[HN Gopher] The big alcohol study that didn't happen
___________________________________________________________________
The big alcohol study that didn't happen
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 192 points
Date : 2021-10-04 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| h2odragon wrote:
| If the prohibitionists and the distillers can agree on protocols
| to collect and publish data, to the point they're both willing to
| fund it; then yes that certainly seems worth doing and then
| everyone gets to argue about that data set for the next century.
|
| Isn't there another reading of this story that goes "NYT spikes
| cool thing for quick sensation?" File it with "Slate Star Codex"
| and other examples of predatory reporting there.
| elmomle wrote:
| Could you provide some good examples of predatory reporting
| from Slate Star Codex? I don't doubt you, just genuinely
| curious.
| sixo wrote:
| Likely referring to NYT's piece _on_ SSC
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-
| cod..., summarized in
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-
| my-... )
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The commenter meant that SSC was the _subject_ of (i.e. an
| example of) the New York Times 's predatory reporting.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The first NYT article was problematic and more of an editorial,
| however the second follow up article did expose real issues
| with the "firewall" that deserved to be brought to light.
| searine wrote:
| This seems like a success story for government science :
|
| 1. A shady dude and his business colleagues try to shoe-horn in a
| preconceived conclusion into a large RCT and co-opt the NIH brand
| for authenticity.
|
| 2. They have some initial success but once enrollment starts a
| variety of red-flags are raised and the whole thing is canned
| before any results are produced or large amounts of money spent.
|
| 3. Shady dues reputation is ruined, people are fired, and new
| safe guards are in place.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I love this article so much, the tone, the perspective, the
| research.
|
| I love how he mounts a reasonable defense of everyone involved,
| then proceeds to argue against his own defense and tear them
| down.
|
| I want to be friends with the author.
| kypro wrote:
| I agree. I love reading articles like this because it forces me
| to question what I think is the right perspective rather than
| just digest whatever perspective the author is feeding me.
|
| I don't know why more journalists don't write like this. Is it
| just that people prefer being told what the right and wrong
| opinion to have is? Or is it simply because most journalists
| care more about reporting their opinion than trying to fairly
| represent both sides of the story in question? I guess it could
| be argued some opinions are so clearly wrong that they don't
| deserve the benefit of the doubt, but even then there is often
| a lot more nuance than is typically reported.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Or is it simply because most journalists care more about
| reporting their opinion
|
| I mean... this piece actually has much _more_ opinion in it
| than "journalism" is "supposed" to, doesn't it? It's an
| opinion piece, not a piece of journalism, although he does a
| bit of research for it.
|
| So I find it a bit confusing to ask for "more journalists" to
| write like this, while also saying you think most journalists
| care _more_ about reporting their opinion than OP... OP
| actually centers it 's opinion pretty directly, no? Mostly I
| think this piece is doing something that is not what
| journalism is even expected to do at all.
|
| But to be sure the distinction between "journalism" and
| "opinion" is pretty confusing and blurry these days (because
| opinion rather than journalism both gets more clicks and is
| cheaper!). I'm not sure the solution to problems with
| journalism lies in asking journalists to write journalism
| more like an opinion piece, even a very well-written opinion
| piece!
| Spivak wrote:
| See that's the thing, I think we've painted journalism as
| existing on some imaginary spectrum of "just the facts
| ma'am" which is good, and "editorializing with an agenda"
| which is bad.
|
| But by far my favorite pieces of journalism are dripping
| with opinion and character and full of bias. The X factor
| that makes the result, to me way less biased than most
| journalism, is that they are introspective of their own
| biases, display empathy toward everyone involved, argue in
| good faith for everyone involved, and draws their own
| conclusion from the results of their imaginary argument
| with their crew of alter-egos.
|
| It takes something special (and a lot of practice) to argue
| for someone you disagree with in such a way that that
| someone would say you did a good job.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This seems like a great writeup, but I'm a little skeeved by the
| genericness of the website it's on and the fact that absolutely
| no information about the author which might let me discern their
| intentions, biases, prior viewpoints, etc. is available that I
| can find.
|
| Does anyone know anything more about the person who writes at
| this site?
|
| (I know, I know, it doesn't matter who they are if their
| arguments are good. I'm just at the point where I pretty much
| have to assume bad faith until proven good faith when faced with
| any new source of online information.)
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| Does anyone actually know anyone who drinks more than 2 drinks
| every day? The only people I knew like that were homeless, and I
| was more concerned about other issues with them, than the
| drinking (which was more of a symptom than a cause, imo).
|
| Am I naive for thinking that everyone knows that Alcohol is not
| good for them? Funding research into it seems like a waste of
| money, since I also believe that people should be 100% free to
| ingest whatever they want. You can't ban alcohol, its too easy to
| make. I barely drink, but its undeniably important to our
| culture.
|
| e: Apparently I am quite naive. My crowd is more likely to have
| cannabis addictions than alcohol.
| bityard wrote:
| I'm not and have never been an alcoholic. But I have have
| family members that are (or rather were, before they died from
| it) and often felt that it's something that I could easily slip
| into myself if I didn't make a conscious effort to avoid all
| non-social drinking. So alcoholism is something I have spent
| some time researching.
