>The research shows that in 2017, alcohol proved to be even more deadly than illicit drugs, including opioids. That year there were about 70,000 drug overdose deaths — about 2,300 fewer than those involving alcohol,
>Only cigarettes are deadlier than alcohol: More than 480,000 people die each year in the U.S. because of smoking-related illnesses.
I didn't realise how much worse this is compared to the opioid epedemic .
It seems to me that nicotine, alcohol, and opiods are all related. The addictive personality traits that make you susceptible to one make you susceptible to the others. At a fundamental level, the willingness to do long-term harm to oneself for short-term pleasure is fundamental to all these problems. There are also a ton of cultural factors that make the problems interrelated.
I am curious how these interplay. Like liver disease and lung cancer are both long term effects from chronic use. If you smoke and drink alcohol, is one more likely to kill you than the other first?
Also I would have loved to have seen the median for this figure because as an average it’s astonishing
In the United States, 70.1% of the population aged 18 and older (about 173.3 million people) consumed alcohol in 2017, averaging approximately 3.6 gallons of pure alcohol per drinker, or about 2.1 standard U.S. drinks per day
Quite an eye opener. Yet, due to the enormous amount of money generated by the alcohol and smoking businesses, no one dares to go after them. Who care about people dying when there's so much money to be made?
With the numbers mentioned in the article, it's nowhere near sufficient to ban smoking in bars or other areas. It should be permanently banned from everywhere, and production should be ceased. Let's see them pass legislation to do that.
And prohibition was later repealed when they wanted the tax money, even though it had overall health benefits to society.
I think we're more-or-less on the same side: I would love to live in a world where smoking was a thing of the past.
In re: alcohol... I would hate to give up port. There's an argument there for the artistry of the brewer/vintner, but overall alcohol consumption is pretty vile.
But you said "no one dares to go after them" which is wrong, and set off my "wait, what?" reaction.
Given the way most countries have moved against tobacco advertising, it's kind of fascinating that alcohol advertising is both allowed at all, and in many countries it is essentially totally unregulated.
When Canada legalized cannabis, the enabling legislation prohibited nearly all cannabis advertising. Producers are pretty much restricted to propagating their brand name. They most certainly can't have an ad that portrays cannabis users as sexy and cool.
Quebec went so far that selling clothing or bags with a cannabis leaf on them is now illegal. While that law is probably unconstitutional for its excessive restriction of free expression, it gives an insight into the mentality of the legislators, when it came to cannabis advertising.
And yet nothing stops Anheuser-Busch from proselytizing the message that getting drunk on Bud Light will get you showered you in women and make you the life of the party. Billboards, TV, Internet ads, radio, sponsorships.
Even the government alcohol monopoly advertises alcohol!
This is an abuse of statistics. I'm not trying to minimize alcohol, but it is like saying "putting up Christmas tree lights is more dangerous than BASE jumping"
On a population basis, putting up Christmas lights kills far more people than BASE jumping. But the danger from each activity in isolation isn't comparable at all.
Far more people drink and smoke than use opioids.
The relationship between opioids and cigarette smoking/vaping appears to be complicated, to complicate things.
I’d also argue that, on average, the negative impact of an opioid-related death is greater than that of a smoking-related death. The latter tends to manifest as chronic health issues that extend into old age. Terrible, yes, but these people have at least had relatively full lives with the opportunity to have children and be productive for most it. It’s more akin to obesity than a drug overdose.
Opioid-related deaths tend to involve the rapid destruction of lives, often of young people full of potential, culminating in sudden death due to overdose. Their friends and family then have to live with that horror for the rest of their lives. In terms of lost potential and the psychological trauma inflicted, there’s no comparison. It’s understandable that people consider opioids to be a worse problem than smoking.
Opioid issues are easy PR, which is why they get the limelight. The perception is that only junkies abuse opioids, but lots of people drink alcohol; it's "normal", unlike opioids. As someone who doesn't drink, I've personally had a difficult time for not doing so (professionally, socially, etc.) because there's very much an expectation that everyone does. It's the typical "other guy is bad" strategy, and serves as a safe public issue for politicians to attack without pissing off parts of their constituency. Same reason we don't see any movement on the sky-rocketing rates of venereal disease: also regarded as normal, and discouraging the behaviors that lead to it won't get votes.
At the moment all the evidence we have says that msot people don't get any benefit from drinking. If you're a woman aged over 60 you get some benefit from drinking about one small[1] glass of wine a day (with some days drink free). No-one else gets that benefit. For everyone else the harm increases with dose, although the risks of small amounts of alcohol for most people are very small.
(Note this article doesn't include harm caused by intoxicated driving or intoxicated violence).
[1] 125 ml of wine at 8% ABV, or about 88 ml of wine at 12%. That's really not much. Most people would have glasses that are 175 ml or 250 ml. (These are standard serving sizes in UK restaurants.)
If you read this carefully, that’s not what this study says. 3 leading causes of death they associate with alcohol globally is tuberculosis, road accidents and self harm. Obviously none of those three apply to a moderate drinker ( who doesn’t drink and drive )
Here is a quote right from this paper “Females, particularly in high SDI locations, experienced some protective effects for ischaemic heart disease and diabetes beyond 60 years of age. For males, only high SDI and low SDI locations had noticeable protective effects for ischaemic heart disease”
Well, I mean these findings describe the overall probability or impact of alcohol, which includes injuries and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is not exactly an issue for most readers of this website and injuries can be avoided if you don’t drink and drive. For example, I drink moderately but never ever drink and drive. So, statistics on alcohol harm that include injures from drinking and driving are completely irrelevant to my personal decision to drink or not.
> I've personally had a difficult time for not doing so (professionally, socially, etc.)
It was the same for me for about 6 months, maybe a year. Then people stopped offering drinks or asking why I didn't drink and things felt normal again. I think part of it was not going in to how bad it is for you because people who drink already know.
I don't get uncomfortable without a drink, but if I feel like other people are anxious that I'm not drinking sometimes it helps to have an opaque cup with water (at home) or a mocktail (at a bar) so from across the room it looks like I have a drink.
I've found that most 30+ yrs old people that asked why I don't drink don't really like drinking either and feel like they won't have fun or enjoy the party as much or fit in if they don't drink, but that they don't like the bloating or hangover effects if they have more than a drink or two.
> I've found that most 30+ yrs old people that asked why I don't drink don't really like drinking either and feel like they won't have fun or enjoy the party as much or fit in if they don't drink, but that they don't like the bloating or hangover effects if they have more than a drink or two.
I'm about to cross 40 and I've stopped drinking completely. I don't enjoy the feeling and even after one beer I get depressed for three days following.
There are lots of comments when I'm doing something socially but I just don't care. It's not my job to make people feel good about their drug use.
> There are lots of comments when I'm doing something socially but I just don't care
I can see how people might feel abandoned when social bonds that formed in and around drinking now have to adapt. Keep going though, your body will appreciate it even if your friends don't right now. And if the friendship can't survive you not drinking, it might not be that healthy of a friendship anyway.
My personal experience has been that nobody notices. I have even had people ask me the next day how bad I was hurting from the night before.
But you're right, it is true that it makes people uncomfortable.
When someone offers me a drink, I usually just say thank you, maybe in a bit, or grab something else, or else just accept and not consume it or occasionaly take one small sip. As far as I know my colleagues have no idea that it's not something I ever do. I know this because I also have other colleagues who say, "I don't drink" and have witnessed them become a subject of speculation and intrigue among others when they are not around.
The extent of the myth surrounding alcohol and its role in society seems to drive people to make extreme conclusions about an individual's choice to use it or not ('they must have hit rock bottom' e.g.). My preference is to avoid something obviously bad for my physical and emotional health that has no clear upside, and to just leave it at that.
Honestly I've always been uncomfortable around inebriated people when sober. It's like a corny campfire song, fun only when everyone does it together. This is mostly because most people act stupid under the influence and though it's a bit funny at first, unless one is also drunk, it quickly becomes uncomfortable.
> As someone who doesn't drink, I've personally had a difficult time for not doing so (professionally, socially, etc.) because there's very much an expectation that everyone does.
To a lesser extent so is smoking in Paris. When you go out smoking brings a lot of bonding opportunities that you miss if you don't smoke (standing awkwardly on the side isn't the same + passive smoking).
My father died in July of 2015 from alcohol, at the very young age of 60. He drank daily, and then slowly stopped moving due to other health issues related to back pain. After refusing rehab and other options, he eventually died at his home one evening.
His drinking buddy was my step-mother, who followed an identical trajectory. Less than four years later, she died in the same spot of the house, in her late 50s.
The most difficult thing for my sister and myself was how powerless we were to do anything about it. Despite him committing slow suicide by alcohol, we were advised by lawyers that we had no legal recourse and would just end up burning money in a court battle we could not win.
My last ditch effort was an ultimatum, that if he didn't stop drinking, I would no longer talk to him, nor allow him to meet any kids my wife and I might have down the line. He agreed to stop drinking, but then gave up 72 hours later.
His grandson was born 7 weeks ago, but he never got to meet him. He would have only been 65.
I have diabetes and if I decide I don't want to take my insulin because I'm fed up with the hassle, I shouldn't have to go to court over it. It's my choice and my life.
The thing is - this is impossible to quantify. So basically, you are left with a binary decision - is it okay to overturn peoples civil liberties over arbitrary quotas or not. Personally - having suffered the devastation an addiction of a close relative causes in everyone around them - i would still prefer the current model where people are not forced to things against their will just because they drink too much alcohol.
(I'm in England so all of this is somewhat from an English perspective)
There are roughly two camps when we talk about a human rights approach to mental health law, and they're not compatible with each other.
The more mainstream version is to look at the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which flows into the EU Convention on Human Rights, which flows into national law. Under this system we can still have detention under mental health law, forced medication, and substituted decision making. But you do need some protections in place to prevent arbitrary detention and to give people a right of appeal.
The less mainstream view is to look at the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Under this approach you cannot detain people under mental health laws, you can force them to take medication against their will, and you can only have supported decision making, you cannot have substituted decision making.
If this is strictly a patient's choice; then health insurance providers, especially the government (medicare, medicaid) or future government programs should also have a similar choice of requiring pre-consent for DNRs and to some extent bypass quality of life considerations (amputations for diabetes complications) for costs.
It's also arguable that state regulated or state run health insurance should require some degree of self insurance for people making these detrimental choices.
You can fill out what's called an Advance Care Directive. My health care provider gave us a form to fill out and they will keep on record. Its a series of questions you have to answer to help make the decision when you no longer are able.
Addiction is a sickness, and society needs to treat it as the public health problem it is and effective treatment needs to be made easily and cheaply available to all who need it.
However, incarcerating people against their will, forcing them to take medication against their will, possibly for months, is problematic.
We might tolerate that if it worked, but from the evidence we have we don't think it will work for many people with substance misuse.
Addiction treatment is hard. I don't know many people working in addiction treatment who are asking for more legal powers to detain people.
In England I sometimes speak to people with substance misuse disorders (comorbid with mental illness, or learning disability, or autism, or a mix). Many of them will have been detained for mental illness (they were not detained because of substance misuse). It's fair to say they have mixed views about compulsory treatment. Some of them hate it and think it caused them harm. Some of them think it was transformative. It is complicated.
We were able to work with the local county sheriff, as well as social services, to get him forced into a hospital due to him being a danger to himself. In Ohio, where he was located, this is called a pink-slip law.
He was forced to go to a hospital, where he went into a brief 72 hour coma while he was withdrawing from alcohol. From there, he was hospitalized for another 7 days, and then forced to transfer to a physical rehabilitation center, as he was unable to walk under his own power.
Once he was at the facility, he was no longer under a required hold. Once he realized this, he promptly left so he could go home and start drinking again.
We spoke with lawyers about whether or not I could be granted conservatorship over him, as he went through this detox / early recovery period. Because he hadn't lost his mental faculties in any way, we were advised that a judge was unlikely to provide conservatorship to me, and it would be an expensive and damaging process. Our best bet was to convince him at a personal level, which is what we attempted.
Should people be allowed to drink themselves to death? Should families be powerless to help a family member with a disease that makes is so addictive, they can no longer make rational choices in relation to that substance?
It's clearly a philosophical question, and it comes down to your views on personal liberty, and whether someone suffering from deep addiction is still capable of making informed decisions.
I, personally, believe that conservatorship laws are a reasonable approach to helping people get over the initial hump of detox and then understanding their addiction. I want people to have a fighting chance to come back from the brink, and we lacked the legal right to do so, in this case.
> Should people be allowed to drink themselves to death? Should families be powerless to help a family member with a disease that makes is so addictive, they can no longer make rational choices in relation to that substance?
If you're fat and likely to die of heart disease, should your family be allowed to physically restrain you from buying another burger?
What about cigarettes, can you lock them up to force them to quit?
If you ride too fast should they be able to force you to sell your motorbike?
Should they be able to stop you from free-climbing?
I think the point was sometimes people make less than optimal choices for themselves which can indirectly affect others but they should have the freedom to make them.
Probably we all do this at some level. Hopefully we can encourage each other to do the right thing, but most of us won't at least some of the time. And, sometimes the other party really doesn't know best or understand all the circumstances.
I believe they're similar questions in that they each address an addiction (junk food, nicotine, adrenaline, adrenaline), and for the most part, the only person at risk of death is the addict.
They are similar, but also quite dissimilar. Withdrawal from cigarettes or junk food don’t send you into a 72 hour coma. Smoking and junk food don’t have the huge impacts to how you treat those around you that being drunk all the time does. Saying these things are similar is trivializing the actual physical and psychological effects of alcoholism.
> Withdrawal from cigarettes or junk food don’t send you into a 72 hour coma.
I don't see how this is relevant to the question, unless you want to get into whether their burden on the medical system outweighs their right to do what they want with their bodies (but lung cancer/emphezema, diabetes/heart disease, and traumatic injuries from extreme sports would fall into that category as well).
> Smoking and junk food don’t have the huge impacts to how you treat those around you that being drunk all the time does.
We don't lock up sober assholes for being assholes either.
The question is: where does someone's right to do what their brain makes them want to do end? Individual autonomy is a big deal in a free society, as it should be. When you take away a person's freedom to act, I think you take away part of what makes them human.
I'm so sorry. I've been there too and that powerlessness is devastating.
It seems like the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction from how we treated mental illness in the previous century (aggressively locking people up in institutions).
It would be a huge benefit to society if we could find a (relatively safe from abuse) mechanism to treat people who are "functional" yet too mentally ill to stop their self-destructive behaviors. I'm not sure how that would/could work, but it's a worthwhile goal.
> It seems like the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction from how we treated mental illness in the previous century (aggressively locking people up in institutions).
I'd argue it's more of the same: finding a way to pretend they don't exist.
> It would be a huge benefit to society if we could find a (relatively safe from abuse) mechanism to treat people who are "functional" yet too mentally ill to stop their self-destructive behaviors. I'm not sure how that would/could work, but it's a worthwhile goal.
There is a way. When I was lost, dealing with my own problematic issues with drinking, I found another path. Taking a single dose of LSD-25 made me examine the root cause of my drinking, and made me understand just how self-destructive I had been. I've never been religious, but for those 8 hours I felt more connected to everything around me than I had in my entire life. I felt love for the first time. I touched the surface of God, of goodness, of kindness with my soul. And it healed me. Like a bright light, healing me of all of my old emotional wounds. It opened my eyes, so I could see for the first time.
Absolutely not, and definitely not on a regular basis. Pro-tip: frequent usage has diminishing returns according to SWIM :-)
But has a therapeutic tool, I'd advocate for most people to have a (safe) psychedelic experience at least once in their life. It can profoundly change the way you see the world and yourself, and that has ramifications in how we cope with pain. Using alcohol for that is not a good thing.
I absolutely agree and we are not alone in this assessment. The MAPS project is doing wonderful work to advance this: https://maps.org/.
That said, my point was about how to get a loved one into treatment against their will. That's dangerous territory because of abuse, but it's a topic worth continual exploration.
