, I took it too far a few times.
Coffee? Different story altogether!
Is it just me? Am I the weirdo?
Other countries will be different I would think.
Your caffeine example is a good one. To some folks on /r/stopdrinking, alcohol is more akin to how you feel about caffeine.
Maybe in your social circles that is normal, but that is highly irregular from everything I have experienced over the last 20 years across 3 continents. And if you don't believe me, just look up the statistics on alcohol consumption. It's pretty clear that an extremely high % of people regularly abuse alcohol, especially in social situations.
It's interesting because I don't tend to get addicted to things. I've never tried hard drugs, but I can quit coffee cold-turkey (and have done, several times. Just because I was feeling like switching to tea or oat milk in the morning) and never really got into weed.
(anyway, stopped drinking a couple months ago. Alcohol free beer is great for that to be honest. I do miss a nice whiskey from time to time. Let's see if I keep it up)
Personally, I love it - in particular, the fact that any night of the week you can have one or several unique, powerful sensory experiences to savor and enjoy. Inebriation is basically an unfortunate side effect, for me, if my body stopped metabolizing alcohol after my first drink I'd be perfectly happy - what I'm into is the tasty drinks themselves.
I can have a moscow mule, a mojito, a margarita, and an old fashioned, one after another, and they're all delicious, and all different, and I love that. I can go to another bar tomorrow night, have those same drinks, and yet they'll all be slightly different than the last. Variety is the spice of life!
It's like the difference between a snack drawer filled with your favorite snack, versus a snack drawer filled with a dozen different snacks - you can, on a whim, choose any particular flavour or form you happen to be in the mood for at that moment. That's absolutely delightful for a hedonist like me.
... of course, that's a lot of sugar and salt, which isn't particularly healthy, I know that. But in terms of questions like "Why would you ever have more than one drink?" or "Why would you drink often" or even "Why would you drink alone?" - that's my answer, because I like the way cocktails (and beer, and wine, and cider) taste; And one important factor to enjoying my life is doing things that I like. Simple as.
They drink when they think about their relationship, they drink when they go to social events, they drink when they are having couple moments together.
Social pressure is very damaging in this regard.
I would like to bring doctor Peter Attia's perspective on this - which he mentioned on another podcast with Tim - is occassionally drinking something he really enjoys to the point that "if that glass of wine is not good enough, I will pour it down the drain".
So I tried a few times between now and then, even though I enjoyed it, the aftermath of not having even the slightest effect next day - which I got used to when not drinking at all - convinced me to give up this idea.
The social pressure, though, is real. It's like a habbit which everyone is so much used to, that the alternative "world" with no alcohol feels like a non-existant to some people. And if you fire up a conversation why, there's rarely a good reason why they are so attached to this belief.
I've been in consulting (now consulting-adjacent) roles for the last six years. I've learned a lot from this experience, but the one definite takeaway I've gotten is that alcohol is an absolute must if you're going to hang out with most people (at least here in the US).
Every single after-work event that I've done at the several firms I've worked for has had alcohol involved (and usually lots of it). Every. single. one.
Now, I like drinking. I still drink one or two pints of beer every other day. But it's very difficult to avoid if you want to have a social life here, and seeing your peers get slightly dumber over time is not fun when you're sober! That's annoying as hell!
(I used to drink beer daily until I got acid reflux, despite working out every day in some way or another; I drink an NA beer or two on the off days. I definitely don't get drunk anymore. Been there; done that. I hate losing control over myself like that.)
Saying it hurts health, makes some people prone to violence, and undermines productivity misses the point. People drink alcohol despite the risks because it makes them feel good, around others especially but also alone.
There are other categories of activity like this. Eating at restaurants is objectively bad for your health. Traveling is bad for your body, productivity, the environment. So? We consider them a core part of enjoying life. We like how they make us feel, despite the risks.
You can argue that alcohol is a bigger risk and worse tradeoff. I agree.
But I think what is most likely to persuade people are arguments that undermine the actual reason they drink. “Yes alcohol makes you feel good - but for a short time, and you feel worse for longer, and eventually get depressed.” Or “yes alcohol can bring you closer to friends - but habitual use can ruin your best relationships.”
Alcohol is tempting because it has positives, especially short term ones. When I want to avoid it, I think of the other positives drinking will displace (exercise the next day, having an actually meaningful conversation with a friend, etc)
Focusing purely on the risks and downsides is a mistake because human decisions always weigh the upside and downside and you cannot ignore the upside. Best approach is to convince people there is a bug in how they are weighing those (which is true!)