|
| > Does anyone actually know anyone who drinks more than 2
| drinks every day? The only people I knew like that were
| homeless
|
| My uncle died a couple years ago. He was a functional alcoholic
| and workaholic for almost his whole life, until his age caught
| up with him and he couldn't work anymore. Then he just became
| an alcoholic. He was a multi-millionaire when he died, so he
| could have afforded the help if he wanted it and could have
| admitted to anyone (not least of all himself) that he had a
| problem.
|
| Alcohol itself is not a problem. Alcohol ADDICTION is a very
| serious problem that does not get anywhere near the attention
| and seriousness that it should.
|
| > Am I naive for thinking that everyone knows that Alcohol is
| not good for them?
|
| Yes. And of those who know, many simply don't care and value
| the buzz more than the health downsides. Or feel helpless to
| stop due to the grip of addition. Or are so far gone that they
| secretly hope for an early death.
|
| > You also can't ban alcohol.
|
| I agree that a flat-out alcohol ban would be a failure. It was
| already tried and not only did it not work and caused all kinds
| of strife, it essentially gave rise to organized crime. If it
| was tried today, it would look identical to the War on Drugs
| which did nothing to help society, lined the pockets for
| various government organizations, contractors, and politicians,
| and filled prisons with non-violent offenders.
|
| > I barely drink, but its undeniably important to our culture.
|
| I'll agree that it is "important" in the sense that it is
| omnipresent in many people's daily lives. Even if I don't drink
| regularly, many friends, families, and neighbors do. People
| drink on the TV shows I watch. Co-workers make jokes about how
| many beers it takes to debug a particular program. People I
| know die directly or indirectly from it.
|
| But is it a necessary part of any culture? Absolutely not. And
| just to be clear, I'm not arguing for a ban or any other
| method, but when I ask myself whether the world would be better
| off without mass alcohol consumption, the answer is an
| unequivocal yes.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Does anyone actually know anyone who drinks more than 2
| drinks every day?
|
| Both my parents, who were successful professionals, did this.
|
| I wasn't even aware it was abnormal.
| scrapcode wrote:
| To be honest, I know more that do than do not. Especially if
| you take weekend drinking and spread that out as an average
| throughout the week.
| EngineerBetter wrote:
| Yes. Admittedly they both work in bars/breweries.
|
| It'd be interesting to see the experience of folks in
| continental Europe, where I gather wine with meals is much more
| commonplace.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'd highly recommend you actually do the calculation of what a
| "standard drink" is. You might be surprised. In my garage
| fridge is a pint sized can of alcoholic Kombucha at 7% ABV.
| Higher than most beers, for sure, but not unusual for some
| craft beers in my experience. Back of the envelope calculations
| has that at 1.8 standard drinks, very close to the limit.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| I sure do. There was a time in my life where I was getting
| properly drunk every single night for years and held down a
| programming job the whole time (and I still do!). I know
| several colleagues who drink far more than two drinks a day and
| are all productive and well liked at their jobs (all ate in
| their late-30s to mid-60s).
|
| Sometimes people spend years trying to find the right
| prescription drug to quiet their daemons (with awful side-
| effects along the way) but oh so often, good ol' over-the-
| counter alcohol JustWorks.
| [deleted]
| nkurz wrote:
| > Apparently I am quite naive. My crowd is more likely to have
| cannabis addictions than alcohol.
|
| Where are you located? My impression --- which I'd like to see
| better evidence for --- is that in the US, heavier drinking is
| more prevalent in higher social classes on the East Coast than
| the West Coast.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The short answer is 1 in 5 people in the US drink more than 2
| drinks per day on average.
|
| I know many people who fall in the second from the top decile
| of drinking (i.e. between 2 and 10 drinks a day). Some of the
| people who I think are in this group are probably actually in
| the top decile (above 10 drinks a day) and conceal the real
| quantities they consume
|
| Let me put it this way, 75% of alcohol is sold to people who
| drink more than 10 drinks per day and this group comprises 10%
| of the US (the top decile of drinking.) Given the numbers it is
| pretty clear that a strong majority of this group is not
| homeless.
| flatiron wrote:
| in the beginning of the pandemic i was drinking probably half a
| bottle of wine a night which is probably ~3 glasses. the stress
| of everything, being stuck at home with 3 young children, etc.
| took actually a while to kick the habit. now i just have a few
| friday night and over the weekend. but during that time i still
| went to work and was my normal dad self, just after the kids
| went to be drank a bit. i think you can do some moderate
| drinking without being homeless although i do feel much
| healthier now that i don't drink much during the week
| Symbiote wrote:
| Half a bottle (375mL) of 12% wine is 45mL of alcohol, or 4.5
| UK "units", or 21/2 US standard drinks. 750
| mL / 2 * 0.12 = 45 mL = 4.5 "UK units" 45mL * 0.789g/mL
| / 14 = 2.54 "US standard drinks"
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| I'm shocked you have a wide enough circle of friends to include
| homeless people but not, like any craft beer enthusiast.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| After I graduated from College in 2020, I humbled myself and
| got a job at Ralphs so that I could make rent payments. I
| worked at one across from a major park in Los Angeles so I
| just happened to get to know a lot of homeless people.
|
| I was in engineering school so many of my friends at the same
| intellectual caliber were more interested in robots than
| partying, but even the more enthusiastic drinkers would only
| drink that much if we were partying.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > Am I naive for thinking that everyone knows that Alcohol is
| not good for them?