My mother died 6 years ago in her 60's due to alcohol related complex health issues. Se was psychotic for the last months of her life, died of a cardiac arrest, and a had an advanced form of pancreatic cancer.
At one time she developed severe dementia due to neurological complications from alcohol. She recovered, but started drinking again after that.
I'm not saying what you should feel, but I know the frustration and anger a relatives addiction can cause.
Personally, I'm now fine with the fact that a person can destroy their life.
Because the option would be, that there would be an arbitrary threshold beyond which a persons right for self determination could be taken away, and unless it's bleedingly obvious (as in they are a vegetable) it's most likely an arbitrary and an unfair arrangement.
We are not yet masters of the universe. We are not even masters of human lives. But we've come up with societies that allow individuals freedom to live the lives they choose. This freedom includes the freedom for self immolation. The freedom for self immolation is the price we pay for all the other freedoms. Each one of us need to decide for themselves is this price worth the cost. Personally, for me, I say - yes it is. The price is pain. But the alternative would be even more unfair, and more painfull (i.e. there would be arbiters in the society with more or less arbitrary power to curtail personal freedom due to arbitrary life choices they made).
My adoptive father also died of alcohol abuse. I am Much older than you are though. He served in WWII, also most of his friends drank heavily--I suspect it was due to combat war related PTSD; but that is merely a guess.
I am very careful about how much I drink, and I do have an addictive personality. I just had a talk, tonight in fact, with my 20 year old about drugs--and was surprised to hear that coke is big again at my child's University. My kid drinks a bit, but has a 4.0 average as Bio major looking to get into Med School. No guarantee of a drug free life but my point is talk to your son about it when he's older.
> My father died in July of 2015 from alcohol, at the very young age of 60.
Condolences, but come on. Since when is 60 "a very young age"? You could start collecting social security retirement benefits at 62.
> Despite him committing slow suicide by alcohol
We are all committing slow suicide. That's life. You think are you going to live forever? I'm assuming he drank all his life, so a 42 year "suicide"?
> we were advised by lawyers that we had no legal recourse and would just end up burning money in a court battle we could not win.
What were you hoping to do? Force someone who doesn't want rehab to go to rehab? How would that even work? Wouldn't that drive him to drink even more?
Listen, if I was dictator, I'd ban alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, drugs, soccer, 99% news/media, etc. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, gamble, feel soccer is a waste of time and most news/media is a toxic waste of time. But we live in a free society and grown adults are allowed to waste their time and partake in harmful activities as long as it doesn't directly harm others.
And I'm sure others have their own list of things they don't like or feel is harmful or a waste which I disagree with. I don't want them dictating how I live and in return I don't dictate how they live.
There are obvious exceptions where someone is physically/neurologically debilitated, but a functional adult human being deprived of liberty is not anything I will ever support.
weird comment. spend the first half picking trivial semantic fights, then conclude with seemingly implying that the original commenter shouldn’t feel negatively about their father’s addiction. Odd
I know of similar circumstances and am wondering how much of alcoholism is caused by some other psychiatric condition.
Or perhaps pure idleness and boredom.
What do you do when you're a pensioner, you never cultivated lifelong learning so you're not equipped to take on a new challenge, there's no place in society for your residual skills? Maybe you kick back, relax, and pour a glass or two. After all, there's nothing else for you to do anymore.
Alcohol is really weird. It's unquestionably a pretty hard drug and yet it's (ab)use is completely normalized in our culture. It's also a drug who's abuse regularly kills people other than those using it.
> It's also a drug who's abuse regularly kills people other than those using it.
I don't think this is unique to alcohol. Nicotine and driving seems pretty okay, but I can't think of any other deadly drugs out there which wouldn't impair your driving.
EDIT: As other users have brought up, nicotine kills plenty of people other than those using it, in the form of second-hand smoke.
>Cocaine, methamphetamine don’t impact your ability to drive well, but they may make you drive more impulsively.
Stimulant therapy on adults with ADHD has been shown to improve driving skill. Furthermore, ADHD is found more often in cocaine users than in the general population, likely due to self-medicating tendencies.
As it turns out, I was using my own experience as a guide, but this meta study[0] supports my claim. Lab tests imply better driving skills while real word experience shows the opposite.
Cocaine and methamphetamine increase impulsivity, and “real users” (addicts) of meth in particular are prone to stay up for extremely long periods of time, long enough where the meth wouldn’t counteract the physical exhaustion, which would account for meth leading to more accidents in real life conditions.
I still maintain that cocaine or meth would improve the driving skills and response times for a rested person.
> I still maintain that cocaine or meth would improve the driving skills and response times for a rested person.
Yeah, it does look like the evidence supports that. Interesting stuff.
If restedness is the real factor, it becomes pretty difficult to regulate that. There are two problems I can think of:
1. I don't think that someone being on meth or cocaine meets the burden of proof to say they aren't rested.
2. People drive without adequate rest, even without stimulants. If someone is hasn't slept in 48 hours, it seems like it would be better for them to be on stimulants than not.
Sure, lots of drugs impair your driving, but alcohol seems to be the one that people drive after using most frequently. This could be just selection bias though given that alcohol is the most widely used hard drug and easiest to measure/detect on the side of the road. It would be interesting to see a "drug" vs "drives after using drug" analysis!
Yeah, I agree that would be interesting, but I don't think we can say right now.
One problem with collecting this data is that breathalyzers are cheap, easy, well-known, and available. If there's an equivalent for detecting impairment from other drugs, I don't know of it.
There are probably lots of people you drive by on your commute every day who are on prescription ADHD medicine. Maybe some on low doses of (prescribed) opioids as well, or prescription anti-anxiety like klonopin.
The dose makes the poison though. There’s a reason low levels of alcohol are allowed while driving too
It's a very hard to scientifically compare drugs and their effects on driving...alcohol use is VERY widespread, so is driving, therefore alcohol use + driving is very widespread and we know just how terrible that is.
Opioids and hallucinogens and THC/CBD probably all negatively effect driving, but it's much harder to compare due to less study, less scale, and less data (federally illegal/obstacles abound to study many of those things).
Nicotine is not really a problem with driving, it's like caffeine in that sense...stimulants aren't as dangerous for machinery operation.
Yeah, the worst thing about alcohol is how much it affects other people compared to other drugs. Not only from drunk driving, lots of people commit assault/domestic violence/sexual/nuisance crimes as well while under the influence.
People on opioids might steal and lie to feed their addictions but I think the harm to others in the worst case is a lot less.
Ethanol removes inhibitions, therefore people make bad decisions and they lose their filters which prevents their immoral impulses from rising to fruition. This is why someone being a "mean drunk" is a very bad sign...it's surfacing what is below the surface. If someone is a silly/happy drunk, it's a much more benign sign.
I don’t think most alcoholics would agree with this, btw. People who get drunk a lot usually aren’t one single emotion each time. This is almost on par with the belief that different liquors get you “different kinds” of drunk
The thing about alcohol is that it is so easily available and useful for many reasons unrelated to getting drunk that many culture has some relationship to it.
There is also no easy way to prevent access to it. Anything with sugar can become alcohol, including staple foods.
For other drugs, you need to have access to some specific plants, or grow them specifically for that reason. Chemicals are even harder to get by, you need both precursors and technical skills.
If alcohol was some exotic substance, it would definitely be banned.
It's also crazy to me to see people rail on the point of "marijuana is not completely safe!" when we sell this literal poison everywhere. And it's so much more destructive than whatever people think is so scary about marijuana.
If you use it normally (1-2 drinks or less max daily) it doesn’t seem like a drug to me. Basically a perhaps mildly unhealthy food item that makes you a bit more social for an hour.
The reality is that most of us can drink pretty regularly and enjoy it and not really experience any adverse effects. About 20% of the population develops serious problems related to alcohol consumption, but that leaves 80% of us.
Between this, the spike in suicides across the US, and the opioid crisis, the US appears to be experiencing a kind of “die off” whose only analogue I can think of is post-Soviet Russia. I wonder if we’ll be able to correct course or continue to believe that things like rising GDP, unmoored from the material reality of most people, can paper over these trends.
The US is not experiencing a die-off. The net population growth in the US is still positive. More births and deaths. Combined that with a net positive immigration, the US is not susceptible to falling population levels like those of in Japan and Russia
> The net population growth in the US is still positive.
By something like half a percent. Simultaneously birth rates are decreasing to near historic lows, immigration is being constricted, millennial life expectancy is on the decline, and suicides have spiked across all age groups.
Yes, I’ll concede that we’re not at the level of Russia or Japan yet, but something has definitely gone off the rails and not trending in a great direction.
Why is it not a great direction? I think if we can keep human population under 10 billion by reducing the birth rate it is probably best for everyone. And immigration rates are fairly high relative to what they have been historically (higher than 2008-2015) [0].
I really don't see the fucking problem. Useless people drink themselves to death, beats having to kill them off in a war. Individually, these are tragedies, I guess. Not my former brother-in-law who drank himself to death, his death was a liberation for my sister and her kids.
> the US appears to be experiencing a kind of “die off” whose only analogue I can think of is post-Soviet Russia.
Not even close. Russia's 1990s "die off" was so severe that the current russian population is lower than it was in 1990. 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still has less people. In the same period, the US population grew from 240 million to 330 million. In 2010, the US population was 308 million. So even in this "die off" decade, our population grew.
To show how devastating the soviet collapse was for russia just compare that to the devastation of ww2. After ww2, russia's population recovered after 10 years. They still haven't recovered in 30 years after the soviet collapse. This is also true for the economy as well.
The soviet collapse was far worse for russia than ww2 by any measure. It is by any objective measure, the worst thing to happen to any country in the 20th century. Were it not for russia's nukes, they'd be a source of pity. They've fallen so far and haven't gotten back up. And it's been 30 years. 1.5 generations.
> The soviet collapse was far worse for russia than ww2 by any measure.
That is literally not true, by a lot. Ww2 hit russia harder then west which was hit super hard. There was whole year of males basically killed (not sure which one, but the ones that were 18 when it all started I think). There were massive atrocities against civilian population, whole areas burned down and all that uncontrolled violence going on along with ethnical cleansing.
What happened is that post ww2, people had children. You lived in communism and people turned into familly instead of to career.
Post communist russia has less children for the same reasons why western countries have less children - you got options if you are ambitious and also need to work if you are not.
> Ww2 hit russia harder then west which was hit super hard.
I know. Russia suffered greatly in ww2. That's my point. It's why I compared ww2 to the soviet collapse. That's how awful the soviet collapse was for russia. It was even worse than ww2. I never claimed the west suffered more than russia in ww2. No country suffered more than russia in ww2.
> What happened is that post ww2, people had children.
Not only that they had jobs and hope for the future. Life expectancy increased, everything got better. They became the 2nd largest economy in the world. Everything improved not just from ww2, but even prior to ww2.
The exact opposite happened after the soviet collapse. They stopped having children, people died in droves, life expectancy dropped dramatically, their economy tanked from being #2 economy in the world to a third world hellhole being picked apart by foreign vultures, etc. Even today, 30 years later, russia still hasn't recovered. It took russia 10 years to recover from ww2. In 30 years, russia has yet to recover. In other words, russia is worse off today in population, economy, international clout, etc than they were 30 years ago.
> Post communist russia has less children for the same reasons why western countries have less children - you got options if you are ambitious and also need to work if you are not.
We have less children because we are wealthy and selfish. Russia isn't wealthy. Also, given the growth the west has enjoyed in the last 30 years, we can afford to have less children ( though we probably should be having more ), but russia doesn't have that luxury.
Anyways, people think since bombs weren't dropped during the soviet collapse that ww2 was the worst thing russia experienced in the 20th century, but an objective analysis clearly shows otherwise. Winning ww2 helped russia advance and improve. Losing the cold war truly damaged russia in ways that it doesn't seem capable of recovering from. Not only that Russia has a higher median age than the US. So not only is russia older, it's poorer than the US. That doesn't bode too well for future russian prospects.
Childbirths went down everywhere easter and central Europe. And it is not just poverty - if anything midle class and educated women are less likely to have kids.
It is often oportunities to not be mom at home that attract women.
"Objective analysis" that centers on birthrate only is not objective at all. Especially when it ignores effects of Stalin rule on people and conflates ruling party health with populace health.
Comunist regime did not had healthy economy - it is one of reasons why it became weak.
> Childbirths went down everywhere easter and central Europe
Yes, warsaw pact nations and former eastern european soviet nations also suffered. But russia suffered the most since they were the core of the soviet union.
> And it is not just poverty - if anything midle class and educated women are less likely to have kids.
I didn't say it was. My point was that the russian population dropped from near 150 million in the early 1990s and is still below that today ( 30 years later ). My point is that in the 90s, russian life expectancy dropped dramatically 10%+ - this is not normal. My point is that russia's economy is nowhere near what it was in 1990s ( second largest economy in the world ).
> Especially when it ignores effects of Stalin rule on people and conflates ruling party health with populace health.
What? As if yeltsin's or putin's rule were any better?
> "Objective analysis" that centers on birthrate only is not objective at all.
I didn't just look at birthrates. You seem to be fixated on it. I'm talking about population. Russia's population declined in 30 years. That's not a good thing - especially for a poor country.
> Comunist regime did not had healthy economy - it is one of reasons why it became weak.
It was healthy enough to be the 2nd largest economy for most of the cold war. The capitalist regime didn't have a healthy economy after the soviet collapse. Even during stalin's purges, the indicators weren't as bad as they were in the 1990s.
I'm just talking about objective stats. Not sure why you are bring communism or stalin into the mix. The 10 years after ww2 were far better for russians than the 10 years after the soviet collapse. This is just statiscal fact. Go look at every measurement. Economic, cultural, political, demographic, etc. The soviet union grew and advanced in nearly every metric during the decade after ww2. Russia declined in every metric during the 10 years after the soviet collapse.
Seems like winning a hot war is better than losing a cold war. I'm not saying communism is good or bad. I'm not saying stalin was good or bad. I'm just saying that russian life was better in the immediate years after ww2 than after the soviet collapse - purely in objective statistical terms.
I'm just talking about the effects of ww2 and the soviet collapse in objective terms. Maybe it's psychological. Winning boosts a nation's confidence and losing destroys a nation's confidence. I don't know. What we know is that 10 years after ww2, russia improved greatly and 10 years after the soviet collapse, russia regressed. Even 30 years later, russia still hasn't gotten back to the starting line.
Yes, yeltsin's or putin's rule were better then Stalin rule.
> Not sure why you are bring communism or stalin into the mix. The 10 years after ww2 were far better for russians than the 10 years after the soviet collapse.
Bringing up Stalin, cause you talk about period of history when stalin ruled - after ww2.
And absolutely, Russian people were not better off after ww2 - the country was still destroyed, villages still burned and only slowly rebuilding, dictatorship was in full swing, including very real oppression, torture fear and what not. Oh, and purges were right before that war, so country started it already down.
After wwii: Famine of 1946-1947 with some residue of famine in 1948. Good thing indicators grew after that, but that makes people just not dying of hunger rather then we'll off.
The war was followed by smaller purges, to the point some expected large ones to start around stalin death. Closely after war is when cultural purge happened.
Not even speaking about what russia did in territories they took over (and no we did not wanted them) and what they did to Ukraine.
The state of men in the US is really deteriorating. Men are drugging, drinking, and smoking theirselves to death. And sometimes the death is very explicit, being by suicide which is climbing to rates higher than ever. Prisons are filled with men, universities are increasingly seeing fewer men than women. Men are increasingly sexless much longer than females. Seems we have a big problem on our hands.
This isn't a popular sentiment, and is getting downvoted, but none of these statements appears to be false.
The state of things does seem rather demoralizing, and it does weigh on me. (I think women suffer equally and will eventually catch up on this problem.)
Some of this has affected me very personally. Subjectively, it feels like I drink a lot to ameliorate these affects. I'm aware that statistically it will shorten my life, but living a shorter, less painful life is a hard alternative to give up.
