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Comment by dsrguru | Hacker News Reader

Alcohol is toxic to virtually every kind of tissue in your body. They say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine. But it feels good, it's legal in most countries so you don't have to risk contaminants on the black market, and lots of people pretend it's not even a drug, so Christian fundamentalists and old people won't even look down on you!

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> They say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine.

Then "they" are proffering dangerous medical mis-advice that you should probably not be repeating on a forum.

The they was the World Health Organization. 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. The leaked copy the Guardian links to doesn't appear to exist. But it was found that very low doses of cocaine such as the amount found in tea brewed from coca leaves are marginally healthful, and infrequent lowish doses of uncomtaminated powder cocaine aren't good but aren't very harmful. High doses of powder and basically any effective dose of crack are highly cardiotoxic and addictive. And cocaine combined with alcohol reacts synergistically and creates cocaethelene, which is very, very cardiotoxic.

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.

* Surely the amount of cocaine found in "very low doses" of brewed coca tea is not what one would consider, in your words, "a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine." So 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.

* Whether or not the US's drug policies are more harmful than the drug itself is a totally different question.

My original post said nothing at all about cocaine being good for you. It said alcohol is even worse. I was not referring to coca leaves in my original post. I said "moderate recreational dose of powder cocaine." I was very clear. I really don't see what problem you have with my original post.

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.

> My original post said nothing at all about cocaine being good for you.

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."

>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.

No. I read that article and it did not even hint that the WHO endorses the thing that the GGP suggests. Plus the evidentiary standard even for Internet discussion is higher than this. One can't say "a paper was suppressed, somehow I magically saw it even though nobody else did, and therefore you cannot refute my on-its-face improbable statement."

> Who said anything about it being good for you? Neither you nor I, as far as I know.

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.

At no point have I flagged or downvoted you; I do believe my responses to what you have written stand on their own merits.

A lot of Christian fundamentalists will look down on you. That's sort of the point of fundamentalism - extreme adherence to some principles. "No alcohol" is a pretty common one in a lot of Christian churches. Many will perform their communion with grape juice, not wine.

I was under the impression that Christian teetotalism, at least among the predecessors of present-day social conservatives in America, became much less common after the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. ended. I guess that's not the case. But there are certainly lots of people, many but not all being religious Christians, who define alcohol as something other than a drug (as can be seen from the phrase "drugs and alcohol," which in my view is even harder to defend than "humans and animals" or "doctors and dentists," but I digress yet again...), which allows them to drink while simultaneously criticizing other recreational drug users. Oh the wonders of cognitive dissonance.

The Presbyterian church I grew up in used grape juice instead of wine. In other ways, it was fairly progressive - especially in the kind of music played/performed during services. And the teachings were fundamentalist in a completely different way than most folks think of fundy christians.

they put the "fun" in fundamentalism?

Not...quite. ;)

I think that is common in Presbyterian churches. Same for me, though we had traditional hymns and piano accompianment. Not sure what is fundamentalist Presbyterian as I only attended 1 church, but things were laid back.

The Anglicans/Episcopalians use real wine. You can't change the Greek word "oinos" in the New Testament to grape juice, at least not in any lexically credible way.

This is absolutely true in America and in almost no way is it necessarily tied to being a Christian, even those who are non-religious will often espouse the fact that alcohol "isn't like other drugs". Obviously this is just anecdotal evidence but a number of people I know will insist, for example, that alcohol is far less harmful and "not a drug" when compared to marijuana. They usually use an example of someone they know who they know uses / has used marijuana, who clearly has issues / problems in their life and say, "see what it can do to you", while completely ignoring X number of alcoholics all around them that have completely fucked up lives and the fact that the person they are talking about often also abuses alcohol so there is really no way to separate his / her alcohol use from their marijuana use to pinpoint which has a more negative affect.

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.

I think that's a very American thing? Never encountered it in (Central/North/East) Europe.

That's not what's scary to me. What's scary is the number of people in my country's parliment who drink like fish and, more than that, the number of them who drink at lunch. Some of these studies plainly state that behavioral and decision making side effects have been observed. I hate to sound alarmist, but my country is being run by people with compromised cognitive ability and, I assume, personality.

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.

I understand your concern, but I don't see how that's any different than any other country for the last few thousand years.

If anything, people probably drink less these days.

England, I'm guessing? Parliament even have their own pub! The joke is that at floor level, there are little arrows on the wall pointing to the door so that drunk MPs can find their way out.

Nice try, cocaine dealer.

just what I was thinking

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