|
| Yes, extremely. Aside from the fact that I know plenty of
| people in my extended family who drink more than 2 drinks per
| day, the vast majority of my family clings to the "a drink a
| day is better for you than none".
| friendly_chap wrote:
| Eastern European here, but I spent most of my adult life in the
| UK. Almost every person I know drinks a few beers or shots a
| day. 2-3 on a normal, uneventful day, and a about 5-8 drinks
| when meeting up with family/friends etc, and 10-20+ drinks on a
| night out.
|
| None of them show physical symptoms yet, all highly functioning
| people, but I suspect that is mostly due to their youth
| (20-40).
|
| I personally went teetotaler about a year ago. Drinking is
| loads of fun and I miss it, but I appreciate a steady mood now
| way more than the ups and downs of alcohol induced euphoria,
| then potential anxiety etc.
| watt wrote:
| It takes about 10 years for full blown alcohol dependency to
| develop, I feel that's the one unspoken truth about
| alcoholism. It's a slow descent.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Yes I do. And they don't think it is a health problem at all.
| Even working in tech in downtown SF, there would be happy hours
| all the time and free-flowing booze. I told myself I was a
| "social drinker" but found myself at 2-4 drinks every single
| workday. So Monday is a python meet-up with drinks. Tuesday is
| someone's birthday and also Taco Tuesday so we all go out for
| tacos and drinks. Wednesday is some alumni event downtown with
| drinks. Thursday is my non-work friends' "Thirsty Thursday"
| drinks. Friday is the unofficial company-sponsored happy hour
| where the managers bring out Whisky at 3-4pm.
|
| All of a sudden, I was on the road to alcoholism, just by
| trying to fit in and be a little more extroverted. And the
| booze certainly helps someone who is anxious and introverted do
| exactly that.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Alcoholism/Functional alcoholism is fairly pervasive. I'd say
| you're either naive or your circle of family and friends are
| saints.
|
| Yes, I know several people that fit that description by much
| more than 2 drinks every single day.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Two drinks is not as much as you think.
|
| I'm 5'11", 235lbs - I could stand to lose a little weight, but
| I've got a lot of muscle mass. I can drink a standard 12-oz 5%
| beer with a meal and not even notice the alcohol.
|
| I can do that at lunch and dinner and not be noticeably
| intoxicated _at all_.
| more_corn wrote:
| I can think of half a dozen people who drink more than 2 a day.
| Heavy drinking is very common in the UK and Europe, Scandinavia
| especially in my experience. I stopped drinking a year ago
| because I was in the habit of having 4 and conversations like
| this convinced me I was killing myself.
| taneq wrote:
| Like, every day, or on average?
| kodt wrote:
| I know plenty of people who will regularly consume a bottle of
| wine a night, or a 6-pack a day. It is very common.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Plenty of people. Once you start paying attention, you see many
| many casual alcoholics. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted
| because it's a common misconception as others have pointed out
| how much constitutes a drink and how much we're actually
| drinking.
| atestu wrote:
| Yes... 1 glass of wine per meal is not crazy. Adds up to 2
| drinks a day and that's not counting aperitif or any after-
| dinner drinks.
| pkd wrote:
| I have known people who believe that "moderate drinking" is
| actually beneficial to health - something that has been shown
| to be untrue when controlling for socio-economic factors.
|
| I believe people should be free to chose to drink too, but
| alcohol is truly in the "culture", like you said. Very few
| clearly harmful activities like that are part of any culture
| and that is what makes it important for us to educate society
| about this. I believe that alcohol should come with the same
| level of warning as cigarettes do, but the society is not there
| yet.
| more_corn wrote:
| There was a meta-study a year and a half ago. It seemed to
| indicate that the supposed beneficial effects could be
| explained by moderate drinkers tending to exercise more and
| generally make sound health decisions. The study seemed to
| indicate that the safe number of drinks is one or two PER
| WEEK. It seems that zero is the number of safe drinks per
| day.
| kovek wrote:
| Such a strong belief that moderate drinking is beneficial..
| "It gets the heart running". How to explain that it's not
| beneficial? How to show a study and have people believe in
| said study? Which study did you refer to?
| wusher wrote:
| Yes, a few of my friends and none of them are homeless. Granted
| the number of drinks they do consume has gone down as we've all
| become older.
|
| Separately, when I was in the army, and much younger, we all
| consumed significantly more than 2 drinks day and were still
| high performers at our job.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| It's pretty easy to go over two units in a day if you drink
| casually and aren't paying attention. Checking a handy online
| chart, 2 units of red wine is 70% of an US measuring cup -
| 167ml. So if you thought a "cup" (as in measuring cup) of wine
| was fine, you'd be over 2.
|
| A bottle of 5% beer is defined as 1.7 units, therefore a bottle
| of 6.5% or 7% craft beer would be well over 2 units.
| throwaway9191aa wrote:
| I was reading https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-
| health/overview-a..., which looks a little different than
| your chart, but the craft beer thing (imho) is dangerous (and
| I love craft beer).
|
| Most of the beers I like are 7.5%, except stouts which are
| 10-12%. They also come in large 16oz cans. Two of these is
| almost 4 drinks. "Craft beer enthusiast" can start to
| approach heavy drinker very quickly.
| Symbiote wrote:
| 16oz = 473mL. Now that's out of the way...
