However, that doesn't mean that consuming moderate amounts of alcohol or caffeine will kill you. When people look at all-cause mortality data (here's one example picked at random from Google http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/8628131/reload=0;jsessionid=... , I've seen several studies that come to more or less the same conclusions), they find that moderate drinking (1-2 drinks per day for men, 1 drink per day for women), is associated with lower all-cause mortality than abstaining. And I've seen studies that show that this effect is even present if you control for factors that may be correlated with abstention, such as poverty (can't afford alcohol), or previous alcoholism that may have had health effects (some people are teetotalers because they have previously had problems with alcohol, so they may have had any ill effects outside of the study period).
Don't assume that just because something is neurotoxic in high doses means that it's bad in low doses as well. There are many things that can kill you if you take too much, but are healthy in moderation.
Nicotine has only been found to be neurotoxic in adolescents or in extremely high doses. At the normal rate of consumption, it acts as an anti-oxidant and has a protective effect on the brain.
That study demonstrates an association and does not suggest one way or the other that drinking is in any way healthy. What if people who choose to drink in moderation just happen to be more likely to do everything else in moderation too? What if people who choose to abstain are more likely to fall into extremes and affect their life span that way? What if someone who moderates everything else and chooses not to drink is healthier than the moderate drinkers?
On the subject of low doses being completely safe, from a link someone else provided (http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa53.htm):
>...some deficits are possible even in people who are not heavy drinkers.
Involuntary movements are caused by excess dopamine and are seen in people who use too much L-Dopa (dopamine precursor) for extended periods of time, for example. Interestingly, this effect is blocked when co-administering and NMDA antagonist. Even more interestingly, NMDA antagonists have been observed to reduce/prevent stimulant tolerance. All of this suggests that it's possible that involuntary movements are simply dopamine deficiencies (e.g. in the case of L-Dopa, dopamine receptors down-regulate too much).
Caffeine is known to release significant amounts of dopamine. Over a period of time, this will down-regulate dopamine receptors.
> Nicotine has only been found to be neurotoxic in adolescents or in extremely high doses. At the normal rate of consumption, it acts as an anti-oxidant and has a protective effect on the brain.
That's exactly my point. Just because something is a neurotoxin for some animals, or at extremely high doses, does not mean that it's actually dangerous. I wasn't trying to make caffeine or nicotine sound dangerous; I was pointing out that looking at some research, seeing "neurotoxic", and being scared is a bad way of approaching science.
Obviously, there are dangers in alcohol consumption. Alcohol has a fairly narrow range between the effective dose (the dose at which you start noticing any effects), and a dangerous dose. There are the obvious cognitive impairments while you are drinking, and some slight longer term impairment (that is much worse for heavy drinkers, and even worse for people who were heavy drinkers and then quit). But there are also advantages. There are some physical advantages to alcohol consumption, related to heart disease. There are the obvious social advantages, which many people cite as the reason they drink. And looking at all-cause mortality, the advantages appear to outweigh the disadvantages, at least for moderate drinkers.
> What if people who choose to drink in moderation just happen to be more likely to do everything else in moderation too? What if people who choose to abstain are more likely to fall into extremes and affect their life span that way? What if someone who moderates everything else and chooses not to drink is healthier than the moderate drinkers?
There is also this study: http://while-science-sleeps.com/pdf/628.pdf which discusses the weaknesses in previous studies, and attempts to correct for them. They look at a quite wide range of potential factors that might be correlated with abstention and increase mortality. The findings are somewhat surprising: in this study, even heavy drinkers had a lower mortality rate than teetotalers. And these effect were still present, though diminished, even once they controlled by many compounding factors.
It does admit that:
> In fact, in tests of potential covariates, we found among these older adults that at baseline, abstainers were significantly more likely to have had prior drinking problems, to be obese, and to smoke cigarettes than moderate drinkers and significantly higher than moderate drinkers on health problems, depressive symptoms, and avoidance coping. Moreover, at baseline, abstainers were significantly lower than moderate drinkers on SES, physical activity, number of close friends, and quality of friend support and significantly less likely to be married than moderate drinkers. Moreover, all of these covariates significantly predicted mortality.
However, it goes on to state:
> Controlling for age and gender, all eleven additional covariates, and the gender-marital status and gender-avoidance coping interactions in the Cox proportional hazards regression analysis reduced the 20-year mortality risk for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers. After including all covariates, the relative mortality risk for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers dropped by close to one-third and approached that of heavy drinkers. However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 49 and 42%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers. After adjusting for all covariates, the relative risk for light drinkers compared to moderate drinkers was no longer significant.
Now, this study was for older adults (who were 55 to 65 at the beginning of the 20 year study). It discusses in some detail the weaknesses that it has, such as the possibility that it has selected for people who have survived higher levels of drinking. However, it did a very good job of controlling for a lot of compounding factors; and it still found that people who drank had lower mortality rates than people who abstained.