I have no answers, and I don't think there are any.
well to be honest, when the media which includes print, broadcast, news, and even movies, portray men in a bad light over and over and over it can have an effect.
many parts of the legal system and quasi legal system; think colleges; de facto treat men differently. this is especially true in cases of divorce, domestic violence, and campus issues.
this is not to say there are not many cases where the outcome is correct but there are too many instances where the deck is stacked against them before they even get to the table.
Very interesting that this particular truthful sentiment is being downvoted so heavily - a large portion of the world's male population needs assistance, and nothing you said here is false.
The problems you've listed all seem like symptoms of a single ailment: the brutal stratified economy that most Americans now have to navigate. Things like incarceration and suicide are just male-specific facets of a general decline in living standards.
Driveby conservative and liberal punditry regards men as uniquely targeted/at fault for their lots respectively, but I don't think this sex-specific interrogation yields any real solutions. At least not compared to universal class-based politics, which addresses the root of the issue rather than the way the problem manifests for a particular demographic.
I suspect you're getting downvoted because, while you might be correct, nothing in the article supports this, and it could therefore be considered off topic.
> The state of men in the US is really deteriorating. Men are drugging, drinking, and smoking theirselves to death.
It's very strange that the same people who advocated libertarianism and complete freedom years ago when men were in complete control, are now advocating for collectivism and support when they are in trouble.
The conservative/libertarian view should be that if men want to drink themselves to death, the government should not get involved.
Ive always been suspicious that alcohol in the United States is basically a thinly veiled means to privatize social interaction. I spent 16 years drinking regularly and certainly the dangers werent explained in LMFAO's song "shots" when i was young, or by James Bond's seven martini car chases. The industry is large enough to require more oversight in my opinion, but states dependent on alcohol and tobacco taxes theres very little incentive to wash the grease off that hand.
the WHO and NHS both strongly advise against consumption of any alcohol in 2020, but for my parents I guess it was more like cigarettes. No one knows/there are health benefits/its harmless are all excuses im sure they heard along with the reinforced masculinity tropes.
Alcohol turned my parents into miserable wretches. My mother now suffers from Wernekes encephalitis. at age 62 now shes suffered more than a dozen seizures and a fractured hip. When she was admitted to hospital she could not be given painkillers, as she had consumed eleven cans of beer before arriving. she spent 2 weeks in a nursing home and suffering from withdrawal symptoms was so insufferably aggressive and abusive they threatened to discharge her after a week. She cursed every member of the family with scathing vitriol and merciless fervor. Not as though it would matter, as she refused any and all physical therapy until she could go home and have beer again. she still drinks around 3-4 cans a day, and hobbles about in a walker.
my fathers developed chronic gastritis and cant handle so much as a warm cup of tea. He has had a section of intestine removed as chronic alcohol related inflammation had destroyed it. He seems completely blind to what alcohol has done to him.
So pick literally any other social interaction that doesn’t require alcohol consumption. Aside from literal alcohol tastings, I’m not sure that any social interactions require alcohol.
You're the right person to ask this I think - what is likely the attributable cause of death responsible for this? Mostly the overdoses, or other disease-related things?
Not an expert at all; I just read the paper. The paper suggests it's about a few things, like the opioid epidemic, increased binge drinking, and more reporting from coroners.
I've been an HN member for a long time, fairly prominent Bay Area tech executive, rich in the sense of both bank accounts and family.
Alcohol brought me to my knees in my late 20s / early 30s.
It started out as the typical "social lubricant" to help a natural introvert be better at connecting with people and was wonderful at that - I was the life of the party.
Over a decade it leaked into a "requirement" for just about anything and eventually drinking heavily 3 / 4 nights a week.
Eventually I sought paid help from therapists, coaches, natural remedies, medication, recovery specialists. Nothing worked. Eventually a therapist told me "you're screwed the only thing left to try is AA".
I was highly skeptical, an agnostic, still am more or less, but AA saved my life on account of the comradery i found in the rooms of SV meetings. People with the same story and same struggles who worked the steps and recovered.
One of the AA rules is attraction not promotion, this isn't promotion only my own simple testimonial. Statistics say that it doesn't work for a lot of people but knowing the general skeptical nature of HN and the crowd I want anybody struggling or who was in my situation to know that for this one skeptical / tech / entrepreneurial brain it was a lifesaver after trying basically everything else.
Now sober ~9 years and counting and wouldn't have it any other way.
I am happy to answer questions about the program if anybody is struggling, can give an anon email too if preferred.
If I had to give you a number, 20% (with a church being 100%)?
But it really depends on the group. There non-religious modifications to the AA program. They don't say a prayer every 3 minutes. It definitely worth going to a meeting or two just to listen to their stories.
My brother goes to one in Utah where they're actually very careful to stay away from any religious aspects. They understand that not everyone in Utah is LDS and they're very careful to make it so everyone feels included and isn't turned off by any religious undertones. I went with him to support him for his very first meeting and it was surprising how strict this rule was.
Per the comments below it's what you make it and some groups skew more towards a traditional "God" understanding
my experience in general with norcal AA groups is "higher power" is used instead of "God" almost exclusively, people are very careful to not push God / religious understanding / etc
At step 3 you have to turn it over to a "higher power" which is a reflection of the understanding that it is unlikely you, yourself have the power to control alcohol and there must be something "Greater than" you - that can be "physics" that can be "the moon" and a guy who has been sober a very long time in the meeting i go to says his higher power is the "light fixture"
Great question, the first year my sponsor said "avoid those events or have an escape plan"
avoiding was a non starter so the "escape plan" was I committed to leave, akwardly as it may be, before i picked up a drink.
aka if someobdy was pressuring me to drink to the point i felt i had to i would say "ok get me a beer i have to go to the bathroom" and then disappear and blame it on an upset stomach
and believe the truth that unless you take somebody else's drink away from them or ask them to stop drinking nobody cares if you have a beer or a coke in your hand
After the first year I learned that caffiene has a similar effect on me in social situations if i need to ramp up and can be just as engaging / moreso
> avoiding was a non starter so the "escape plan" was I committed to leave, akwardly as it may be, before i picked up a drink.
> aka if someobdy was pressuring me to drink to the point i felt i had to i would say "ok get me a beer i have to go to the bathroom" and then disappear and blame it on an upset stomach
I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but I don't understand -- why was pretending to get sick easier than telling the truth -- "I can't, I've quit drinking", or a softened version, "I'm not drinking tonight", etc.? Or did you start off with that and they'd continue to pressure you? I don't think I know anyone who'd be that much of an a-hole, unless they were already very drunk themselves.
Some people don’t want to publicly embrace the label “alcoholic” and all the social stigma it comes with.
If you openly tell people that you “quit drinking” they will likely either assume alcoholism or openly ask you why. They are not likely to assume you just decided you don’t like the taste, so now you’ve got the label.
If instead you tell people you aren’t “drinking tonight”, you will absolutely get pressure to drink, because “drinking is fun”, and you don’t have a “real reason not to drink”. I’ve seen it many times and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve participated before as well, not because it was my intent to actually pressure someone to drink, but because it was “good natured teasing”. If I had a friend who loved steak and he suddenly ordered a salad at the steakhouse, I’d similarly be tempted to tease him about his dinner choice, even though I don’t actually care if he had steak, or wine, or whatever. I’ve since recognized that this behavior is not healthy and tried to weed it out of myself, but it’s very common.
This is by the way, why vegans complain about people teasing them or judging them about their food choices. With very few exceptions, it’s probably not malicious. It’s just people being stupid and not realizing the impact they’re having on others. In some cases, this can be just annoying. In others, this can be truly problematic.
>This is by the way, why vegans complain about people teasing them or judging them about their food choices. With very few exceptions, it’s probably not malicious. It’s just people being stupid and not realizing the impact they’re having on others.
It could be that people feel judged, criticized by someone who doesn't drink alcohol/eat meat. That person seems to be setting themselves up as better than others, or more ethical, or with better habits. And they spoil the vibe and camaraderie. People feel attacked and feel justified in striking back, or release that psychological tension with jokes that only seem funny to those with the tension.
In many rooms that kind of honesty can easily be interpreted as weakness. And it’s not so much what they say to you in the moment (we all have to keep up our pretenses)... it’s what they say when you’re out of the room. Is it fair? Nope. But that’s how it works in certain social settings.
> Or did you start off with that and they'd continue to pressure you?
I'm not an alcoholic myself, but I drink _very_ rarely so I'm often in a similar boat.
If you say "I'm not drinking" or "I don't drink" a very common follow up question is: "oh? why?"
For me, I've always been able to shrug my shoulders and say: "I dunno, just never felt like it". But I could _very_ easily see a recovering alcoholic feeling like they're in a very awkward position once that question comes up.
Because someone who is pushing alcohol on you is not thinking about you. They are thinking about about how they want you to have alcohol, which has nothing to do with you. You do not owe them an explanation about why their plan for you doesn't work for you. To look at it another way, it easier to explain things to someone who is trying to listen.
A lot of times it's just an uncomfortable question to answer, even more so for someone who is already a bit socially awkward. I've never had a problem with alcohol, but routinely go through periods where I just abstain for various reasons. And in those periods I get all the questions about why I'm not drinking. It's just boring to answer them over and over. And to be clear, no one is being a jerk about it, just more of a curiosity. Many people can't imagine not drinking, so it's a surprise.
As an aside, a trick I use to control the number of drinks in a business situation is to order liquor neat. I can sip a scotch for an entire meal while other people drink multiple beers or mixed drinks. Don't order something that's easy to drink.
I quit drinking 12 years ago but made it a point to carry on with my day to day life and not avoid situations. If I'm in a situation where people are moderately drinking, I ... don't drink. If people ask me why I don't drink, I ask them why they do drink. At the end of the day, whether I'm getting shitfaced or not drinking at all is my business. I have had a few people make a big deal about it and I just tell them they're being an asshole and they must be really insecure if making a big deal about me NOT drinking is all they're focused on.
If you have social anxiety, talk to a therapist. My drinking got out of control from a cycle having anxiety which was relieved by drinking which would cause anxiety.
Life is pretty boring in the beginning when you quit. You start to realize how much of your social life is dictated by drinking and how much time and money you spend on it.
11 years sober here. I think my experience mirrors yours, especially how peoples' questions about OUR lack of alcohol are masking their own insecurities about THEIR alcohol consumption. Spending most of my adult life in two alcohol-heavy communities (the military and Japan), I see it all the time, but I try not to throw it back in their faces.
I know a functional alcoholic that drins a very large amount of alcohol but doesn't get drunk from it. He wants to stop but refuses to go through long PAWs. How long was it until you felt your normal self ?
a couple of weeks, for alcoholics w/significant PAWs they should work with a doctor or inpatient in addition to AA or similar early 2 week program, of which there are many i can reccomend depending on location
other interesting timing stuff for me
30 days until believing i could actually do it "one day at a time"
> He wants to stop but refuses to go through long PAWs
As someone who's about to cross 4 years sober who was so stubborn he lost everything (a cardboard box would have been an upgrade), this is just f*cking hilarious. Boo hoo, he doesn't want withdrawal. Lol. Addiction doesn't work that way.
If they're a real drunk, and if what you say is true about him/her not getting drunk, they are going to have much more serious health problems than some PAWs. They are going to start having fatty liver, neuropathy, stomach problems, blah, blah, blah. Once it starts from heavy alcoholism, it doesn't stop until you stop or die. PAWs be damned. The only difference is the booze can and WILL kill you. That's one thing that the booze industry never tells you. Hell, people are still surprised to learn that alcohol is one of 2 or 3 substances where even the withdrawal can kill you. It's just not all fun and games even if you don't have the addictive alcoholic genes.
When did you realize it was too much? Number of drinks? Hangovers? What was "heavily" 3/4 nights a week? What precisely was the moment you were brought to your knees as you say?
Number of drinks is not a good way, in my experience. It’s a detail that isn’t important unless you are trying to game your own standard. You will convince yourself that your arbitrary line makes you ok.
Hangovers turn into waking up drunk at some point. For me, they were a reason to drink. Withdrawal is like a hangover that lasts for weeks. The whole time, you will want a drink.
My bottom was the realization that my alcoholism was a way of checking out of my life. Once I realized that, I just had to start doing other things and dealing with the problems I tried to drown.
When you are in the pit of addiction, the first things you need are positive alternatives to drinking. It could be AA but I went a different route.
I am not a meticulous scheduler, but I had a rigid schedule for the first few months. I even planned out my free time. I put myself back out into the world, and found that I loved it and the people in it.
Taking a bath as they say (my uncle used to do it until he developed cancer) is indicative of a problem IMO. When you wake up at 9 AM and start drinking, get drunk the whole day, sleep and repeat the whole cycle, that's when you definitively have a problem.
Yes and no. I know many people that would be well served if they removed this idea of, "Well, i can't be an alcoholic because i don't drink beer for breakfast" notion from their minds. I was never like that either, but I did use it as an escape at almost every opportunity I could. I would spend an enormous portion of my waking life rumination about alcohol and strategizing over how to get away with it. When will i start drinking today? How much will I drink and not have a hangover? Well, theres that dinner at 7 tonight. Do you think they'll each have one or two drinks? Would i get some stares if i have three drinks?
Sure, that is definitely a justification one can use. My point is that you need some reference point to compare your own behavior with. There are some people that should have never started drinking in the first place. That I agree with. It's a nexus of genetics and environment. A lot of it is influenced by cultural norms.
Pardon the side step but it reminds me of my life not long ago. Replace browsing with drinking. Obviously less harmful 'addiction' but the 'do a single thing to somehow avoid life everyday' sounds like an interesting diagnosis pattern.
Realizing it's too much and being brought to your knees are usually two different times.
"Realizing it" happens gradually after an established pattern of behavior. Usually, years. You're like, I seem to drink a lot more than everyone else and maybe that's not good. Eventually other problems kick in like sleep issues, anxiety, possibly weight gain - and the solution is always drinking because you stop worrying about it, or can at least say "well this is one of the last times." You realize that this is a bigger issue and then decide to stop, but something inevitably draws you back in. There's always something. And since you slipped back in, you somehow find your way to drinking as much or even more than you did. And then you realize the issue is even bigger - you've established a pattern of trying to stop and it never sticks, no matter how sincere you were in that moment of decision. No matter how much you poured down the drain. No matter how much you know that being sober is actually the good life and that your problems are much easier managed when staying away from drinking.
And after many attempts of this, trying and failing, but probably knowing that deep down there's a part of you that doesn't want to stop, you hit a point where you feel the worst you've ever felt in your life, hurt someone, or instigated another serious problem. And if you're honest, you know where it all started.
Then you are on your knees. Some people try to fix the problem themselves in earnest, some seek help, some stay in the cycle and break out down the road, and some stay in until the (statistically early) end.
Early to late twenties for me. I struggled through AA but I found it to be too defeatist. I couldn’t get clean framing the problem the way that they do.
The turning point for me was a joke by a stand up comedian that kind of glorified being a drunk. Doug Stanhope had a line similar to “addiction is just a thing you like doing more than living your life”. I chose to live my life. I got hobbies, took classes, worked a lot and I got through the first few months by staying busy. Over time I balanced out my life schedule (also finding out I have workaholic tendencies).
Everyone’s path is different. I can’t believe mine has worked for 6 years. AA isn’t for everyone, but it works for many. It should be the default first option for people wanting out.
I feel like my whole life is a series of addictions designed to prevent me from drudging through the extreme anger and sadness I have in my life. At least, luckily, I don't like to drink so excessively.
Yep. I can't be totally sure the extent to which I've unpacked my issues versus improved my ability to mask them. I'm positive I do both, but a great deal of good fortune means that I'll have to wait for the inevitable dark times to find out.
I reread Burroughs when I get like that. From Wild Boys, in the chapter "Dead Child":
I held out my hands no more power left in them head against a tree it was cold on my eyes moon that night solid I could touch almost couldn't get the leg was broken and teeth tore past the bones at me begging for help pictures all cut up knife had fallen I lay there my pieces moved and shifted against a tree I spit up from my stomach green when day came and mist steamed up to the top of the high tree just under the leaves at the top and looking down I could see my body lying there the leg all twisted and the face caved in lips drawn back showing teeth I could see and hear but I couldn't talk without a throat without a tongue sun moon and stars on the face down there worms in the leg weeds growing through the bones.