|
| I often socialize with a Belgian guy, and he will choose
| similarly strong Belgian beers, but will almost always
| split the bottle with someone else. I think that can would
| probably be split three ways -- it is equivalent to 21/2 to
| 3 reasonable glasses of wine.
|
| _Sometimes_ that means drinking less, but it might also
| mean each person tries a wider selection of beers.
|
| (A deleted comment asked for a "European" view, and I
| should make clear this is not a unified European view.
| That's impossible, as drinking culture varies massively
| between countries, by drink, culture, law and tax.)
| shkkmo wrote:
| Your numbers are off. Based on your link, a 12oz 5% beer is
| one drink so a 16oz 7.5% is 2 drinks (1.5 * 4/3) and thus
| two of those is exactly 4 drinks.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calculating-
| alc...
|
| Here was the reference I used. Small glass of
| red/white/rose wine (125ml, ABV 12%) 1.5 units Bottle of
| lager/beer/cider (330ml, ABV 5%) 1.7 units
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Oh, and wow. 16oz = 473ml (had to look that up)
|
| 473ml*0.12 = 57ml of alcohol (!) - so almost 6 10ml units
| in a single can??? so two of those 12% stouts would be
| 11.4 units! Ouch... Yeah. Maybe switch to one of them as
| a special treat once in a while. :)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| A measuring cup of wine is obviously more than a standard
| drink.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In England, pubs usually sell "small", "medium" or "large"
| glasses of wine, which are 125mL, 150mL and 250mL. ([1] for
| good evidence for this, that you can buy measures for it.
| There's also a law [2].)
|
| But the comparisons in this discussion are all confused, as
| the first person wrote "US measuring cup" but used UK
| alcohol "units" (which are 10mL = 6g), but the US "standard
| drink" contains 11g = 18mL alcohol.
|
| UK units are nicer to calculate, as an example 150mL glass
| of 13% wine contains 150 x 13 / 1000 - 1.95 "units" alcohol
| (19.5mL).
|
| But the US standard drink is probably nearer to what people
| actually consider one drink. The UK site shows that typical
| drinks are nearer 2-3 units [3].
|
| [1] https://www.wineware.co.uk/professional-stainless-
| steel-thim...
|
| [2] https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-
| law/sp...
|
| [3] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-
| support/calculating-alc...
| [deleted]
| capitainenemo wrote:
| Yeah, sorry, I was trying to use the "measuring cup" for
| familiar reference purposes. The 10 ml of alcohol measure
| in the UK (with 1-2 units being the "safe" range)
| definitely seems a lot clearer and easier to approximate
| if your drink has an ABV % to me than the "standard drink
| which is all over the place:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_drink
|
| "For example, in the United States, a standard drink
| contains about 14 grams of alcohol." "Different countries
| define standard drinks differently. For example, in
| Australia, a standard drink contains 10 grams of
| alcohol,[4] but in Japan, one "unit" contains
| approximately 20 grams."
| capitainenemo wrote:
| But, ok, yeah, I'm sorry. I'd perked up and replied to
| parent because the "2 standard unit 20ml limit" as "safe"
| seems to show up in a bunch of studies, and interpreted
| "2 drinks" as that. But if he meant US standard drink
| that would be a 1.7*2 units (or 2 5% beer bottles), which
| is a bit harder to hit (but also firmly in unhealthy
| territory). That said, as another person noted, you can
| blow through that with a high ABV craft beer really
| easily (or an overly full glass of wine).
| capitainenemo wrote:
| It's a very large glass of wine, yes. That said, I've been
| in restaurants with large wine glasses that generously fill
| them.
|
| I guess if you're paying by the bottle who cares. Ensures
| more consumption?
|
| And, was more noting how people could deceive themselves. I
| just fetched one of the large wine glasses from the
| kitchen. Filled but well below the rim (maybe a couple of
| cm below) it was 2 cups of water (so 6 units!) - I emptied
| out the water and filled it with 1 cup of water (so well
| over the 2 units) the glass was less than half full.
| Visually looked about a third of the way up the glass due
| to the curve.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Funding research into it seems like a waste of money..._ "
|
| If, as you say, you cannot (and should not) ban alcohol, then
| finding out how bad it is, and in what ways, is somewhat
| important.
| dynm wrote:
| > Am I naive for thinking that everyone knows that Alcohol is
| not good for them?
|
| I think people definitely understand that heavy drinking (e.g.
| more than 2 drinks per day) is bad for you. The question is
| really about the impact of moderate drinking (1-2 drinks) where
| the science is unsettled, and people have differing opinions.
| Answering this was the goal if this particular study.
| Maursault wrote:
| > moderate drinking (1-2 drinks)
|
| I really feel like _moderate drinking_ is a poor standard
| invented by the industry to prevent loss of sales due to
| science, and ultimately an oxymoron not unlike _safe
| cigarette_ , _clean coal_.
|
| Though alcohol is out of the drinker's system within 24
| hours, what that drink does to their system takes a month to
| play out. Yet someone who has had strictly 1-2 drinks a day
| for decades is somehow a _moderate_ drinker? If a drinker
| hasn 't gone a single month without a drink since their
| junior year of high school, I believe the more accurate label
| is _alcoholic_.