On the flip side, I've had a couple of "magical" nights in my life where alcohol played a key role and I would not trade those nights away in the risk/reward equation.
So as a personal measure I'd say - if you drink rarely and your results are additive to your life - great. You are striking the right balance. If you are drinking frequently and struggle to function without it (eg - can't handle a social gathering without it) then you got health and personal issues from it and should change your ways.
As a society we are way too accepting of it as a casual and normal substance, for sure.
As you say, it's probably okay to drink rarely. But I wouldn't discourage the instinct to quit completely, and recognize that there is a high amount of pressure through culture to imbibe.
[0] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
Yes, but I've also been blackout drunk, more than once. I can't really keep beer in the house, because much like a binge eater with sweets, I have surprisingly little self-control and will consume it all in little time.
I recognize I have a family history of addiction. I also recognize I can slow down and moderate, but honestly with no level of alcohol consumption being safe for our health, why shouldn't I just quit altogether?
I find hard rules easier than moderation. Eg currently eating Paleo, which is much easier for me to do than "trying to be moderate with breads, dairy etc."
If you know what works best for you - absolutely do that!
Taxes, no alcohol in supermarkets, etc...seems rather misguided...
We know that taxes have a very strong positive effect on cigarette use, for example.
There is an argument to be made for making alcohol harder to access for younger or lower income people.
This logic is a big reason why I personally avoided all recreational substances including alcohol until I felt very happy and stable in my career and trajectory in life, at 25.
I advise everyone to abstain from any recreational substances at least until they are at cruising altitude in life, whenever and whatever that means for them.
Occasional recreational substances are for happy and stable times, if at all.
A government isn’t some faceless monster entity like the banks in The Grapes of Wrath. They are you and I, and it seems more than okay to come together to write laws for the greater good of all.
"Public policies affecting the price of alcoholic beverages have significant effects on alcohol-related disease and injury rates. Our results suggest that doubling the alcohol tax would reduce alcohol-related mortality by an average of 35%, traffic crash deaths by 11%, sexually transmitted disease by 6%, violence by 2%, and crime by 1.4%."
> Left unaddressed is the presumption that alcohol is necessary to any of those (good and often great) rituals. It’s not. You can get most (perhaps all) of those social benefits without alcohol. Drinks with friends don’t have to be alcoholic.
I suspect most folks' critique of this author's opinion will lie with this unsubstantiated assertion. And the ensuing inference that a prohibitionist stance strives to remove people's bodily autonomy to decide if they like using recreational drugs.
EDIT: I don't see a 'reply' button beside those replying to me below. I am 100% open to being convinced of the benefits of alcohol -- especially psychological, social, etc. Please feel free to post papers that scientifically show that alcohol is beneficial. Would love to read them.
You claim that "there aren't based on the biological research" you've read. I do believe you here.
However, have you ever stopped to think that that perhaps the benefits that one derives from consuming alcohol, or other recreational drugs, are outside the realm of what biological sciences can answer? Maybe another field is better positioned to provide you with an illuminating alternative perspective.
[0] - https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
Low to moderate drinkers have better health outcomes than teetotalers. That's probably because unhealthy people are less likely to drink alcohol, but it also suggests that most people using alcohol are not exactly having their lives ruined. Futher, loneliness is epidemic in the modern west, and alcohol is a patently social drug. If drinking 4-5 beers a week gets you out of the house and talking to people twice, that might actually be a health win in the current environment.
At least for me they absolutely are real and we're valuable to bring me out of my shell in college. Don't need it as much anymore, but drinking a bit in college had a transformatively positive experience for me socially.
And even after doing this consistently they still had p values very close to 0.05 for 1 and 2 drinks per day on average.
You can't count only biological benefits when balancing the scales because then most things humans do is only bad for you.
Physical pleasure?
It can preserve calories of carbohydrates that would otherwise go bad?
Or the physical pleasure I previously mentioned?
So our social structures evolved in the context of alcohol as a given.
No surprise, then, that now that we (largely) have access to fresh water, we still find a place for alcohol in our lives.
More recently we gained the ability to look into the long term harms and balance them against additional benefits we might get from alcohol like the antioxidants, the increases in HDL cholesterol, or the decreases in blood sugar, some of which may improve our health, but I suspect that as long as alcohol increases people's likelihood of having fun, dancing, singing, and screwing, it'll probably stay pretty popular.
Just like there is no benefit to (table) sugar.