The issue is for many people this is an unstable equilibrium. When things start going wrong people drink more which makes things worse.
My best friend was a raging alcoholic for 20 years, he would go through cycles of moderate then heavy drinking, hit bottom, give it up for a few months, and repeat. Unfortunately he simply loved alcohol and really did not want to give it up.
Total abstinence seems like it gives up a huge positive, but insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Many people simply can’t have alcohol in their lives and be happy long term. That might not be you, but it’s something to think about.
In the moments where addiction has crept into my life (I've been fortunate enough to observe it and have a good enough life that I could correct it; I can see how if things were worse, I might not have had that control), I've always had this awful feeling that I was just escaping. The fastest route out of consciousness, no effort, no feeling, no hope for myself. I think for many of us, addiction really is about escaping the ordinary because when your ordinary becomes painful, coping can become a tremendous burden. I don't hold peoples addictions against them at all... If you prefer drinking over your life, you're probably battling something awful. Maybe it's things happening right now, maybe it's something that happened to you. Maybe you have acute mental illness that's virtually undetectable to others and you've tried to live the way everyone expects for 20 years +, and it's too much now. I think this is quite common. If that's how someone feels, they have my sympathy. My life has been pretty good all things said, but I've felt incredibly overwhelmed at times. Life can be hard as hell. Sometimes you just want to turn it off for a while.
Given your success, I'm surprised that you feel the need to remain anonymous. Is it only social stigma, or do you think that there would be business or professional consequences if people knew that you are an alcoholic in recovery?
I’m not surprised at all. Why cause yourself trouble by airing dirty laundry? Zero upside for him to do so, and really no reason to. Knowing he is X person doesn’t add anything to the message, it would almost certainly have blowback for him.
As someone that's tried aa meetings and found sobriety through other means I want to echo that finding people with your story and your struggles is one of the keys to recovery. I didn't find these people in the aa meetings I went. Or on therapists couches. I still haven't really found my people, but I have found that I'm not alone in my struggles and that I cannot escape through substance abuse. This was my turning point in allowing me to reign in my substance use. Did it solve any of the problems I had before? No. But I've got one less problem now.
I think microdosing is more a part of the nootropics world. Regular dose of LSD or Psilocybin is associated with getting a new perspective on one's addition, possibly by opening new pathway connections in the brain.
i've only seen studies specifically targeting alcoholism and not other types of addictions. in this case it may actually be physiological and not just because LSD "gives you a new perspective" on something
> With the increases in alcohol use among women, there's been increases in harms for women including ER visits, hospitalization and deaths
Do people not care if men die? I do not understand why these snippets are almost always put in press releases, even when the actual numbers show that men are astonishingly more likely to die from the disease. I've seen articles about how women's rates are rising faster, when the increase in men's death over the same period is greater than the absolutely total number of women affected! Its almost as if we have to mention that women are affected or people will just ignore the problem all together. So sad.
I was in Greek Life in college. I don't regret a second of it, but the drinking culture was omnipresent (we did have dry brothers but if you drank you drank).
After college I moved back home. I had a few concerning episodes that one could "pass" as a mildly embarassing thing (vomiting after a comedy show once I was home, passing out during a family party). The first time my drinking came to a head was when my then-SO called me at a work retreat and I realized I had consumed about 30 drinks in the past 4 days- I was violently hungover and unable to consume food.
Several months later, we broke up, a relative died, and I came into enough money to pay off a significant enough chunk of my loans so that I could move out. During this time my therapist suggested I curb my drinking but I didn't really take him all that seriously. Dumb things kept happening- the most prominent event during this period was that I vomited while drunk gaming online with friends. Sometime after this I took my therapist's advice to quit drinking for a week. My mind cleared up a lot but I resumed after.
Things came to a head when I woke up one day after a day-long bout of drinking (I went to a tailgate and ended up going out to bars later that night). I felt like my liver was going to explode. The worst part was that I had errands to do that day and the entire time I felt like I was going to die.
I decided to indefinitely quit drinking. This was over this past November and December, and I had a few holiday parties to go to- I mostly teetotaled at them, but one conversation stuck out to me. A college friend who was older than me told me she had to re-calibrate her drinking life post-grad to function normally. I kind of realized that I hadn't done that.
I've started drinking again but I've kept it much more muted. I don't go to my local bar after work anymore. I don't really club. I never really drank alone much (the online gaming this was an outlier), so stopping that wasn't hard.
I do think there's a way to curb bad drinking habits, and I think I'm making headway in doing that, but the key is to recognize that your habits are problematic. Right now my mantra is
1) Have a predefined limit
2) Nurse the drink (I drink everything fast, so this is hardest)
3) Don't let people pressure you. Don't feel the need to drink at someone else's pace. Don't feel the need to take shots because someone bought them from the group.
I know this isn't perfect, and I'm not truly abstaining for good, but I'm in a way better place than I was before.
Don't make excuses for yourself. If you feel like alcohol is impacting you, do something about it.
Some people are able to moderate drinking after periods of binge drinking but if you find you can’t moderate after multiple attempts to do so, your best strategy is to just quit.
It can be hard to not have anything to drink when everyone else is, but it’s better than making a fool of yourself somewhat frequently
I pretty much failed because I would just let it rip after a few drinks in a "high energy" atmosphere. So I just decided to stop, at least for Dry Jan but probably for 2020. Just feels so clean and also forces you to man up and "just do it" socially.
The ally's secret face is terror. The alcohol ally is like a slime, slow moving, growing on you, at first only a fine veneer, like a slug trail. But later more layers collect, until you feel unclean. Feel your steps weighted. Feel every hour of the day a tedious distraction and ordeal. You finish as quickly as you can, so that you can return to your place among the rocks were the ally is happy and thrives.
The ally likes darkness. It doesn't like to move around a lot. A little feeding. Mostly, it likes you, your body, your brain, your dreams. It likes a chair, if you have one.
Once it's fed and watered, it tells you that you can leave your place among the rocks, that you can arise from your mossy boulders and enter the world of humankind, but you seldom do. At such times the growing weight of the layers of film that the ally has coated over you seems to lighten and soften. The mass becomes gelatinous and pliable, and you feel free.
Pain is banished or forgotten.
The world is light. You feel spontaneous. Problems are solvable or ignorable. And you can live like that for a very long time perhaps. For a very long time indeed. Maybe until you die.
Or maybe not.
Maybe the mass of stuff that the alcohol plant has deposited on you begins to harden. Maybe you haven't been able to feed it enough and the veneer has begun to crack. It's like the way the wine itself kills the yeast, its own mother, when the poison is fully formed. Then it is time for your friend across the table to unmask. He does, and you see that he is not there, that he has already departed. In fact, he has not been there for some years, or perhaps it is she. Only the coating, the facade deposited day after day by the poison, has been keeping you company.
In truth, you are totally alone, and frighteningly alone. And tonight, of all nights, you are out of food. A night like this, when you are alone and people that you don't want to talk to are knocking on your doors and windows. You are aware that soon they will abandon civility all together and just force their way in.
Oh, it's got you now. By the balls, by the short hairs, got your tit in a wringer, it does. It's got the hold on you. It's got tiny wet sucking fingers, green fingers - it's the slime, and it's got you.
It's saying it is time to start paying your dues. It's saying that it is time to start feeling all that pain that has built up on you like a crust. It's saying that it is time to get back to work. To free your words. To face your children, your spouse, your divorce, your ruin of your life, or perhaps its success. That it is time to deal with the devil you have created. For they are all your creations, all of them. It is your own children that call to you.
It's a sneaky kind of plant, a patient kind of plant. It is glad to wait, to let you control it. It is always ready to talk or parley and negotiate. But note, the plant is a shrewd negotiator. It loves to make deals, but it always takes the first night for itself: you say to the ally, "OK, I'll spend tonight with you, but tomorrow night I spend with my family, and you stay locked up in the cupboard." It will always say yes to deals like this, but never to the converse.
It's a nightmare. It's a slime well. Every direction is uphill, and it's all ice.
The ally says that it is time to deal with the devil you have created. It is your own creation, it is your art. It is, perhaps, gothic, but nonetheless there is an inner integrity to it. It is your genius, only your genius could have created such an elaborate prison for your own self. The ally is telling you you have built enough. Enough locks, enough doors, enough curtains and shades, bars and obstacles. They are all yours to burn.
Look upon it as the devil's firewood, and now you have a shed-ful. Call it your "material" in the alchemical sense. So there is still cause for hope, for now you have a practice, you have a discipline, a pat...
What worked for me was to take multiple soft drinks at a party after each alcoholic one. You have something in your hand to drink slowly from and it limits your willingness to drink one more alcoholic one.
A bit off topic but has anyone tried Naltrexone or the Sinclair Method? I did a bit of research on it, tried it a few times but it gave me killer headaches but it seems like a really novel/interesting way to quit outside of the usual AA approach which was always a bit culty/unscientific for my liking
If you haven't already seen it, you might search around in /r/cripplingalcoholism on reddit. Most of it is random things regarding advanced alcoholism, but there's a surprising amount of, well, sober information on things people have tried, etc. Exceedingly non-judgemental.
I've been using TSM for about three months now. Prior to starting, I was a frequent binge drinker and experienced significant memory loss from drinking once per week on average. After three months, my interest in drinking is very little to none. TSM gave me my life back.
If the headaches you are referring to are hangovers, this is common and happened to me. The community often refers to them as "Nalovers". Those stopped for me when my consumption got down to a safe level. I recommend sticking to the method if it is just that your hangovers are now much worse.
Former heavy drinker here. I used to get very drunk about once a week (exclusively in social situations). I had to cut down on alcohol significantly few years ago, due to a health problem that came about unrelated to drinking. Now I get drunk maybe 2-3 times a year.
I was disappointed that I didn't get any of the benefits I frequently found mentioned online. I didn't lose any weight, my skin didn't look better, my thinking hasn't become any more clear, I didn't become more productive and my relationships haven't improved. But those were all in pretty decent shape while I was still drinking regularly.
All in all, life just became a little more boring. It wasn't even that hard to reduce my drinking, after having come to terms with the life-becoming-more-boring part. I just wish there was some substance which would fill the same niche without the health risks. Weed isn't really it.
For some people weed might not be it, but for me it is. A combination of coffee and a strong sativa edible for an evening outing satisfies my escapist tendencies and is quite enjoyable for me.
When I cut back on my drinking I tried the weed substitute (I live where where its legal, and could experiment with strains) but never found anything that was "fun". Interesting, yes, but not a substitute. I know plenty of folks who vastly prefer it to alcohol, though, which I think is great.
One thing I've found with weed is that it's not really fun on its own, it just changes how you perceive what you're already doing. So rather than sit at a bar with friends I find myself choosing to see live music, or to play music, build something, or do some other creative endeavor.
It's definitely not a one to one replacement for alcohol, as I don't find myself doing exactly the same things as I would if I went out drinking, but what I do when I get high generally feels more fulfilling.
I'm 2.5 months sober and this has been my experience as well. I'm now much more wary of getting myself into situations where I might be bored. I'm naturally extraverted so I still enjoy the social aspect of parties but I've cut back on the amount of dates that I go on since the risk of being bored is too high.
I've started meditating to try and raise my "boredom tolerance". It's too early to say if it has made any difference but I've met people who swear by it. I'm also trying to get more curious about other people and essentially rely on my extraversion to deal with boring situations.
In terms of substances to fill the niche I don't think there's anything that exists. Coffee is nice during the day but drinking it past a certain time leads to insomnia. I've mostly just taken to drinking a wide variety of non-alcoholic beverages LaCroix and non-alcoholic beer.
Pharmacologically speaking the closest drugs would be GABA receptor agonists (e.g. phenibut, benzos, GHB) but those can be quite nasty and even more addictive than alcohol. I have not personally tried them and don't plan on it.
Not that I'm encouraging you to try this, but a low dose of nasal ketamine (5-20mg) has you feeling like you've had a few drinks.
The effects last for up to 2 hours, and there is no hangover. In a way that's difficult to describe, the effects also feel "cleaner" somehow than alcohol.
It can be psychologically addictive for some people, but does not cause physical dependency.
If you're adverse to snorting powder (very understandable), ketamine is water soluble, so you can dissolve it in saline solution and put in a metered nasal spray bottle (which typically deliver ~0.13 ml/spray).
My entire family, outside of myself, has struggled with alcohol. I watched it turn them from brilliant, creative people into miserable wretches that avoided living life like one would an allergy. For every single one of them, they started out drinking heavily at parties. Then they would have a beer after work to 'relax'. Then two. Then four. Then six. And then their livers, marriages, and careers started to fall apart around them. They stopped leaving their homes, and then their chairs, and then their beds -- until they were dead. Their livers failed along with the rest of their health. Alcoholism isn't a war or a battle, it's a slow, insidious invasion and dismantling of your coping mechanisms until you have literally nothing else to turn to.
It always amazes me that casual and habitual drinking is an accepted thing. People even seem to take pride in their alcohol tolerance, and congratulate each other for drinking more of the substance than others would even attempt.
> It always amazes me that casual and habitual drinking is an accepted thing
yes, everyone agrees drinking and driving is stupid, dangerous, and selfish. yet there are so many bars that are located such that nearly 100% of the patrons drove to/from the bar. Yes, some may have a designated driver, but I suspect many many simply drink and drive because they feel OK to drive and walking home isn't an option.
I'm a 175 lb man and after a single beer I'm sure I'm not legally drunk, but I can sure as hell tell that my perception and reflexes are affected.
"yes, everyone agrees drinking and driving is stupid, dangerous, and selfish. yet there are so many bars that are located such that nearly 100% of the patrons drove to/from the bar. Yes, some may have a designated driver, but I suspect many many simply drink and drive because they feel OK to drive and walking home isn't an option"
This has always irritated me. It isn't that the bars are located where they are: It is more that walking home simply isn't safe combined with the absolute lack of public transportation. I've seen some of these bars in places that don't even have taxis available - and honestly, even if they were I somewhat doubt patrons could afford the fare since most of the surrounding area was countryside.
To be fair, even living in the city where walking home is an option, actually doing so was a bad idea in the US. This is mostly because of public intoxication laws. On the other hand, I think some states have eased up on this because it seemed to encourage drunk driving. (Police in Indiana used to wait outside of bars for drunk people to come out of them).
Not everyone goes from casual drinking to full-on life destroying alcoholism. Just as not everyone who gambles loses their house to the casino, or even does a line of cocaine and starts turning tricks for their next fix.
We tried prohibition during an extremely prude moment in the USA. It failed so miserably that we passed a constitutional amendment to revert a previous amendment, which is pretty incredible.
The stories of people who let any vice ruin their lives are powerful and important to know. But don’t let stories restrict the freedom of everyone. If alcohol was so bad then we never would have legalized it after prohibition. Everything is a trade off, and it’s better to let people make their own decisions than to throw people in jail.
It was not so much extreme prude moment, but more of massive problems with pervasive alcoholism moment. People drinking out their whole salaries leaving dependents hungry and obviously a lot of violence - street and domestical.
Prohibition did not worked just like drug war don't work, but it did not started on whim for no reason.
This is certainly an attention grabbing headline, but wouldn't 'years off life expectancy' be a better metric to report to help people make life decisions? I am sure there are studies out their collecting that data. How am I to make a moderation decision based purely on a count a people with a specific cause of death?
The vape lung disease is so concerning because it killed people in a few days or a week. Where as cigarettes would reliably shave X years off someone's life. I can easily make a decision to never use a vape at all or never from underground source.
Interesting, Alcohol consumption over-all has declined since the start of the 20th century with the US seemingly being alone among advanced nations in having an increase in the last 10 years.[1]
It seem logical the rise in death from alcoholism is broadly related to the "death from despair" phenomena many credit for declining US life expectancy.
Also, in other disturbing news, suicide rates have been climbing steadily since 2000[1]. This makes me wonder if the older anti-depressants are better than the new ones.