| handrous wrote:
| Quite a few people average one or two normal-person-defined
| "drinks" of alcohol per day. However, one normal-person drink
| of alcohol is _very probably_ two or more scientists
| '/regulators' "drinks", because those are--for reasons I can't
| fathom unless the intent is to mislead people to believe their
| drinking is healthier than it is--so tiny that very few people
| would consider them one entire serving.
| brainzap wrote:
| People don't know that alcohol is one of the strongest poisons
| we use. Kills about 260 people per day in the US. Please fight
| for the health of your friends.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Dihydrogen monoxide is way worse...
|
| Joking aside, the dose makes the poison. On a society level,
| alcohol is a problem, but on a personal level, it is still
| unclear how much of an effect moderate drinking has, and in
| which direction it goes, that's the topic of the article.
|
| If you want a strong poison most of us use, take
| acetaminophen. More than 12g and it can kill you by liver
| failure. It is the leading cause of acute poisoning, and yet,
| it is very safe at normal doses (1gx3/day).
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| I've always wondered about this too. Seems like it would be
| cost prohibitive if nothing else.
|
| During one stretch of my life where I was really stressed out I
| was having 2-3 glasses of wine a night for about 3 straight
| months. Aside from that, I can't imagine having more than a
| glass or two of something every week or so.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Alcoholics tend to not buy super expensive drinks. It's
| mostly low-end cheap vodka purchased in 1.75 liter bottles in
| my experience.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| A bottle of wine contains about 6 servings, so if you buy $6
| wine, that's around a dollar a serving, $60/month is not cost
| prohibitive for many people.
|
| My local beverage store has lots of wine choices < $5, many
| have pretty good reviews (4+ stars out of 5)
|
| Though if you're looking for the best bang for the buck, they
| have a 1.75l vodka for $8.99 - at 40 servings per bottle,
| that's about 50 cents a day for 2 servings a day.
| lkbm wrote:
| You mean for cost-prohibitive homeless people? For people
| with decent incomes, 3-5 drinks a day is easily affordable.
| Beer is < $1.00/drink[0] and Trader Joe's sells bottles of
| wine for $2.00[1].
|
| A single coffee costs $4 before tip most places I've visited
| in Austin.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/how-much-a-case-of-beer-
| cost...
|
| [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/21/two-buck-chuck-
| return...
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| I'm a light drinker (a beer a month range, and months without).
|
| That said, I'm interested in the moderate drinking results.
|
| Some alcohol intake is perhaps self medication for other issues
| - ie, stress etc. Perhaps there is a small positive there -
| though a larger positive would be to try and solve root causes?
|
| Not - HN has gotten a bit downvote heavy these days - don't
| take it too seriously.
| anarticle wrote:
| In the mid 2000s NIH was flat funded, and lots of alcohol
| research went out the window. I worked at a place that did
| alcohol research at large (mostly mitochondria/liver systems
| biology stuff). Mostly the idea from funders was that alcoholism
| is not a disease, and funding should be moved to more pressing
| things like cancer/diabetes. I would say half the surviving labs
| moved on to metabolic issues in disease, and the other half did
| translational medicine based on their research. This was a huge
| blow, caused a few retirements and closing of several labs. I had
| to lay off a couple of my friends (technicians).
|
| It is surprising the alcohol industry is going to such huge
| lengths, and I can't remember ever hearing of such things. It
| would be a huge blow to your credibility at the time I was in
| science.
| frandroid wrote:
| Duplicate
| anarticle wrote:
| Ah, sorry! Janky internet due to today's bad internet
| weather.
| anarticle wrote:
| In the mid 2000s NIH was flat funded, and lots of alcohol
| research went out the window. I worked at a place that did
| alcohol research at large (mostly mitochondria/liver systems
| biology stuff). Mostly the idea from funders was that alcoholism
| is not a disease, and funding should be moved to more pressing
| things like cancer/diabetes. I would say half the surviving labs
| moved on to metabolic issues in disease, and the other half did
| translational medicine based on their research. This was a huge
| blow, caused a few retirements and closing of several labs. I had
| to lay off a couple of my friends (technicians).
|
| It is surprising the alcohol industry is going to such huge
| lengths, and I can't remember ever hearing of such things. It
| would be a huge blow to your credibility at the time I was in
| science.
|
| I do enjoy the author trying to look at both sides at the end.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'd be interested to see the why/how behind the TB correlation.
| Like is it just secondary?
| ruined wrote:
| alcohol suppresses the immune system, making infection more
| likely. TB is also correlated with homelessness, poverty,
| incarceration, and addiction to other drugs, which all have
| obvious relations to heavy drinking, and TB treatments are
| generally hard on the liver, making prognosis worse and
| progress from exposure to disease more likely for heavy
| drinkers.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "TB is also correlated with homelessness, poverty,
| incarceration..."
|
| This was along the lines of what I was thinking. I just found
| it odd that the others seemed to be direct and this one is a
| second order (or higher) impact.
| peter_retief wrote:
| Any alchohol is bad for you, dont believe the one drink a day is
| healthy. Just don't drink and your chances of living a healthy
| long life are good.
| Koshkin wrote:
| "... but liquor is quicker!"
| misiti3780 wrote:
| sounds fun!
| bluGill wrote:
| There are lots of ways to have find. If you need alcohol to
| have fun, it shows how little you know about having fun. Get
| a bike, or a wood chisel, or a chess board (snip a few
| million other ways to have fun)
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I'm going out on a limb and gonna say your probably the odd
| person out if you think a chessboard is more fun than a
| dry, dirty gin martini.