Can you provide links or elaborate on this? I'm curious.
Of course it's a neurotoxin, the whole point is that it messes up the way your brain operates in a way that happens to be enjoyable.
Anyway there are various neuroprotectants you can take to reduce the amount of brain damage. Although if you are drinking in moderation it isn't much of an issue because your brain won't be getting its energy from the alcohol to begin with.
That said, alcohol is pretty terrible for you in general, and it definitely isn't a good idea if you're depressed because it causes inflammation, among other things.
I wonder if there's a threshold at which the toxicity starts or if it's just an inherent quality of alcohol just as the high from huffing paint is an integral part of the brain damage that it causes.
Pretending it's not a drug is certainly an interesting perspective considering that it's one of the harder drugs out there.
If anything, people probably drink less these days.
:)
The scary thing here is that basically no one in the U.S., who isn't a teenager / in college, will openly come out and say to most people, "I smoke marijuana", so anyone who is remotely normal / has a job, etc will only tell other people whom they know also smoke marijuana (even if just occasionally), because otherwise they are ostracized. Therefore, we have this skewed perception where only people who are either too close to someone to hide it (such as a son / daughter) or there life is messed up in such a way that its obvious / they don't care about hiding it are the ones that these people can point to and say "they use marijuana" as any "normal" person who uses it will never admit to it around someone who they know is against it or even neutral / not in favor and may actually go to great lengths to hide it as the repercussions can be extremely severe. If you live in the wrong state, you can quickly lose your job, etc very fast if word gets out.
Then "they" are proffering dangerous medical mis-advice that you should probably not be repeating on a forum.
Also, saying that alcohol is even more harmful than cocaine and that you should probably avoid it (well I sarcastically said you should drink it, but no one would interpret the above post as a recommendation for alcohol) is providing very safe medical advice. I don't see how you got me recommending black market recreational cocaine use from my previous post. If that's how it came across, I'd like to make it clear I do not endorse cocaine use either.
* Whether or not the US's drug policies are more harmful than the drug itself is a totally different question.
As for whether or not the typical recreational dose is moderate or high, I have met several people who have admitted to consuming cocaine recreationally at least once, and all of them reported snorting a relatively low amount of powder. That's consistent with what I remember the WHO report saying is somewhat toxic but not likely a big concern if not done frequently. It emphasized that chronic users and users of large doses almost invariably suffer from huge health problems. I don't advocate recreational drug use, let alone powerful stimulates. All I advocated in the original post was that alcohol is awful for you and should probably be avoided. Please stop changing my words.
Who said anything about it being good for you? Neither you nor I, as far as I know.
In your original post, you said, "They say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine."
You then followed it up with "The they was the World Health Organization."
So I don't think it's unfair to read that as you saying: "The World Health Organization say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine."
I then reviewed your source and concluded, "I don't think that what you've posted really supports your claim that the WHO finds recreational cocaine usage to be less hazardous than drinking enough to get drunk."
That's because he couldn't provide the source he was thinking of. The source he did post demonstrates why he couldn't find it.
>I can't actually find the article, but http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/bad-scie.... suggests it was suppressed by the U.S. government, so I must have read a leaked copy that I can't find anymore.
You said I gave "dangerous medical mis-advice" and someone, who I assumed was you, flagged my post. Assuming you didn't think the suggestion of not drinking was dangerous, what could you have meant besides interpreting my post as an endorsement of cocaine use? Either you keep changing what you're saying, or I've been misinterpreting each of your posts. I'm legitimately confused now.
> I then reviewed your source and concluded, "I don't think that what you've posted really supports your claim that the WHO finds recreational cocaine usage to be less hazardous than drinking enough to get drunk."
I recall them explicitly making that claim, as I referenced in my original post. Could the source I originally read have been a forgery and the Guardian made the same mistake? Yes. I don't think that's the case, but it could be. But I've definitely come across in other sources (that I guess could have gotten their information from the same unofficial WHO document, but I think they were sources that had citations, so that shouldn't be the case) the same general conclusion that powder cocaine isn't nearly as harmful as alcohol or opiates unless you take large enough doses or do it enough to develop a dependency.
Ever had moonshine? The old saying "it'll make ya go blind" is based on the improper distilling by amateur moonshiners, but not because of the equipment they use. Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol and as such will vaporize first, but some distillers don't remove this and other harmful compounds properly. Methanol is incredibly damaging to the optic nerve, so even in small amounts it can destroy eyesight over a period of time.
If you really want to be freaked out, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_and_health
I can't find any good references right now, but it seems that a lot of the widespread idea that it's easy to screw up amateur alcohol fermentation is probably a lie that was spread in support of strict regulation on such activities.