It baffles me how much the alcohol industry keeps pushing fake studies about the "benefits" of alcohol. As if ANY of those benefits can be obtained without the poison of alcohol.
Oh well, people drinking.... social darwinism. Drink away I guess
My father is an alcoholic. (in his case, he went to rehab and doesn't drink much anymore but he is still an alcoholic)
I used to think that I was going to drink at one point. I remember thinking, "if I was of age I'd like to buy that lady a drink." But by the time I turned of age and could, I decided I wouldn't touch it. I'd never really been offered alcohol growing up - so maybe that helped settle in the habit. But, I got offered it constantly once I was of age. I declined every time and never sought it out. I don't drink at all and even more so, I don't pay or contribute to alcohol bills directly. If my significant other wants a drink, I tell her to put it on a separate bill.
I used to think that maybe I'd drink but then I'd go to parties and smell beer. And I knew I wouldn't. I'd feel so much anger and resentment as soon as I smelled it. It pulled me back into hell. On top of this, I felt like I was the prime candidate for substance abuse. I have amazing executive control (I have suffered incredible emotional and physical pain over the last decade but I have never shed a tear in that time. Hell, I watched a lot of Disney movies and I still didn't. I do it just to prove that I still have control). You lose some of that control when you drink alcohol (from what I've been told).
So, I just don't. I don't care to know if I'm a jovial or mean drunk. I don't need to know if I'll have a substance abuse problem. Personally, I'd be quite happy if it didn't exist. I wouldn't have to deal with the problems it causes so frequently. I abstain from most other substances as well for similar reasons. (Caffeine really being the only thing that I normally ingest)
My father is also an alcoholic, went to AA for a while, has had two divorces since because of drinking. My sister is an alcoholic, my mother is a prescription drug addict. The way this manifests in me is that I'm obsessed with Not Being An Alcoholic. So I drink. Because it's Not A Problem! Sometimes I drink too much, sometimes it lasts for months. And then I Prove To Myself that I'm not an alcoholic, and I stop for a bit. And start again, but like a Well-Adjusted Person! And sometimes not, and everything is coming apart, and then I do it again, stop drinking for a bit, and I think to myself, "Well, at least I'm not an alcoholic!"
Edit: Let me mention that the guardrails on this have narrowed since my daughter was born.
I think it's important to note that he describes a functional alcoholic. He seems to be managing his responsibilities and dependents without egregious carelessness.
This is distinction is important to note so friends and families can identify regressions earlier and thus better manage the resulting behaviors. I don't support strict abstinence or the 12 stepsbut every addict needs a system thatcatches them well before their live disintegrates. By recognizing when someone is slipping from casual use into binges and benders we can all save lives, money, time, and relationships.
This is a strange statement. Is this poorly phrased or do you actually think recurring alcoholics should continue endlessly drinking and relapsing rather than abstaining?
I also don’t think addicts should expect friends and family to be their guardrails. If you cannot drink in moderation without slipping into alcoholic behaviors, then it’s on you to stop rather than expect others to attempt to manage your addiction for you. It’s unhealthy, irresponsible, and inconsiderate to attempt to put that burden on others. Not only is this likely an ineffective strategy, but it drives others away.
I don't support forcing strict abstinence on people. For example, the fake marijuana crisis that ravaged Florida and the rest of America years ago wouldn't have occurred had marijuana been legal. Instead every impoverished broken person on probation had a new fix available to them. This time it was dangerous untested drugs made in sketchy Chinese labs.
If someone swears off (x) then that's their decision. If I tell you to never eat meat, drink milk, or travel via any method that consumes fossil fuels you'd rightly think I'm crazy. Just the same, telling addicts to stop drinking or drugging when just about everyone they know does is crazy. Do I need to explain why?
The expectation is not to have addicts rely on their family to keep them from falling off the wagon. Instead, when you accept the fact that strict abstinence is a pipe dream you have to start actually planning how you live around an addict instead of blithely thinking they'll never relapse you can help them get back on their feet. If that's too much to ask of you then you aren't their friend and should warn them that you're not going to help them when they're struggling. Because there's a solid chance that if someone is relapsing a lot of other shit went wrong. And if you're a close friend or family then you carry some responsibility for not helping them.
Whoa, great description of this dynamic. Is the desire to drink consistent, or does it vary? Does it vary with the cycles of healthy / unhealthy consumption, or with a different period?
>I have amazing executive control (I have suffered incredible emotional and physical pain over the last decade but I have never shed a tear in that time.
not to offend, but that doesn't define executive control to me. Generally it's not unhealthy to cry during emotionally turbulent episodes in your life; it's (crying) a method by which you're controlling your stress. Those i've met that don't cry tend to have longer periods between emotional 'episodes', but tend to act out much more aggressively. I tend to think that the supression of emotions does little to satisfy our need to express them, it just puts them on the backburner until they finally boil over much more violently than normal.
Another point, by which i'm not trying to offend you personally : is it healthy to villanize alcohol? It seems that would take the responsibility away from your father, when in reality he's the one who abused a substance that plenty of people can enjoy casually without issue.
I'm glad your coping with whatever methods you find that work personally, but I think that in a general sense that it is self-damaging to damn things in life based off of the experiences of others. Of course, that doesn't apply to suicidal ventures, but to avoiding common things in life.
My mother is an alcoholic, so I can offer some perspective, perhaps. It is a disease. I can tell for sure I have the same addictive tendencies, I have just had much better success aiming it at healthier outlets. It is fine for the alcohol to exist, plenty of people drink it socially, but it is a drug where very little good comes from it. It has limited medicinal use and significant long term impact like many recreational drugs. When you grow up seeing a parent either under it, it is very easy to be resentful at them and the alcohol. It isn’t crazy to just wish the stuff never existed. Maybe they would never have taken that first drink that set them on that path. At some point early in the process of alcoholism there is definitely an element of choice. If you catch it too late it becomes a full blown disease where the agency of the person with it is significantly reduced. They often need outside help to quit. Some common things in life truly are better just being avoided. So, I get the grandparent poster. It is armor to protect against the highly negative outcome of alcohol and alcoholism.
>Generally it's not unhealthy to cry during emotionally turbulent episodes in your life; it's (crying) a method by which you're controlling your stress
This is modern pseudoscientific nonsense, born in part of institutional crises in academia.
>Those i've met that don't cry tend to have longer periods between emotional 'episodes', but tend to act out much more aggressively.
This is blatant projection of personal bias.
Some people, men in particular, deal with emotions stoically. It's a perfectly valid approach, eastern philosophy has been teaching meditation to a similar end for thousands of years, not to mention this particular gender norm existed until very recent time, while we built civilization.
I challenge you to cite a reproducible, unbiased study that rigorously demonstrates the necessity of crying for all, or at least a sizable majority of, people. The trouble is you're dealing with the softest of sciences, one which is particularly vulnerable to bias from institutional dogma.
I don't think you need studies. Look at who crying hurts, and who crying helps. Crying alone is fairly costless, what are you wasting, time? What's the harm? But it's easy to find anecdata of how crying helps - stress relief, greater self-compassion, and the realizations that come afterwards.
I think it is true that it is not unhealthy to cry. Perhaps some people do not need to cry, but I don't think avoiding crying is an indication of more executive control. I cry all the time, because I'm not trying to avoid it. It feels good to cry for me.
I do try not to cry in front of other people and for the most part succeed. When alone though some times I do cry (eg watching a sad movie), because the effort to hold it in doesn’t seem to be worth it. But the thing is I don’t feel better having cried. Often times I actually feel worse, like a positive feedback loop. The crying makes me feel worse so I cry more which makes me feel worse still and so on.
Males also die five years younger, on average. A large portion of the gap has roots in poor mental health (risk-taking behavior, alcohol/diet, and suicide).
Rather than blaming men for not living longer consider how much less is spent on treating and researching male health issues than female. For example in the UK boys were offered the HPV vaccine 10 years after girls. Yet during that period male death rates from HPV related throat cancer were comparable to female death rates from HPV related cervical cancer.
I don’t really buy this claim. I think there are also examples of this the other way round (eg endometriosis affects many women but little research was done into it for a long time and people were turned away being told they were just imagining their pain instead of being given a diagnosis).
I don’t think I’m in a good position to guess at which sex is treated worse by medical research but I don’t think it’s obviously men.
I’m not sure medical research treats one gender better than the other - not something I have a strong opinion about.
But if the person you’re responding to is truthful, it’s odd that if the rates were similar why we only hear about one of the two groups being affected, isn’t it? I think if you search you can find a lot of these across both sexes, actually. I’m not sure what the cause of throat HPV is, but if it’s oral sex on women maybe that reveals a societies taboo. It’s so taboo that we are willing to let people die rather than admit it.
Anyway just a few thoughts as I was skimming the posts here.
As far a public health is concerned it's settled fact and has been for some years. The main risk seems to be for men that have sex with men rather than oral sex with women. Men that have sex with men can now (finally) get the vaccine on the NHS up to the age of 35.
Understanding cause of death is not "blaming men". The reasons for the gap are, for the most part, known. Big gaps are explained away by the suicide rate for men being 3.54x higher for males vs females and men delaying preventative medical treatment.
If you're arguing for the stoic-ness of traditional masculinity as a way to maintain mental health, as the comment I was replying to was, it's important to understand the real mental health issues and longevity issues associated with that same behavior.
Since you claim that the reasons are know, it seems to miss that a major reason for successful suicide is untreated depression which are well know area in medicine known to discriminate against men.
You can blame masculinity, or you can blame society for how it react to men who seek help.
In the case of HPV caused cancer this is because there is (rightly) a massive screening program for cervical cancer and yet most men that have sex with men don't even know that they are at increased risk of HPV caused throat cancer. Similar programs exist for other diseases that exclusively affect women. They do not for diseases that exclusively or disproportionately affect men.
If living a fuller life through risk costs me five years, I'll take the trade. Perhaps mortality is not the only metric worth optimizing for some people.
Both my parents were alcoholic which led to bad consequences for both of them. It was hard sometimes, but I think it gave me more empathy for people who suffer with addiction. And it made me extremely cautious with alcohol. I may very occasionally drink a beer or a glass of wine but no more than that.
Besides I read a few rock star biographies. One thing that struck me is that from all the addictions they had, alcohol was for most the hardest to overcome. Because alcohol is so pervasive in our society, I think a lot of people under-estimate the risk.
My dad lost everything because of alcohol and still to this day will not admit that was the cause. It definitely led me to treat alcohol with care. I have been drunk before and enjoy good beer, wine, and spirits. But, I've also gone long periods without drinking at all. If someone said tomorrow I couldn't drink again that would be fine, although I'd like to drink my aging bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape first :)
My attitude has caused weird things in relationships though. I was in a serious relationship when I was younger and while discussing kids I told her that if I ever had kids I would never drink again. The girl was beside herself and ended up mad at me about that for some reason. She just didn't understand what I saw and experienced growing up. Among other things, there is a smell that comes from heavy drinkers in the morning and it's not something I would ever want my kids to experience.
Possible too much information, but if someone can find comfort or benefit in knowing bits of my story then it's a good thing.
> If my significant other wants a drink, I tell her to put it on a separate bill.
I assume this has worked well for you, and I’m glad if it has.
Are you married, or in a long-term relationship where you have a shared bank account? Will your attitude towards this change under those conditions? Or do you plan to continue asking your significant other to separate it out and specifically use her money to pay?
> (I have suffered incredible emotional and physical pain over the last decade but I have never shed a tear in that time. Hell, I watched a lot of Disney movies and I still didn't. I do it just to prove that I still have control). You lose some of that control when you drink alcohol (from what I've been told).
This sound less healthy than drinking alcohol occasionally. It sounds as if you're glorifying some kind of stunted emotional capacity.
My grandfather was an alcoholic, which scared my dad to such an extent that he won't drink at all. I drink fairly often, but only beer. I wonder in these stats how much of this is liquor/spirits vs beer. I just can't see people drinking themselves to death (as in overdosing) with beer because it makes you so full feeling, where as liquor and wines require much less liquid to make you intoxicated that it's much harder to judge and pace.
To some people, beer is food. It's not pretty to watch them rot away with malnutrition. In one company I worked, we were instructed to watch one guy come with us for lunch. If we didn't, he'd slink away with a few beers for lunch.
He was stationed at various places in Europe during WW2 and saw some truly horrible things during that time. He had nightmares for the rest of his life.
After the war, he drank vodka for many years, then later switched to cheap, strong lager (something like 8-10%, which tasted like cat's piss), which he drank all day, every day, for another 20 years or so. He didn't eat much during this time, presumably because he was full of lager.
A bit of an aside, but I may as well add some more, since we're sharing stories. He ended up in hospital for a few weeks due to some condition caused by his alcoholism (surprising it took so long, really), and nearly died. He went through withdrawals during that time, and almost dieing gave him quite the scare - he never touched another drop from that day on. It was quite incredible how he was able to just stop with no relapse after drinking so heavily for so long.
Of course, frequently what this kind of headline actually means is, "We changed the definition of 'alcohol-related death' to encompass causes of deaths that were happening all along."
Alcohol sales went up after the 2008 crash. Drug and alcohol use increases when the economy is bad. Now that the economy is good, if this continues, the trend should hopefully decline. Though affordable and effective treatment may be necessary as well. Most addiction treatment centers are extremely ineffective and costly.
311 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 223 ms ] thread>Only cigarettes are deadlier than alcohol: More than 480,000 people die each year in the U.S. because of smoking-related illnesses.
I didn't realise how much worse this is compared to the opioid epedemic .
Maybe, but some people certainly have their "drug of choice".
Also I would have loved to have seen the median for this figure because as an average it’s astonishing
In the United States, 70.1% of the population aged 18 and older (about 173.3 million people) consumed alcohol in 2017, averaging approximately 3.6 gallons of pure alcohol per drinker, or about 2.1 standard U.S. drinks per day
Prohibition doesn't count?
What about all the no-smoking-in-bars etc. laws?
And the warnings on the packaging?
The manufacturers don't do that voluntarily.
C'mon now.
And prohibition was later repealed when they wanted the tax money, even though it had overall health benefits to society.
In re: alcohol... I would hate to give up port. There's an argument there for the artistry of the brewer/vintner, but overall alcohol consumption is pretty vile.
But you said "no one dares to go after them" which is wrong, and set off my "wait, what?" reaction.
When Canada legalized cannabis, the enabling legislation prohibited nearly all cannabis advertising. Producers are pretty much restricted to propagating their brand name. They most certainly can't have an ad that portrays cannabis users as sexy and cool.
Quebec went so far that selling clothing or bags with a cannabis leaf on them is now illegal. While that law is probably unconstitutional for its excessive restriction of free expression, it gives an insight into the mentality of the legislators, when it came to cannabis advertising.
And yet nothing stops Anheuser-Busch from proselytizing the message that getting drunk on Bud Light will get you showered you in women and make you the life of the party. Billboards, TV, Internet ads, radio, sponsorships.
Even the government alcohol monopoly advertises alcohol!
On a population basis, putting up Christmas lights kills far more people than BASE jumping. But the danger from each activity in isolation isn't comparable at all.
Far more people drink and smoke than use opioids.
The relationship between opioids and cigarette smoking/vaping appears to be complicated, to complicate things.
Opioid-related deaths tend to involve the rapid destruction of lives, often of young people full of potential, culminating in sudden death due to overdose. Their friends and family then have to live with that horror for the rest of their lives. In terms of lost potential and the psychological trauma inflicted, there’s no comparison. It’s understandable that people consider opioids to be a worse problem than smoking.
Probably because they're seen as socially acceptable behavior, and are readily available for anyone to purchase.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...
https://www.insider.com/drinking-health-benefits-heart-nutri...
At the moment all the evidence we have says that msot people don't get any benefit from drinking. If you're a woman aged over 60 you get some benefit from drinking about one small[1] glass of wine a day (with some days drink free). No-one else gets that benefit. For everyone else the harm increases with dose, although the risks of small amounts of alcohol for most people are very small.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
(Note this article doesn't include harm caused by intoxicated driving or intoxicated violence).