| asdff wrote:
| Anything can be responsible or dangerous. Woodworking can
| be bad. I had relatives who would go down to the garage or
| basement and aggressively push wood through tablesaws to
| vent off steam. They didn't have all their fingers.
| shadowtree wrote:
| All those physical health effects ignore the other aspect, which
| is mental health.
|
| Alcohol is about self-medication, at the core of human
| civilization for a long, long time. China, India, Egypt so many
| early examples (https://www.cato.org/commentary/alcohol-caffeine-
| created-civ...).
|
| How many people would be under more stress, have less
| relationships without alcohol? It absolutely works as social
| grease, loosens up nerves and is a very nice way of calming down.
|
| I know so much in modern culture is about this weird asceticism,
| removing _anything_ tasteful, fun, stupid and optimize for
| longevity - but what 's the point to live in total boredom?
|
| I like alcohol, it connects across millenia.
| beebmam wrote:
| Superbly written article, covering so much of the nuance involved
| in medical science. Easily one of the best links I've ever come
| across on Hacker News.
| danepowell wrote:
| I don't disagree with the article at all, I think it's
| conclusions are probably largely right.
|
| But it's hard to take seriously when the very first figure has a
| logarithmic y-axis without any callout in the discussion,
| exaggerating the appearance of the negative effects.
| whiterock wrote:
| The reason that moderate drinkers (i.e. 1-2 doses/day) appear to
| enjoy less risk of disease than the abstainers, is that the group
| of the abstainers includes people that used to drink but stopped
| to (e.g. they were alcholics and sobered up or they got sick and
| had to stop because of it) which still have hugely elevated risk
| profiles. When you account for that, the dip vanishes.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/l3ilpQ-_IME
| rybosworld wrote:
| This is the right explanation. We just need a formal study to
| assert the obvious here.
|
| It boils down to: Self control is strongly correlated with good
| health
| taeric wrote:
| I confess I've harbored the idea that any benefits were simply
| benefits of not drinking soda. Another giant industry protected
| item.
| nostromo wrote:
| We now know that isn't true, especially not for heart disease.
| This study, as one example, separated out "never drinkers" from
| "former drinkers" to address this bias and found drinking to
| still be beneficial.
|
| https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
|
| I can't help but feel bias against drinking has religious
| roots. This has been studied to death, and generally moderate
| drinking is shown to be beneficial, or at very least not
| harmful. But some folks are so opposed to that result they keep
| moving the goal posts.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| On the individual level the science is still murky, but we do
| know that people from _cultures_ that have a glass of wine in
| the evening tend to be healthier and live longer that those
| who don 't. That said, I don't necessarily think the magic is
| in the antioxidants in wine, nor do I think it has something
| to do with the cardiovascular effects of having alcohol in
| the bloodstream.
|
| My complete layperson theory is that no amount of alcohol is
| "healthy" per-se: its negative effects are well known and
| documented, and almost assuredly outweigh the few dubious
| positive effects. Instead, the benefits of drinking small
| amounts of alcohol might be entirely tied to stress
| management. Stress kills. It absolutely ages people and leads
| to early death.
|
| Having a wind-down ritual in the evening is probably the
| important bit. A glass of wine with dinner is a firm
| punctuation mark in a person's day. It signals that work is
| now over, and what's been left undone can be resumed
| tomorrow.
| tcgv wrote:
| That's exactly how I appreciate a beer after work every
| couple of days. A personal ritual to relax, taste a
| different - if possible craft - beer, and unplug from work.
| One small bottle (35 cl) is enough to make me happy ;)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> This study, as one example, separated out "never drinkers"
| from "former drinkers" to address this bias and found
| drinking to still be beneficial.
|
| Careful. That result is not so clear-cut:
|
| >> In the few studies that excluded former drinkers from the
| non-drinking reference group, reductions in risk among light-
| to-moderate drinkers were attenuated. [Section
| Abstract/Results]
|
| >> Pooled analysis of estimates relative to non-current
| drinkers showed a reduced mortality risk for an alcohol
| intake up to approximately 75 g/day. However, when studies
| with former drinkers in the reference group were excluded,
| the association was considerably weakened (see Additional
| file 1: Figure S9). In addition, among those studies using
| post-event alcohol measures, the result did not change
| substantively; a similar trend was seen in studies with
| multiple measures but failed to reach statistical
| significance, probably because of the low number of curves
| (n=2) in this subgroup (see Additional file 1: Figure S10).
| [Section _Alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality among
| CVD patients_ ]
|
| Btw, "post-event" means that participants reported their
| results after they had their major cardiovascular event:
|
| >> In addition, most of the included studies asked patients
| to report their average consumption since the occurrence of
| their primary events (post-event alcohol assessment), whereas
| three studies used alcohol intake in the year prior to
| primary events (pre-event), assuming drinking habits remained
| stable over time, even following events [14, 44, 45].
| [Section _Data extraction and quality assessment_ ].
| [deleted]
| beebmam wrote:
| Why is everyone so confident with their conclusions without
| RCTs? This article points out how deeply complicated ethanol
| consumption is with our biochemical systems. Without RCTs we
| really can't measure the overall effect of ethanol without
| quantifying the effects of ethanol on each of those systems.