In moderation the harm is only moderate.
Anything else is pure cope from people who need to justify their wine at dinner.
You're joking right? There are plenty of benefits to consuming table sugar. Not the least of which is the cost per calorie and the quick availability of energy. But we can also add in low weight/calorie and good food preservation qualities.
Your body isn't fucking up when it tells you that sugar is tasty. It knows what it's doing.
That doesn't mean that table sugar is something you should be consuming all the time and in the quantities we do, but it's fairly outrageous to suggest that table sugar is not beneficial as a blanket statement.
---
You might have the opinion that calories are plenty enough that you can avoid table sugar. That opinion is just as much an outlier historically as is our current easy access to sugar.
Beer can be metabolized for energy.
If that's the benefit, then sure.....table sugar and beer are both "beneficial."
It's fine to pick and choose your own vices, but dismissing others' as a frivolity is simply a failure to empathize.
It took incredible societal level effort to change the culture around cigarettes.
Most anyone who thinks something is bad and wants that behavior reduced might naively want to ban it, and then they realize nobody likes being told what to do and they make enemies out of otherwise allies. On the other hand very few people are capable of associating consequences to their actions in ways that change their actions. This does create a real problem for society. Cigarette smokers were stealing the public air inside of restaurants and causing undue burden on public health.
People who are against things like drinking alcohol should take a page out of anti-tobacco's book.
Cigarettes were salami sliced away.
They removed smoking zones from restaurants, started to restrict where smoking could be done. They increased the tax on cigarettes. They showed commercials about the awful consequences of smoking. They had health care professionals bring around smokers lungs to elementary school students. They repeated cigarettes == cancer so many times in so many different forms of media. They had pictures of people with the hole in their throat speaking with the vibrating neck tool. They showed pictures of teeth. There was media about the thick layer of nasty residue on the inside of homes. Forest fires, couch fires and the like were tied to cigarette usage. There were cigarette butts littered absolutely everywhere. They resitcted use of cigarettes in movies. They restricted advertising to children. They overturned the pro tobacco research. They had lesson plans about "corrupted tobacco research" in high school. There was significant amount of conversation around second hand smoke and how second hand smoke harms your kids. They should how chewing tobacco was harmful. They showed how harmful all the cigarette aditivies were. They made nicotine patches and created treatment plans.
Now if you smoke in the US, you are basically advertising that you are a low class peasant who doesn't care about themselves and can't control themselves. Smoking is very uncool. Smoking is very low status behavior. That absolutely was not the attitude 30 years ago.
Going to foreign countries, it's shocking to smell cigarettes. Going to japan and entering a cafe and smelling cigarette smoke is absolutely jarring.
The US didn't ban cigarettes, but they made them very very uncool. They repeated the consequences of cigarette use enough that people eventually internalized them.
So you can be a prohibitionist, and that doesn't help anybody, but I do agree with the general sentiment that alcohol harms society more than it helps and to make changes you must change the culture.
Changing the culture requires telling the truth to people who don't want to hear it and eventually using force ("you can't smoke here" is a use of force) in a gradually increasing way.
Prohibition failed for the reason many software projects fail. It tried to make a large change at once rather than asking "what's the smallest step we can make in the right direction" and then executing on that repeatedly until your goal is achieved "enough."
Alcohol is also fun in an inherently desirable way that cigarettes aren't. People don't drink because it's cool, people drink because they like being unsober. Smoking weed is super stigmatized and is outright illegal most places and people still do it. Those same people aren't buying cigarettes.
Alcohol also doesn't have a strong narrative of being addictive, difficult to quit, causing people to spiral into more and more consumption, or being inherently harmful to others. These things happen to some people but with cigarettes it was a guarantee for everyone even at moderate usage. The fact that alcohol makes you sick is a natural mediating factor for most people.
First, as the author admits as having some logic, "If someone can vote, if they can join the army, fight and die, get married, then they should be allowed to buy alcohol." When does adulthood kick in? If you couldn't join the army until you were 35, get married until you are 35, or own a gun until 35, I am sure the death or divorce rate statistics would go down, but nobody wants 35 to be the age of adulthood.
Secondly, this claim: "Formerly wasted talent would be used in the economy, countless lives would be saved, and families and relationships would be healthier and less violent." The author really doesn't want to talk about these claims were lifted straight from Prohibition and the WCTU, verbatim. It turns out humans who don't care about wasting talent like wasting it any way they can; be it alcohol, drugs, video games, gang violence, take your pick. The WCTU learned that the hard way when gang violence for alcohol became the new favorite way to waste talent.