[1] 125 ml of wine at 8% ABV, or about 88 ml of wine at 12%. That's really not much. Most people would have glasses that are 175 ml or 250 ml. (These are standard serving sizes in UK restaurants.)
Here is a quote right from this paper “Females, particularly in high SDI locations, experienced some protective effects for ischaemic heart disease and diabetes beyond 60 years of age. For males, only high SDI and low SDI locations had noticeable protective effects for ischaemic heart disease”
I don't think you can say that.
It was the same for me for about 6 months, maybe a year. Then people stopped offering drinks or asking why I didn't drink and things felt normal again. I think part of it was not going in to how bad it is for you because people who drink already know.
I don't get uncomfortable without a drink, but if I feel like other people are anxious that I'm not drinking sometimes it helps to have an opaque cup with water (at home) or a mocktail (at a bar) so from across the room it looks like I have a drink.
I've found that most 30+ yrs old people that asked why I don't drink don't really like drinking either and feel like they won't have fun or enjoy the party as much or fit in if they don't drink, but that they don't like the bloating or hangover effects if they have more than a drink or two.
I'm about to cross 40 and I've stopped drinking completely. I don't enjoy the feeling and even after one beer I get depressed for three days following.
There are lots of comments when I'm doing something socially but I just don't care. It's not my job to make people feel good about their drug use.
I can see how people might feel abandoned when social bonds that formed in and around drinking now have to adapt. Keep going though, your body will appreciate it even if your friends don't right now. And if the friendship can't survive you not drinking, it might not be that healthy of a friendship anyway.
But you're right, it is true that it makes people uncomfortable.
When someone offers me a drink, I usually just say thank you, maybe in a bit, or grab something else, or else just accept and not consume it or occasionaly take one small sip. As far as I know my colleagues have no idea that it's not something I ever do. I know this because I also have other colleagues who say, "I don't drink" and have witnessed them become a subject of speculation and intrigue among others when they are not around.
The extent of the myth surrounding alcohol and its role in society seems to drive people to make extreme conclusions about an individual's choice to use it or not ('they must have hit rock bottom' e.g.). My preference is to avoid something obviously bad for my physical and emotional health that has no clear upside, and to just leave it at that.
To a lesser extent so is smoking in Paris. When you go out smoking brings a lot of bonding opportunities that you miss if you don't smoke (standing awkwardly on the side isn't the same + passive smoking).
His drinking buddy was my step-mother, who followed an identical trajectory. Less than four years later, she died in the same spot of the house, in her late 50s.
The most difficult thing for my sister and myself was how powerless we were to do anything about it. Despite him committing slow suicide by alcohol, we were advised by lawyers that we had no legal recourse and would just end up burning money in a court battle we could not win.
My last ditch effort was an ultimatum, that if he didn't stop drinking, I would no longer talk to him, nor allow him to meet any kids my wife and I might have down the line. He agreed to stop drinking, but then gave up 72 hours later.
His grandson was born 7 weeks ago, but he never got to meet him. He would have only been 65.
People are asking how much capacity a person has if they are addicted.
There are roughly two camps when we talk about a human rights approach to mental health law, and they're not compatible with each other.
The more mainstream version is to look at the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which flows into the EU Convention on Human Rights, which flows into national law. Under this system we can still have detention under mental health law, forced medication, and substituted decision making. But you do need some protections in place to prevent arbitrary detention and to give people a right of appeal.
The less mainstream view is to look at the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Under this approach you cannot detain people under mental health laws, you can force them to take medication against their will, and you can only have supported decision making, you cannot have substituted decision making.
There's some discussion on the CRPD here: https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/disability-...
https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...
It's also arguable that state regulated or state run health insurance should require some degree of self insurance for people making these detrimental choices.
However, incarcerating people against their will, forcing them to take medication against their will, possibly for months, is problematic.
We might tolerate that if it worked, but from the evidence we have we don't think it will work for many people with substance misuse.
Addiction treatment is hard. I don't know many people working in addiction treatment who are asking for more legal powers to detain people.
In England I sometimes speak to people with substance misuse disorders (comorbid with mental illness, or learning disability, or autism, or a mix). Many of them will have been detained for mental illness (they were not detained because of substance misuse). It's fair to say they have mixed views about compulsory treatment. Some of them hate it and think it caused them harm. Some of them think it was transformative. It is complicated.
He was forced to go to a hospital, where he went into a brief 72 hour coma while he was withdrawing from alcohol. From there, he was hospitalized for another 7 days, and then forced to transfer to a physical rehabilitation center, as he was unable to walk under his own power.
Once he was at the facility, he was no longer under a required hold. Once he realized this, he promptly left so he could go home and start drinking again.
We spoke with lawyers about whether or not I could be granted conservatorship over him, as he went through this detox / early recovery period. Because he hadn't lost his mental faculties in any way, we were advised that a judge was unlikely to provide conservatorship to me, and it would be an expensive and damaging process. Our best bet was to convince him at a personal level, which is what we attempted.
Should people be allowed to drink themselves to death? Should families be powerless to help a family member with a disease that makes is so addictive, they can no longer make rational choices in relation to that substance?
It's clearly a philosophical question, and it comes down to your views on personal liberty, and whether someone suffering from deep addiction is still capable of making informed decisions.
I, personally, believe that conservatorship laws are a reasonable approach to helping people get over the initial hump of detox and then understanding their addiction. I want people to have a fighting chance to come back from the brink, and we lacked the legal right to do so, in this case.
If you're fat and likely to die of heart disease, should your family be allowed to physically restrain you from buying another burger?
What about cigarettes, can you lock them up to force them to quit?
If you ride too fast should they be able to force you to sell your motorbike?
Should they be able to stop you from free-climbing?
Probably we all do this at some level. Hopefully we can encourage each other to do the right thing, but most of us won't at least some of the time. And, sometimes the other party really doesn't know best or understand all the circumstances.
I don't see how this is relevant to the question, unless you want to get into whether their burden on the medical system outweighs their right to do what they want with their bodies (but lung cancer/emphezema, diabetes/heart disease, and traumatic injuries from extreme sports would fall into that category as well).
> Smoking and junk food don’t have the huge impacts to how you treat those around you that being drunk all the time does.
We don't lock up sober assholes for being assholes either.
The question is: where does someone's right to do what their brain makes them want to do end? Individual autonomy is a big deal in a free society, as it should be. When you take away a person's freedom to act, I think you take away part of what makes them human.
It seems like the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction from how we treated mental illness in the previous century (aggressively locking people up in institutions).
It would be a huge benefit to society if we could find a (relatively safe from abuse) mechanism to treat people who are "functional" yet too mentally ill to stop their self-destructive behaviors. I'm not sure how that would/could work, but it's a worthwhile goal.
I'd argue it's more of the same: finding a way to pretend they don't exist.
There is a way. When I was lost, dealing with my own problematic issues with drinking, I found another path. Taking a single dose of LSD-25 made me examine the root cause of my drinking, and made me understand just how self-destructive I had been. I've never been religious, but for those 8 hours I felt more connected to everything around me than I had in my entire life. I felt love for the first time. I touched the surface of God, of goodness, of kindness with my soul. And it healed me. Like a bright light, healing me of all of my old emotional wounds. It opened my eyes, so I could see for the first time.
But has a therapeutic tool, I'd advocate for most people to have a (safe) psychedelic experience at least once in their life. It can profoundly change the way you see the world and yourself, and that has ramifications in how we cope with pain. Using alcohol for that is not a good thing.
That said, my point was about how to get a loved one into treatment against their will. That's dangerous territory because of abuse, but it's a topic worth continual exploration.
At one time she developed severe dementia due to neurological complications from alcohol. She recovered, but started drinking again after that.
I'm not saying what you should feel, but I know the frustration and anger a relatives addiction can cause.
Personally, I'm now fine with the fact that a person can destroy their life.
Because the option would be, that there would be an arbitrary threshold beyond which a persons right for self determination could be taken away, and unless it's bleedingly obvious (as in they are a vegetable) it's most likely an arbitrary and an unfair arrangement.
We are not yet masters of the universe. We are not even masters of human lives. But we've come up with societies that allow individuals freedom to live the lives they choose. This freedom includes the freedom for self immolation. The freedom for self immolation is the price we pay for all the other freedoms. Each one of us need to decide for themselves is this price worth the cost. Personally, for me, I say - yes it is. The price is pain. But the alternative would be even more unfair, and more painfull (i.e. there would be arbiters in the society with more or less arbitrary power to curtail personal freedom due to arbitrary life choices they made).
My adoptive father also died of alcohol abuse. I am Much older than you are though. He served in WWII, also most of his friends drank heavily--I suspect it was due to combat war related PTSD; but that is merely a guess.
I am very careful about how much I drink, and I do have an addictive personality. I just had a talk, tonight in fact, with my 20 year old about drugs--and was surprised to hear that coke is big again at my child's University. My kid drinks a bit, but has a 4.0 average as Bio major looking to get into Med School. No guarantee of a drug free life but my point is talk to your son about it when he's older.
Sorry for loss.
Congratulations on the birth of your son!
Condolences, but come on. Since when is 60 "a very young age"? You could start collecting social security retirement benefits at 62.
> Despite him committing slow suicide by alcohol
We are all committing slow suicide. That's life. You think are you going to live forever? I'm assuming he drank all his life, so a 42 year "suicide"?
> we were advised by lawyers that we had no legal recourse and would just end up burning money in a court battle we could not win.
What were you hoping to do? Force someone who doesn't want rehab to go to rehab? How would that even work? Wouldn't that drive him to drink even more?
Listen, if I was dictator, I'd ban alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, drugs, soccer, 99% news/media, etc. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, gamble, feel soccer is a waste of time and most news/media is a toxic waste of time. But we live in a free society and grown adults are allowed to waste their time and partake in harmful activities as long as it doesn't directly harm others.
And I'm sure others have their own list of things they don't like or feel is harmful or a waste which I disagree with. I don't want them dictating how I live and in return I don't dictate how they live.
There are obvious exceptions where someone is physically/neurologically debilitated, but a functional adult human being deprived of liberty is not anything I will ever support.
I know of similar circumstances and am wondering how much of alcoholism is caused by some other psychiatric condition.
Or perhaps pure idleness and boredom.
What do you do when you're a pensioner, you never cultivated lifelong learning so you're not equipped to take on a new challenge, there's no place in society for your residual skills? Maybe you kick back, relax, and pour a glass or two. After all, there's nothing else for you to do anymore.
Does alcoholism creep in at this stage?
I don't think this is unique to alcohol. Nicotine and driving seems pretty okay, but I can't think of any other deadly drugs out there which wouldn't impair your driving.
EDIT: As other users have brought up, nicotine kills plenty of people other than those using it, in the form of second-hand smoke.
Opiates, benzos, and alcohol all affect technical driving skills in a negative way.
I’m not opening the THC and driving can of worms.
Stimulant therapy on adults with ADHD has been shown to improve driving skill. Furthermore, ADHD is found more often in cocaine users than in the general population, likely due to self-medicating tendencies.
I'm very skeptical of this claim. Do you have any evidence?
Note that impressions of ones own performance while on drugs are not necessarily accurate.
Cocaine and methamphetamine increase impulsivity, and “real users” (addicts) of meth in particular are prone to stay up for extremely long periods of time, long enough where the meth wouldn’t counteract the physical exhaustion, which would account for meth leading to more accidents in real life conditions.
I still maintain that cocaine or meth would improve the driving skills and response times for a rested person.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22842792/
Yeah, it does look like the evidence supports that. Interesting stuff.
If restedness is the real factor, it becomes pretty difficult to regulate that. There are two problems I can think of:
1. I don't think that someone being on meth or cocaine meets the burden of proof to say they aren't rested.
2. People drive without adequate rest, even without stimulants. If someone is hasn't slept in 48 hours, it seems like it would be better for them to be on stimulants than not.
One problem with collecting this data is that breathalyzers are cheap, easy, well-known, and available. If there's an equivalent for detecting impairment from other drugs, I don't know of it.
The dose makes the poison though. There’s a reason low levels of alcohol are allowed while driving too
Opioids and hallucinogens and THC/CBD probably all negatively effect driving, but it's much harder to compare due to less study, less scale, and less data (federally illegal/obstacles abound to study many of those things).
Nicotine is not really a problem with driving, it's like caffeine in that sense...stimulants aren't as dangerous for machinery operation.
People on opioids might steal and lie to feed their addictions but I think the harm to others in the worst case is a lot less.
There is also no easy way to prevent access to it. Anything with sugar can become alcohol, including staple foods.
For other drugs, you need to have access to some specific plants, or grow them specifically for that reason. Chemicals are even harder to get by, you need both precursors and technical skills.
If alcohol was some exotic substance, it would definitely be banned.
By something like half a percent. Simultaneously birth rates are decreasing to near historic lows, immigration is being constricted, millennial life expectancy is on the decline, and suicides have spiked across all age groups.
Yes, I’ll concede that we’re not at the level of Russia or Japan yet, but something has definitely gone off the rails and not trending in a great direction.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/us-immigra...
Not even close. Russia's 1990s "die off" was so severe that the current russian population is lower than it was in 1990. 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still has less people. In the same period, the US population grew from 240 million to 330 million. In 2010, the US population was 308 million. So even in this "die off" decade, our population grew.
To show how devastating the soviet collapse was for russia just compare that to the devastation of ww2. After ww2, russia's population recovered after 10 years. They still haven't recovered in 30 years after the soviet collapse. This is also true for the economy as well.
The soviet collapse was far worse for russia than ww2 by any measure. It is by any objective measure, the worst thing to happen to any country in the 20th century. Were it not for russia's nukes, they'd be a source of pity. They've fallen so far and haven't gotten back up. And it's been 30 years. 1.5 generations.
That is literally not true, by a lot. Ww2 hit russia harder then west which was hit super hard. There was whole year of males basically killed (not sure which one, but the ones that were 18 when it all started I think). There were massive atrocities against civilian population, whole areas burned down and all that uncontrolled violence going on along with ethnical cleansing.
What happened is that post ww2, people had children. You lived in communism and people turned into familly instead of to career.
Post communist russia has less children for the same reasons why western countries have less children - you got options if you are ambitious and also need to work if you are not.
I know. Russia suffered greatly in ww2. That's my point. It's why I compared ww2 to the soviet collapse. That's how awful the soviet collapse was for russia. It was even worse than ww2. I never claimed the west suffered more than russia in ww2. No country suffered more than russia in ww2.
> What happened is that post ww2, people had children.
Not only that they had jobs and hope for the future. Life expectancy increased, everything got better. They became the 2nd largest economy in the world. Everything improved not just from ww2, but even prior to ww2.
The exact opposite happened after the soviet collapse. They stopped having children, people died in droves, life expectancy dropped dramatically, their economy tanked from being #2 economy in the world to a third world hellhole being picked apart by foreign vultures, etc. Even today, 30 years later, russia still hasn't recovered. It took russia 10 years to recover from ww2. In 30 years, russia has yet to recover. In other words, russia is worse off today in population, economy, international clout, etc than they were 30 years ago.
> Post communist russia has less children for the same reasons why western countries have less children - you got options if you are ambitious and also need to work if you are not.
We have less children because we are wealthy and selfish. Russia isn't wealthy. Also, given the growth the west has enjoyed in the last 30 years, we can afford to have less children ( though we probably should be having more ), but russia doesn't have that luxury.
Anyways, people think since bombs weren't dropped during the soviet collapse that ww2 was the worst thing russia experienced in the 20th century, but an objective analysis clearly shows otherwise. Winning ww2 helped russia advance and improve. Losing the cold war truly damaged russia in ways that it doesn't seem capable of recovering from. Not only that Russia has a higher median age than the US. So not only is russia older, it's poorer than the US. That doesn't bode too well for future russian prospects.
It is often oportunities to not be mom at home that attract women.
"Objective analysis" that centers on birthrate only is not objective at all. Especially when it ignores effects of Stalin rule on people and conflates ruling party health with populace health.