|
| Can't we just reserve judgement here, and use some humbleness
| in the face of our ignorance to drive for a real RCT funded
| by the public?
|
| Can we try to avoid the trap of becoming confidence-men?
| nostromo wrote:
| This is an impossible ask and exactly what I mean about
| moving the goalposts.
|
| For example: there are zero RCTs that prove to us
| cigarettes cause cancer. But we're still comfortable in
| saying cigarettes cause cancer.
|
| It's entirely ridiculous to suggest we do a RCT and ask
| someone to smoke for 30 years to remove all doubt that
| cigarettes cause cancer. And who would pay for it? So all
| we have are mountains of data showing that cigarettes
| shorten lifespan.
|
| The same is true here, but the opposite result. Doing a RCT
| on alcohol for decades will never happen. All we have are
| mountains of data showing either no harm or a small benefit
| on lifespan. So that should be our null hypothesis: that
| moderate drinking is either harmless or slightly
| beneficial.
| bena wrote:
| This is a fun one because it's a good example of how to
| bend the truth with the truth.
|
| About 80 to 90 percent of people who have lung cancer
| were smokers.
|
| Only about 10 to 15 percent of smokers will develop lung
| cancer.
|
| So it's not a guarantee. It increases the risk.
|
| Just like alcohol (https://www.cancer.gov/about-
| cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...)
|
| The problem with doing RCT with alcohol and with smoking
| is that we're talking about lifestyle studies. You can't
| really do a study with the goal being "see if we can give
| this dude cancer during his lifetime".
|
| And let's also remember that the study that people who
| drink moderately had longer lifespans just really notes
| correlation. It does not prove a causation.
|
| Drinking _is_ ubiquitous. Most people drink. Drinking is
| also a luxury. So if you 're poor, you either drink a lot
| or very little. Because you either have a problem or
| you're too broke to afford it.
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185179/)
|
| Guess which income bracket engages in moderate drinking
| the most? That's right, the income bracket that also
| allows you to afford better health outcomes overall. So
| while it may be true that moderate drinking correlates
| with longer lifespans, it's a knock-on effect to the fact
| that being poor sucks.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The issue is, the difficulty of doing an randomized study
| doesn't nullify the benefits of randomization (a big one
| being eliminating confounding variables, for which there
| can be a lot for who decides to take up an addiction and
| why).
|
| The control part would be particularly difficult (unless
| maybe you gave everyone a real or sham nicotine patch?
| But then you can't exclude some other benefit from
| straight nicotine itself).
|
| One could control for all the confounders they want, but
| you still risk missing some that are unknown or
| undervalued.
| beebmam wrote:
| So your argument here is that it is ridiculous to suggest
| that an RCT is possible in this circumstance, so we
| should therefore accept observational studies which
| derive correlations as truth.
|
| Not only does that conclusion not follow from your
| premise (a logical fallacy), but it's an absurd
| suggestion as a process for deriving truth. Observational
| studies, at best, offer an insight into possible
| hypotheses, and should by no means be considered
| persuasive unless all interacting systems have been
| controlled for. In the case of ethanol, there are an
| enormous amount of interacting systems that need to be
| controlled for.
|
| Your premise is also strictly false, as it's clear that
| not only is an RCT for ethanol consumption possible, but
| it was planned and partially in progress before it was
| terminated.
|
| It's truly incredible to see the kind of language that
| you use here, how confident you are about your fallacious
| argument. I kindly request that you turn down your
| confident language. Science is a long and careful process
| of pushing back the fog of ignorance, and if you are
| serious about the search for truth you shouldn't use such
| confident language.
| abra0 wrote:
| Because only people with a high enough conviction of
| benefits of moderate drinking are commenting here and
| arguing for. However I have no idea how they do become so
| strongly convinced in that, given the low quality of the
| data that exists, the general reproducibility crisis in
| bio-sciences, precedent of complete compromise of a large
| study, things like
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-
| one-..., the argument that if moderate amounts of ethanol
| were beneficial we would have just evolved to synthesize
| it, etc.
|
| I think the most likely outcome is boring: moderate amounts
| of alcohol are moderately harmful, but not harmful enough
| to be immensely obvious and not harmful enough to outweigh
| the non-biological benefits some people extract from it.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| Of course we 'know' nothing for sure - which is a truism that
| applies both to the original comment and to yours... but my
| point is that you should rarely be convinced by a single
| study.
|
| That said, I have no specific criticism on the paper you
| refer to. It might be that the lower risk of heart disease is
| outweighed by an elevated risk for e.g. cancer? In that way
| both results can be true.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Is there any data that points to causation?
|
| Is there any reason to believe the chemicals in alcoholic
| drinks would boost your health?
|
| My intuition is it's behavioral or emotional in that maybe
| drinking a glass of wine a day is relaxing, maybe more likely
| to be drinking with friends?
| nostromo wrote:
| I've heard a number of theories, here are a few:
|
| Alcohol thins the blood, much like aspirin, which at small
| doses decreases all cause mortality.
|
| Some types of alcohol, especially wine, are rich with
| antioxidants and flavonoids.
|
| Alcohol may decrease stress and anxiety.
|
| Alcohol is often consumed with friends and family, and we
| know socialization is correlated with better health.