Third, he follows the premise that dangerous means we should discourage it. I don't actually agree. Motorcycles are 20 times as deadly as cars to the rider - but I don't believe the government has any role in shutting them down. There is also a very high risk of unexpected consequences - for example, the requirements for lots of new safety equipment in new cars has been shown to have significantly priced out poorer communities, causing them to opt for cheaper, older, even more dangerous vehicles.
Fourth, I think is honestly stupid that he factors drugs in as an example of how "we can ban drugs - why not alcohol?" Has literally anything about how drug bans have been enforced gone well? We can think drugs are bad for people while admitting the War on Drugs has been a nightmarish disaster with over 19% of High Schoolers admitting to having used drugs in the last 30 days, not to mention causing considerable racial effects, as well as having built a logistics service that rivals Amazon while being illegal - and yet he brings it up as though it was a good example!
while i definitely miss the feeling, i look back with horror and amazement that i ever did it, and very likely won't consider getting another bike again. i rode pretty conservatively the great majority of the time, but the culture is so provocative it's so fucking hard to be completely strict about it. my last bike was a big adventure bike, not a track bike, so it's not like i was squidding around on a gsxr the whole time.
this basically completely parallels my journey with alcohol. i don't drink anymore and never came anywhere close to alcoholism, but it was a pervasive and toxic substance and culture that i didn't really enjoy participating in anymore. i now have many other good options and hell even the craft NA beer options are growing quite well.
Does this make it wrong? Both prohibition can be a failure and alcohol can ruin lives.
Its best to separate the facts from potential policies.
> I simultaneously don't think society has a role in restricting it more than presently, at least in the US.
Restricting maybe not, but strongly discouraging as well as informing the public of the strong negative consequences should be fair game.
> It turns out humans who don't care about wasting talent like wasting it any way they can; be it alcohol, drugs, video games, gang violence, take your pick.
IMO, a lot of things wrong here. I don't think there is a line somewhere that clearly separate the talent waster to the productive people. Human usually respond (albeit differently) to incentive structure. The point of those intervention is change the incentive structure of the environment to make the desired behavior a bit more common.
> Motorcycles are 20 times as deadly as cars to the rider - but I don't believe the government has any role in shutting them down.
Motorcycles seems to be "obvisouly" dangerous that most poeple do not drive them. Same reason we do not regulate rope-jumping : The impact on society is not that high. If/When the amount of people driving motorcyles increases as to become a problem, then more regulation might be needed.
> or example, the requirements for lots of new safety equipment in new cars has been shown to have significantly priced out poorer communities, causing them to opt for cheaper, older, even more dangerous vehicles.
First, references ? Second then let's make those things offorable for the target population... Let's not make life unsafe for everybody else...
> Fourth, I think is honestly stupid that he factors drugs in as an example of how "we can ban drugs - why not alcohol?"
Because they are both (potentially) addictive substances...
This is not entirely the same situation, since alcohol abuse also affects the abusers family. The article mentions that as well.
https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-...
In short: it's about why we continue to drink despite the obvious costs. There are, as it turns out, some non-obvious benefits as well.
I do find so much of the argumentation against it very off putting, though. Happy that this article at least points out some of the nonsense in obviously too high costs associated with hangovers. That kind of rhetoric and analysis really makes it hard to care about some of the easier points. In ways that doesn't even make sense. (Why try and inflate what is ostensibly already a strong case?)
I genuinely enjoy the taste of cider and wine. I love mixing cocktails. I enjoy experimenting with combining flavours to make something refreshing and hopefully unique.
As with all vices in moderation, speaking only for myself it's been a clear net positive.
- can't effectively work out post-use
- insufficient sleep damages early morning performance
- can't read or work post-use
However, I enjoy drinking socially, so I find it easy to regulate like I do other drugs. For instance, LSD means that day's a waste for most of my life objectives, so I use it rarely. Shrooms means that the next 4 hours or so will not be productive in terms of the things I want to do. Caffeine has to be pre-noon or it will damage sleep and affect next-day performance and increase illness risk. MDMA damages sleep.
Overall, I think I manage my substance use quite well. I use with my girlfriend (who has stopped recently since we're running IVF), and recreationally with our friends, and most of these substances have positive social effects. Most of the time, I need to make time, because even though availability isn't a problem (I have lots in my fridge) the time cost is significant. There are just too many things that we want to do and too little time. Sadly, this has meant that it's been months since I last found the time.