Comunist regime did not had healthy economy - it is one of reasons why it became weak.
Yes, warsaw pact nations and former eastern european soviet nations also suffered. But russia suffered the most since they were the core of the soviet union.
> And it is not just poverty - if anything midle class and educated women are less likely to have kids.
I didn't say it was. My point was that the russian population dropped from near 150 million in the early 1990s and is still below that today ( 30 years later ). My point is that in the 90s, russian life expectancy dropped dramatically 10%+ - this is not normal. My point is that russia's economy is nowhere near what it was in 1990s ( second largest economy in the world ).
> Especially when it ignores effects of Stalin rule on people and conflates ruling party health with populace health.
What? As if yeltsin's or putin's rule were any better?
> "Objective analysis" that centers on birthrate only is not objective at all.
I didn't just look at birthrates. You seem to be fixated on it. I'm talking about population. Russia's population declined in 30 years. That's not a good thing - especially for a poor country.
> Comunist regime did not had healthy economy - it is one of reasons why it became weak.
It was healthy enough to be the 2nd largest economy for most of the cold war. The capitalist regime didn't have a healthy economy after the soviet collapse. Even during stalin's purges, the indicators weren't as bad as they were in the 1990s.
I'm just talking about objective stats. Not sure why you are bring communism or stalin into the mix. The 10 years after ww2 were far better for russians than the 10 years after the soviet collapse. This is just statiscal fact. Go look at every measurement. Economic, cultural, political, demographic, etc. The soviet union grew and advanced in nearly every metric during the decade after ww2. Russia declined in every metric during the 10 years after the soviet collapse.
Seems like winning a hot war is better than losing a cold war. I'm not saying communism is good or bad. I'm not saying stalin was good or bad. I'm just saying that russian life was better in the immediate years after ww2 than after the soviet collapse - purely in objective statistical terms.
I'm just talking about the effects of ww2 and the soviet collapse in objective terms. Maybe it's psychological. Winning boosts a nation's confidence and losing destroys a nation's confidence. I don't know. What we know is that 10 years after ww2, russia improved greatly and 10 years after the soviet collapse, russia regressed. Even 30 years later, russia still hasn't gotten back to the starting line.
> Not sure why you are bring communism or stalin into the mix. The 10 years after ww2 were far better for russians than the 10 years after the soviet collapse.
Bringing up Stalin, cause you talk about period of history when stalin ruled - after ww2.
And absolutely, Russian people were not better off after ww2 - the country was still destroyed, villages still burned and only slowly rebuilding, dictatorship was in full swing, including very real oppression, torture fear and what not. Oh, and purges were right before that war, so country started it already down.
After wwii: Famine of 1946-1947 with some residue of famine in 1948. Good thing indicators grew after that, but that makes people just not dying of hunger rather then we'll off.
The war was followed by smaller purges, to the point some expected large ones to start around stalin death. Closely after war is when cultural purge happened.
Not even speaking about what russia did in territories they took over (and no we did not wanted them) and what they did to Ukraine.
I do expect women to catch up--despair is ultimately an equal-opportunity killer.
The state of things does seem rather demoralizing, and it does weigh on me. (I think women suffer equally and will eventually catch up on this problem.)
Some of this has affected me very personally. Subjectively, it feels like I drink a lot to ameliorate these affects. I'm aware that statistically it will shorten my life, but living a shorter, less painful life is a hard alternative to give up.
I have no answers, and I don't think there are any.
[Study link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acer.14239 Beware the awful log-scaling of plots.]
many parts of the legal system and quasi legal system; think colleges; de facto treat men differently. this is especially true in cases of divorce, domestic violence, and campus issues.
this is not to say there are not many cases where the outcome is correct but there are too many instances where the deck is stacked against them before they even get to the table.
Driveby conservative and liberal punditry regards men as uniquely targeted/at fault for their lots respectively, but I don't think this sex-specific interrogation yields any real solutions. At least not compared to universal class-based politics, which addresses the root of the issue rather than the way the problem manifests for a particular demographic.
It's very strange that the same people who advocated libertarianism and complete freedom years ago when men were in complete control, are now advocating for collectivism and support when they are in trouble.
The conservative/libertarian view should be that if men want to drink themselves to death, the government should not get involved.
Ive always been suspicious that alcohol in the United States is basically a thinly veiled means to privatize social interaction. I spent 16 years drinking regularly and certainly the dangers werent explained in LMFAO's song "shots" when i was young, or by James Bond's seven martini car chases. The industry is large enough to require more oversight in my opinion, but states dependent on alcohol and tobacco taxes theres very little incentive to wash the grease off that hand.
the WHO and NHS both strongly advise against consumption of any alcohol in 2020, but for my parents I guess it was more like cigarettes. No one knows/there are health benefits/its harmless are all excuses im sure they heard along with the reinforced masculinity tropes.
Alcohol turned my parents into miserable wretches. My mother now suffers from Wernekes encephalitis. at age 62 now shes suffered more than a dozen seizures and a fractured hip. When she was admitted to hospital she could not be given painkillers, as she had consumed eleven cans of beer before arriving. she spent 2 weeks in a nursing home and suffering from withdrawal symptoms was so insufferably aggressive and abusive they threatened to discharge her after a week. She cursed every member of the family with scathing vitriol and merciless fervor. Not as though it would matter, as she refused any and all physical therapy until she could go home and have beer again. she still drinks around 3-4 cans a day, and hobbles about in a walker.
my fathers developed chronic gastritis and cant handle so much as a warm cup of tea. He has had a section of intestine removed as chronic alcohol related inflammation had destroyed it. He seems completely blind to what alcohol has done to him.
What does this mean?
Unless its government work. Then it would be fraternizing.
A few notes:
- It's comparing absolute, not per-capita, numbers. The US drinking age population is up >20% since 1999, so that accounts for some of this rise.
- The paper spends a lot of time discussing the fact that alcohol isn't reported completely in death certificates.
- Alcohol-related drug overdoes are broken out separately from alcohol overdoses, and this is up 580% (!) from 1999
I've been an HN member for a long time, fairly prominent Bay Area tech executive, rich in the sense of both bank accounts and family.
Alcohol brought me to my knees in my late 20s / early 30s.
It started out as the typical "social lubricant" to help a natural introvert be better at connecting with people and was wonderful at that - I was the life of the party.
Over a decade it leaked into a "requirement" for just about anything and eventually drinking heavily 3 / 4 nights a week.
Eventually I sought paid help from therapists, coaches, natural remedies, medication, recovery specialists. Nothing worked. Eventually a therapist told me "you're screwed the only thing left to try is AA".
I was highly skeptical, an agnostic, still am more or less, but AA saved my life on account of the comradery i found in the rooms of SV meetings. People with the same story and same struggles who worked the steps and recovered.
One of the AA rules is attraction not promotion, this isn't promotion only my own simple testimonial. Statistics say that it doesn't work for a lot of people but knowing the general skeptical nature of HN and the crowd I want anybody struggling or who was in my situation to know that for this one skeptical / tech / entrepreneurial brain it was a lifesaver after trying basically everything else.
Now sober ~9 years and counting and wouldn't have it any other way.
I am happy to answer questions about the program if anybody is struggling, can give an anon email too if preferred.
edit: temp gmail account ohohuhunkjnuihuh@gmail.com
But it really depends on the group. There non-religious modifications to the AA program. They don't say a prayer every 3 minutes. It definitely worth going to a meeting or two just to listen to their stories.
my experience in general with norcal AA groups is "higher power" is used instead of "God" almost exclusively, people are very careful to not push God / religious understanding / etc
At step 3 you have to turn it over to a "higher power" which is a reflection of the understanding that it is unlikely you, yourself have the power to control alcohol and there must be something "Greater than" you - that can be "physics" that can be "the moon" and a guy who has been sober a very long time in the meeting i go to says his higher power is the "light fixture"
https://www.smartrecovery.org/
avoiding was a non starter so the "escape plan" was I committed to leave, akwardly as it may be, before i picked up a drink.
aka if someobdy was pressuring me to drink to the point i felt i had to i would say "ok get me a beer i have to go to the bathroom" and then disappear and blame it on an upset stomach
and believe the truth that unless you take somebody else's drink away from them or ask them to stop drinking nobody cares if you have a beer or a coke in your hand
After the first year I learned that caffiene has a similar effect on me in social situations if i need to ramp up and can be just as engaging / moreso
> aka if someobdy was pressuring me to drink to the point i felt i had to i would say "ok get me a beer i have to go to the bathroom" and then disappear and blame it on an upset stomach
I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but I don't understand -- why was pretending to get sick easier than telling the truth -- "I can't, I've quit drinking", or a softened version, "I'm not drinking tonight", etc.? Or did you start off with that and they'd continue to pressure you? I don't think I know anyone who'd be that much of an a-hole, unless they were already very drunk themselves.
If you openly tell people that you “quit drinking” they will likely either assume alcoholism or openly ask you why. They are not likely to assume you just decided you don’t like the taste, so now you’ve got the label.
If instead you tell people you aren’t “drinking tonight”, you will absolutely get pressure to drink, because “drinking is fun”, and you don’t have a “real reason not to drink”. I’ve seen it many times and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve participated before as well, not because it was my intent to actually pressure someone to drink, but because it was “good natured teasing”. If I had a friend who loved steak and he suddenly ordered a salad at the steakhouse, I’d similarly be tempted to tease him about his dinner choice, even though I don’t actually care if he had steak, or wine, or whatever. I’ve since recognized that this behavior is not healthy and tried to weed it out of myself, but it’s very common.
This is by the way, why vegans complain about people teasing them or judging them about their food choices. With very few exceptions, it’s probably not malicious. It’s just people being stupid and not realizing the impact they’re having on others. In some cases, this can be just annoying. In others, this can be truly problematic.
It could be that people feel judged, criticized by someone who doesn't drink alcohol/eat meat. That person seems to be setting themselves up as better than others, or more ethical, or with better habits. And they spoil the vibe and camaraderie. People feel attacked and feel justified in striking back, or release that psychological tension with jokes that only seem funny to those with the tension.
I wish people didn’t have to feel pressure to hide behind platitudes and white lies just to be socially acceptable.
I'm not an alcoholic myself, but I drink _very_ rarely so I'm often in a similar boat.
If you say "I'm not drinking" or "I don't drink" a very common follow up question is: "oh? why?"
For me, I've always been able to shrug my shoulders and say: "I dunno, just never felt like it". But I could _very_ easily see a recovering alcoholic feeling like they're in a very awkward position once that question comes up.
The last 20 seconds or so of this clip of Jim Gaffigan rings pretty true to me: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/fq3bvp/comedy-central-presents...
As an aside, a trick I use to control the number of drinks in a business situation is to order liquor neat. I can sip a scotch for an entire meal while other people drink multiple beers or mixed drinks. Don't order something that's easy to drink.
If you have social anxiety, talk to a therapist. My drinking got out of control from a cycle having anxiety which was relieved by drinking which would cause anxiety.
Life is pretty boring in the beginning when you quit. You start to realize how much of your social life is dictated by drinking and how much time and money you spend on it.
other interesting timing stuff for me
30 days until believing i could actually do it "one day at a time"
90 days until the cravings subsided reguarly
1 year until cravings for the most part behind
2 years until no more alcohol dreams !
As someone who's about to cross 4 years sober who was so stubborn he lost everything (a cardboard box would have been an upgrade), this is just f*cking hilarious. Boo hoo, he doesn't want withdrawal. Lol. Addiction doesn't work that way.
If they're a real drunk, and if what you say is true about him/her not getting drunk, they are going to have much more serious health problems than some PAWs. They are going to start having fatty liver, neuropathy, stomach problems, blah, blah, blah. Once it starts from heavy alcoholism, it doesn't stop until you stop or die. PAWs be damned. The only difference is the booze can and WILL kill you. That's one thing that the booze industry never tells you. Hell, people are still surprised to learn that alcohol is one of 2 or 3 substances where even the withdrawal can kill you. It's just not all fun and games even if you don't have the addictive alcoholic genes.
Hangovers turn into waking up drunk at some point. For me, they were a reason to drink. Withdrawal is like a hangover that lasts for weeks. The whole time, you will want a drink.
My bottom was the realization that my alcoholism was a way of checking out of my life. Once I realized that, I just had to start doing other things and dealing with the problems I tried to drown.
When you are in the pit of addiction, the first things you need are positive alternatives to drinking. It could be AA but I went a different route. I am not a meticulous scheduler, but I had a rigid schedule for the first few months. I even planned out my free time. I put myself back out into the world, and found that I loved it and the people in it.
I'll be a year sober next month.
"Realizing it" happens gradually after an established pattern of behavior. Usually, years. You're like, I seem to drink a lot more than everyone else and maybe that's not good. Eventually other problems kick in like sleep issues, anxiety, possibly weight gain - and the solution is always drinking because you stop worrying about it, or can at least say "well this is one of the last times." You realize that this is a bigger issue and then decide to stop, but something inevitably draws you back in. There's always something. And since you slipped back in, you somehow find your way to drinking as much or even more than you did. And then you realize the issue is even bigger - you've established a pattern of trying to stop and it never sticks, no matter how sincere you were in that moment of decision. No matter how much you poured down the drain. No matter how much you know that being sober is actually the good life and that your problems are much easier managed when staying away from drinking.
And after many attempts of this, trying and failing, but probably knowing that deep down there's a part of you that doesn't want to stop, you hit a point where you feel the worst you've ever felt in your life, hurt someone, or instigated another serious problem. And if you're honest, you know where it all started.
Then you are on your knees. Some people try to fix the problem themselves in earnest, some seek help, some stay in the cycle and break out down the road, and some stay in until the (statistically early) end.
The turning point for me was a joke by a stand up comedian that kind of glorified being a drunk. Doug Stanhope had a line similar to “addiction is just a thing you like doing more than living your life”. I chose to live my life. I got hobbies, took classes, worked a lot and I got through the first few months by staying busy. Over time I balanced out my life schedule (also finding out I have workaholic tendencies).
Everyone’s path is different. I can’t believe mine has worked for 6 years. AA isn’t for everyone, but it works for many. It should be the default first option for people wanting out.
I held out my hands no more power left in them head against a tree it was cold on my eyes moon that night solid I could touch almost couldn't get the leg was broken and teeth tore past the bones at me begging for help pictures all cut up knife had fallen I lay there my pieces moved and shifted against a tree I spit up from my stomach green when day came and mist steamed up to the top of the high tree just under the leaves at the top and looking down I could see my body lying there the leg all twisted and the face caved in lips drawn back showing teeth I could see and hear but I couldn't talk without a throat without a tongue sun moon and stars on the face down there worms in the leg weeds growing through the bones.
My best friend was a raging alcoholic for 20 years, he would go through cycles of moderate then heavy drinking, hit bottom, give it up for a few months, and repeat. Unfortunately he simply loved alcohol and really did not want to give it up.
Total abstinence seems like it gives up a huge positive, but insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Many people simply can’t have alcohol in their lives and be happy long term. That might not be you, but it’s something to think about.
Do people not care if men die? I do not understand why these snippets are almost always put in press releases, even when the actual numbers show that men are astonishingly more likely to die from the disease. I've seen articles about how women's rates are rising faster, when the increase in men's death over the same period is greater than the absolutely total number of women affected! Its almost as if we have to mention that women are affected or people will just ignore the problem all together. So sad.
http://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-how-much-did-our-an...
Alcohol kind of creeps up on you over time.
I was in Greek Life in college. I don't regret a second of it, but the drinking culture was omnipresent (we did have dry brothers but if you drank you drank).
After college I moved back home. I had a few concerning episodes that one could "pass" as a mildly embarassing thing (vomiting after a comedy show once I was home, passing out during a family party). The first time my drinking came to a head was when my then-SO called me at a work retreat and I realized I had consumed about 30 drinks in the past 4 days- I was violently hungover and unable to consume food.