As with most substance use, it appears that there are a few people who have poor ability to manage their use and then society incurs great cost through their use. This leads to us banning it for all. That's probably fine so long as we allow a pipeline for safe users to acquire the product. In the past, the US followed this method and it worked out really well for high-end drugs: rich people could get access and the poor couldn't, and that was okay because the rich would internalize the cost but the poor would externalize it.
The problem appears to be that when drugs are cheap enough and hard to control, the externalities fall on the rest of society. I can't say I have an answer to this, but the reality is that when we cannot exercise control of production facilities prohibition is likely to result in greater societal harm than widespread use.
Fortunately, the few drugs that I struggle with myself, sugar and social network use, are primarily personally harming and have few socially harmful effects. Still, both of these are far more personally harmful than the other recreational drugs I have used, and have little positive effect. I suspect, like for me, most of my peers are benefited by personal interventions rather than slaving themselves to an aggregate population intervention.
Causation? Anxiety makes you drink or drinking makes you anxious?
https://www.onemedical.com/blog/healthy-living/what-hangxiet...
And even if you don't get an immediate rebound effect, in the medium term it can still worsen your anxiety.
While everything else is an evil drug™
I have a saying about wingnut america: People should use Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, like the little baby jesus intended...
The clear benefits of occasional hallucinogenic use, and the very mild psychoactive effects of marijuana have been heavily criminalized for decades, while people beat the shit out of each other every night outside of bars. Puking in the gutters and screwing in the allies...
I feel the primary reason alcohol is so popular is because of it's inhibition reducing effects. One has to wonder what the effect on the propogation of the species would be if noone was drunk...
for such folks, especially ones who don't have much exposure to recreational drug use outside of drinking culture, i think GP's question is perfectly reasonable.
there are plenty of people whose drug of choice used to be alcohol and have since switched to something else and found equivalent or greater satisfaction; seems like this thread might be a good forum to have that discussion.
You probably also enjoy a lot of "chemicals" that are mind-altering or intoxicating without realizing it, unless you're very strict about your diet indeed. Casomorphins are delicious, you see, and can life without chocolate really be said to be enjoyable? Better skip fruit juice and bread, as well, given that they certainly include a percentage of alcohol and fermentation byproducts.
Nitpicking, but tell that to the asphyxiophilia crowd.
Plus society (actually marketing, so society by proxy) tells you that you are odd/unusual for not drinking).
It's peculiar how we as species have evolved into this destructive behaviour.
I could list many pleasant things which are not required to enjoy life. Cannabis or alcohol are among them. Can be pleasurable without any adverse effect if used reasonably, which most people manage to do.
Everyone is wired differently, and some of us need different things to get occasional boosts of dopamine that help keep us motivated and productive in life. Best not to judge others when their dopamine sources differ from yours and cause no harm to anyone else.
Also, while I do strongly believe that weed is healthier compared to alcohol, it isn't without it's own problems.
The same author as the book proposes a chemical alternative. He's an interesting guy.
Product page: https://gabalabs.com/
> One major American study suggested that up to a quarter of young alcoholics have a social anxiety disorder
Ok, and . . . . ?
I met my wife and successfully courted her because of alcohol. There is a precisely zero percent chance that I would have my family today if I did not have the option to use chemical assistance to overcome my innate aversion to socializing and empathizing. I transform from a robot into a human when I drink.
And the author wants to take that option away from me, and many many others. It is our personal decision to trade the 0.03% decrease in brain volume and infinitesimally increased risk of cancer for the option to relate to other humans.
The author's correlation to depression is laughable. Alcohol helps many of us actually relate to other people, thereby staving off said depression.
Data point of n=1:
Before alcohol: 0 friends, 0 romantic relationships, 0 children, mired in loneliness. After alcohol: Many friends, 1 wife, 3 children, 0 loneliness.
Prohibitionists can fuck off.
https://gabalabs.com/ seems to be their website
There's a pretty serious genetic element to this too, which seems to get skipped over. Could be in the future a genetic workup will advise against drinking any alcohol for some, while for others it's just a matter of personal taste (within limits).
Nobody gives a shit about society's "productivity" when they consume alcohol. Alcohol tends to be used to relax or to numb pain. It's not exactly the context where you're pondering about the GPD.
And surely everybody knows it's bad for your health, as are many things that people continue to do regardless.
It does seem to me that taxing alcohol at higher rates makes sense to offset the social costs of providing healthcare and encourage moderation.