Several months later, we broke up, a relative died, and I came into enough money to pay off a significant enough chunk of my loans so that I could move out. During this time my therapist suggested I curb my drinking but I didn't really take him all that seriously. Dumb things kept happening- the most prominent event during this period was that I vomited while drunk gaming online with friends. Sometime after this I took my therapist's advice to quit drinking for a week. My mind cleared up a lot but I resumed after.
Things came to a head when I woke up one day after a day-long bout of drinking (I went to a tailgate and ended up going out to bars later that night). I felt like my liver was going to explode. The worst part was that I had errands to do that day and the entire time I felt like I was going to die.
I decided to indefinitely quit drinking. This was over this past November and December, and I had a few holiday parties to go to- I mostly teetotaled at them, but one conversation stuck out to me. A college friend who was older than me told me she had to re-calibrate her drinking life post-grad to function normally. I kind of realized that I hadn't done that.
I've started drinking again but I've kept it much more muted. I don't go to my local bar after work anymore. I don't really club. I never really drank alone much (the online gaming this was an outlier), so stopping that wasn't hard.
I do think there's a way to curb bad drinking habits, and I think I'm making headway in doing that, but the key is to recognize that your habits are problematic. Right now my mantra is
1) Have a predefined limit 2) Nurse the drink (I drink everything fast, so this is hardest) 3) Don't let people pressure you. Don't feel the need to drink at someone else's pace. Don't feel the need to take shots because someone bought them from the group.
I know this isn't perfect, and I'm not truly abstaining for good, but I'm in a way better place than I was before.
Don't make excuses for yourself. If you feel like alcohol is impacting you, do something about it.
It can be hard to not have anything to drink when everyone else is, but it’s better than making a fool of yourself somewhat frequently
The ally's secret face is terror. The alcohol ally is like a slime, slow moving, growing on you, at first only a fine veneer, like a slug trail. But later more layers collect, until you feel unclean. Feel your steps weighted. Feel every hour of the day a tedious distraction and ordeal. You finish as quickly as you can, so that you can return to your place among the rocks were the ally is happy and thrives.
The ally likes darkness. It doesn't like to move around a lot. A little feeding. Mostly, it likes you, your body, your brain, your dreams. It likes a chair, if you have one.
Once it's fed and watered, it tells you that you can leave your place among the rocks, that you can arise from your mossy boulders and enter the world of humankind, but you seldom do. At such times the growing weight of the layers of film that the ally has coated over you seems to lighten and soften. The mass becomes gelatinous and pliable, and you feel free.
Pain is banished or forgotten.
The world is light. You feel spontaneous. Problems are solvable or ignorable. And you can live like that for a very long time perhaps. For a very long time indeed. Maybe until you die.
Or maybe not.
Maybe the mass of stuff that the alcohol plant has deposited on you begins to harden. Maybe you haven't been able to feed it enough and the veneer has begun to crack. It's like the way the wine itself kills the yeast, its own mother, when the poison is fully formed. Then it is time for your friend across the table to unmask. He does, and you see that he is not there, that he has already departed. In fact, he has not been there for some years, or perhaps it is she. Only the coating, the facade deposited day after day by the poison, has been keeping you company.
In truth, you are totally alone, and frighteningly alone. And tonight, of all nights, you are out of food. A night like this, when you are alone and people that you don't want to talk to are knocking on your doors and windows. You are aware that soon they will abandon civility all together and just force their way in.
Oh, it's got you now. By the balls, by the short hairs, got your tit in a wringer, it does. It's got the hold on you. It's got tiny wet sucking fingers, green fingers - it's the slime, and it's got you.
It's saying it is time to start paying your dues. It's saying that it is time to start feeling all that pain that has built up on you like a crust. It's saying that it is time to get back to work. To free your words. To face your children, your spouse, your divorce, your ruin of your life, or perhaps its success. That it is time to deal with the devil you have created. For they are all your creations, all of them. It is your own children that call to you.
It's a sneaky kind of plant, a patient kind of plant. It is glad to wait, to let you control it. It is always ready to talk or parley and negotiate. But note, the plant is a shrewd negotiator. It loves to make deals, but it always takes the first night for itself: you say to the ally, "OK, I'll spend tonight with you, but tomorrow night I spend with my family, and you stay locked up in the cupboard." It will always say yes to deals like this, but never to the converse.
It's a nightmare. It's a slime well. Every direction is uphill, and it's all ice.
The ally says that it is time to deal with the devil you have created. It is your own creation, it is your art. It is, perhaps, gothic, but nonetheless there is an inner integrity to it. It is your genius, only your genius could have created such an elaborate prison for your own self. The ally is telling you you have built enough. Enough locks, enough doors, enough curtains and shades, bars and obstacles. They are all yours to burn.
Look upon it as the devil's firewood, and now you have a shed-ful. Call it your "material" in the alchemical sense. So there is still cause for hope, for now you have a practice, you have a discipline, a pat...
If the headaches you are referring to are hangovers, this is common and happened to me. The community often refers to them as "Nalovers". Those stopped for me when my consumption got down to a safe level. I recommend sticking to the method if it is just that your hangovers are now much worse.
I was disappointed that I didn't get any of the benefits I frequently found mentioned online. I didn't lose any weight, my skin didn't look better, my thinking hasn't become any more clear, I didn't become more productive and my relationships haven't improved. But those were all in pretty decent shape while I was still drinking regularly.
All in all, life just became a little more boring. It wasn't even that hard to reduce my drinking, after having come to terms with the life-becoming-more-boring part. I just wish there was some substance which would fill the same niche without the health risks. Weed isn't really it.
Maybe I just haven't come across the right kind. Thanks for the tip!
It's definitely not a one to one replacement for alcohol, as I don't find myself doing exactly the same things as I would if I went out drinking, but what I do when I get high generally feels more fulfilling.
I've started meditating to try and raise my "boredom tolerance". It's too early to say if it has made any difference but I've met people who swear by it. I'm also trying to get more curious about other people and essentially rely on my extraversion to deal with boring situations.
In terms of substances to fill the niche I don't think there's anything that exists. Coffee is nice during the day but drinking it past a certain time leads to insomnia. I've mostly just taken to drinking a wide variety of non-alcoholic beverages LaCroix and non-alcoholic beer.
Pharmacologically speaking the closest drugs would be GABA receptor agonists (e.g. phenibut, benzos, GHB) but those can be quite nasty and even more addictive than alcohol. I have not personally tried them and don't plan on it.
The effects last for up to 2 hours, and there is no hangover. In a way that's difficult to describe, the effects also feel "cleaner" somehow than alcohol.
It can be psychologically addictive for some people, but does not cause physical dependency.
If you're adverse to snorting powder (very understandable), ketamine is water soluble, so you can dissolve it in saline solution and put in a metered nasal spray bottle (which typically deliver ~0.13 ml/spray).
It always amazes me that casual and habitual drinking is an accepted thing. People even seem to take pride in their alcohol tolerance, and congratulate each other for drinking more of the substance than others would even attempt.
yes, everyone agrees drinking and driving is stupid, dangerous, and selfish. yet there are so many bars that are located such that nearly 100% of the patrons drove to/from the bar. Yes, some may have a designated driver, but I suspect many many simply drink and drive because they feel OK to drive and walking home isn't an option.
I'm a 175 lb man and after a single beer I'm sure I'm not legally drunk, but I can sure as hell tell that my perception and reflexes are affected.
This has always irritated me. It isn't that the bars are located where they are: It is more that walking home simply isn't safe combined with the absolute lack of public transportation. I've seen some of these bars in places that don't even have taxis available - and honestly, even if they were I somewhat doubt patrons could afford the fare since most of the surrounding area was countryside.
To be fair, even living in the city where walking home is an option, actually doing so was a bad idea in the US. This is mostly because of public intoxication laws. On the other hand, I think some states have eased up on this because it seemed to encourage drunk driving. (Police in Indiana used to wait outside of bars for drunk people to come out of them).
Public intoxication laws are totalitarian bullshit.
We tried prohibition during an extremely prude moment in the USA. It failed so miserably that we passed a constitutional amendment to revert a previous amendment, which is pretty incredible.
The stories of people who let any vice ruin their lives are powerful and important to know. But don’t let stories restrict the freedom of everyone. If alcohol was so bad then we never would have legalized it after prohibition. Everything is a trade off, and it’s better to let people make their own decisions than to throw people in jail.
Prohibition did not worked just like drug war don't work, but it did not started on whim for no reason.
The vape lung disease is so concerning because it killed people in a few days or a week. Where as cigarettes would reliably shave X years off someone's life. I can easily make a decision to never use a vape at all or never from underground source.
It seem logical the rise in death from alcoholism is broadly related to the "death from despair" phenomena many credit for declining US life expectancy.
[1]https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption, see chart "Alcohol consumption per capita"
[1]https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/
Oh well, people drinking.... social darwinism. Drink away I guess
I used to think that I was going to drink at one point. I remember thinking, "if I was of age I'd like to buy that lady a drink." But by the time I turned of age and could, I decided I wouldn't touch it. I'd never really been offered alcohol growing up - so maybe that helped settle in the habit. But, I got offered it constantly once I was of age. I declined every time and never sought it out. I don't drink at all and even more so, I don't pay or contribute to alcohol bills directly. If my significant other wants a drink, I tell her to put it on a separate bill.
I used to think that maybe I'd drink but then I'd go to parties and smell beer. And I knew I wouldn't. I'd feel so much anger and resentment as soon as I smelled it. It pulled me back into hell. On top of this, I felt like I was the prime candidate for substance abuse. I have amazing executive control (I have suffered incredible emotional and physical pain over the last decade but I have never shed a tear in that time. Hell, I watched a lot of Disney movies and I still didn't. I do it just to prove that I still have control). You lose some of that control when you drink alcohol (from what I've been told).
So, I just don't. I don't care to know if I'm a jovial or mean drunk. I don't need to know if I'll have a substance abuse problem. Personally, I'd be quite happy if it didn't exist. I wouldn't have to deal with the problems it causes so frequently. I abstain from most other substances as well for similar reasons. (Caffeine really being the only thing that I normally ingest)
Edit: Let me mention that the guardrails on this have narrowed since my daughter was born.
I would think this was sarcasm if not for the edit.
This is distinction is important to note so friends and families can identify regressions earlier and thus better manage the resulting behaviors. I don't support strict abstinence or the 12 stepsbut every addict needs a system thatcatches them well before their live disintegrates. By recognizing when someone is slipping from casual use into binges and benders we can all save lives, money, time, and relationships.
This is a strange statement. Is this poorly phrased or do you actually think recurring alcoholics should continue endlessly drinking and relapsing rather than abstaining?
I also don’t think addicts should expect friends and family to be their guardrails. If you cannot drink in moderation without slipping into alcoholic behaviors, then it’s on you to stop rather than expect others to attempt to manage your addiction for you. It’s unhealthy, irresponsible, and inconsiderate to attempt to put that burden on others. Not only is this likely an ineffective strategy, but it drives others away.
I don't support forcing strict abstinence on people. For example, the fake marijuana crisis that ravaged Florida and the rest of America years ago wouldn't have occurred had marijuana been legal. Instead every impoverished broken person on probation had a new fix available to them. This time it was dangerous untested drugs made in sketchy Chinese labs.
If someone swears off (x) then that's their decision. If I tell you to never eat meat, drink milk, or travel via any method that consumes fossil fuels you'd rightly think I'm crazy. Just the same, telling addicts to stop drinking or drugging when just about everyone they know does is crazy. Do I need to explain why?
The expectation is not to have addicts rely on their family to keep them from falling off the wagon. Instead, when you accept the fact that strict abstinence is a pipe dream you have to start actually planning how you live around an addict instead of blithely thinking they'll never relapse you can help them get back on their feet. If that's too much to ask of you then you aren't their friend and should warn them that you're not going to help them when they're struggling. Because there's a solid chance that if someone is relapsing a lot of other shit went wrong. And if you're a close friend or family then you carry some responsibility for not helping them.
[1] https://www.aa.org
not to offend, but that doesn't define executive control to me. Generally it's not unhealthy to cry during emotionally turbulent episodes in your life; it's (crying) a method by which you're controlling your stress. Those i've met that don't cry tend to have longer periods between emotional 'episodes', but tend to act out much more aggressively. I tend to think that the supression of emotions does little to satisfy our need to express them, it just puts them on the backburner until they finally boil over much more violently than normal.
Another point, by which i'm not trying to offend you personally : is it healthy to villanize alcohol? It seems that would take the responsibility away from your father, when in reality he's the one who abused a substance that plenty of people can enjoy casually without issue.
I'm glad your coping with whatever methods you find that work personally, but I think that in a general sense that it is self-damaging to damn things in life based off of the experiences of others. Of course, that doesn't apply to suicidal ventures, but to avoiding common things in life.
This is modern pseudoscientific nonsense, born in part of institutional crises in academia.
>Those i've met that don't cry tend to have longer periods between emotional 'episodes', but tend to act out much more aggressively.
This is blatant projection of personal bias.
Some people, men in particular, deal with emotions stoically. It's a perfectly valid approach, eastern philosophy has been teaching meditation to a similar end for thousands of years, not to mention this particular gender norm existed until very recent time, while we built civilization.
I challenge you to cite a reproducible, unbiased study that rigorously demonstrates the necessity of crying for all, or at least a sizable majority of, people. The trouble is you're dealing with the softest of sciences, one which is particularly vulnerable to bias from institutional dogma.
I don’t think I’m in a good position to guess at which sex is treated worse by medical research but I don’t think it’s obviously men.
But if the person you’re responding to is truthful, it’s odd that if the rates were similar why we only hear about one of the two groups being affected, isn’t it? I think if you search you can find a lot of these across both sexes, actually. I’m not sure what the cause of throat HPV is, but if it’s oral sex on women maybe that reveals a societies taboo. It’s so taboo that we are willing to let people die rather than admit it.
Anyway just a few thoughts as I was skimming the posts here.
If you're arguing for the stoic-ness of traditional masculinity as a way to maintain mental health, as the comment I was replying to was, it's important to understand the real mental health issues and longevity issues associated with that same behavior.
You can blame masculinity, or you can blame society for how it react to men who seek help.
In the case of HPV caused cancer this is because there is (rightly) a massive screening program for cervical cancer and yet most men that have sex with men don't even know that they are at increased risk of HPV caused throat cancer. Similar programs exist for other diseases that exclusively affect women. They do not for diseases that exclusively or disproportionately affect men.
Besides I read a few rock star biographies. One thing that struck me is that from all the addictions they had, alcohol was for most the hardest to overcome. Because alcohol is so pervasive in our society, I think a lot of people under-estimate the risk.
My attitude has caused weird things in relationships though. I was in a serious relationship when I was younger and while discussing kids I told her that if I ever had kids I would never drink again. The girl was beside herself and ended up mad at me about that for some reason. She just didn't understand what I saw and experienced growing up. Among other things, there is a smell that comes from heavy drinkers in the morning and it's not something I would ever want my kids to experience.
Possible too much information, but if someone can find comfort or benefit in knowing bits of my story then it's a good thing.
I assume this has worked well for you, and I’m glad if it has.
Are you married, or in a long-term relationship where you have a shared bank account? Will your attitude towards this change under those conditions? Or do you plan to continue asking your significant other to separate it out and specifically use her money to pay?
This sound less healthy than drinking alcohol occasionally. It sounds as if you're glorifying some kind of stunted emotional capacity.
My grandfather was an alcoholic.
He was stationed at various places in Europe during WW2 and saw some truly horrible things during that time. He had nightmares for the rest of his life.
After the war, he drank vodka for many years, then later switched to cheap, strong lager (something like 8-10%, which tasted like cat's piss), which he drank all day, every day, for another 20 years or so. He didn't eat much during this time, presumably because he was full of lager.
A bit of an aside, but I may as well add some more, since we're sharing stories. He ended up in hospital for a few weeks due to some condition caused by his alcoholism (surprising it took so long, really), and nearly died. He went through withdrawals during that time, and almost dieing gave him quite the scare - he never touched another drop from that day on. It was quite incredible how he was able to just stop with no relapse after drinking so heavily for so long.