| stefan_ wrote:
| This meta study you link literally cites 6 papers authored by
| our main villain Mukamal.
|
| Is this "no one reads the article anymore" again?
| Lewton wrote:
| Do you really think the bias against drinking (that might or
| might not have religious roots) is stronger than the massive
| bias that comes from the vast majority of people enjoying
| alcohol a lot?
| dionidium wrote:
| > _I can 't help but feel bias against drinking has religious
| roots._
|
| I don't think it's necessary to propose novel explanations
| for opposition to drinking. Alcohol has enormous negative
| effects on society and individuals. Nobody who has ever lived
| with an alcoholic is even remotely confused about this, but
| even those of us who have been lucky in that respect can
| easily observe large societal detriment. A staggering
| percentage of all violent crimes are committed by drunk
| people, most of us know someone who died in a drunk-driving
| related incident, and we've all been around drunk people who
| we found to be incredibly annoying (and often actually
| violent).
|
| Opposition to drinking doesn't require additional
| explanation.
| switchbak wrote:
| The majority of drinking is done in a pro-social manner,
| and you're missing a large part of the picture when you say
| "Alcohol has enormous negative effects on society and
| individuals" as if it's a blanket negative impact. I agree
| that it does have a substantial negative component of
| course.
|
| There was a (ineffective and violent) prohibition on
| drinking a century ago. Some religions also have strong
| views against drinking. To ignore these societal influences
| on western culture and call it a novel explanation is a bit
| of a stretch.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dionidium wrote:
| This is a bit of a non sequitur. The benefits of drinking
| are obvious! And, yes, religions and political parties
| have opposed alcohol...because the harmful effects are
| equally obvious. The causal arrow runs that direction.
| There was indeed a prohibition on drinking a century ago,
| spearheaded mostly by women who were tired of their
| husbands beating them when drunk.
|
| Prohibition is widely regarded today as an obviously
| ridiculous blunder, but that's mostly revisionist and
| ahistorical.
|
| German Lopez at Vox did a couple good pieces on what
| people get wrong about it:
|
| * https://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9566935/prohibition-
| myths-mis...
|
| * https://www.vox.com/the-
| highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...
|
| There's also a bit of an asymmetry that makes weighing
| the pros and cons difficult. If 40 people enjoy a night
| at the bar, but one one of them goes home and beats their
| wife and another kills a family in a drunk-driving
| accident on the way home, do we just say, "well, 38 of
| the 40 peacefully enjoyed their evening, so it's mostly
| good." That looks like a horrific outcome, to me.
| wahern wrote:
| A critical fact that destroys modern narratives about the
| supposedly naive rationales behind Prohibition is that
| the 18th Amendment was only supposed to apply to what we
| now call hard liquor, not to beer and wine. Indeed, much
| of the country already had similar or identical
| legislation yet beer and wine was perfectly legal in most
| (all?) of those localities. The Federal prohibition was
| simply for national consistency with a public policy that
| was well tested.
|
| Unfortunately, an overly pedantic Supreme Court
| interpreted "intoxicating liquors" very broadly,
| resulting in a national ban that far exceeded the state
| and local legislation with which most people were
| accustomed and comfortable. It was the narrower
| definition only encompassing distilled liquor that the
| public knowingly gave their consent.
| allturtles wrote:
| This isn't quite accurate either. It was the Volstead Act
| - an act of Congress - that defined the breadth of the
| ban (i.e. what constitutes intoxicating liquors). The
| Supreme Court did uphold the legality of the Volstead
| Act.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| Beneficial implies casualty, which is clearly not established
| in the association study you linked.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Not sure how you've reached the "religious" conclusion. With
| the glaring exception of Islam, alcohol plays a central role
| in most religions.
|
| Obviously drunkenness is another issue altogether, but that's
| not what such studies examine in the first place, so that's a
| different discussion.
|
| As for the benefits of wine in moderate drinkers, I remember
| reading a study which compared consumption of wine vs equal
| amounts of other types of alcohol, and concluded that the
| antioxidants and tannins in wine were the main carriers of
| that benefit, and if anything alcohol still had negative
| effects but simply the benefit from the other substances in
| wine overrode the harm caused by the moderate amounts of
| alcohol in wine.
|
| Obviously since I don't remember the study to cite it, this
| makes it an anecdotal claim here, but ...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| In the US the temperance movement that led to prohibition
| was motivated in no small part by evangelical Christianity.
| dionidium wrote:
| And where did evangelicals get the idea to ban alcohol?
|
| They didn't read in the Bible that alcohol was bad. They
| looked around at society and blamed a lot of its ills on
| problematic alcohol use.
|
| Some background here:
| https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-
| shou...
|
| Everybody gets this causal arrow strangely backwards.
| Alcohol causes people to _sin_ ; that's why Christians
| opposed its use. It's the _negative effects_ of alcohol
| that led people to oppose its use, not "religion" per se
| (or even in any kind of explicit scriptural or liturgical
| sense).
| nitrogen wrote:
| Given that "sin" is a purely religious concept, and that
| one's culture around alcohol has a pretty big effect on
| whether alcohol is associated with misbehavior (there are
| lots of people and places for whom alcohol does not cause
| "sin"), it's totally fair to say that alcohol bans were
| at least partially religiously motivated.
| dhimes wrote:
| The New England Journal of Medicine study that came out in
| the early 2000s (I don't have a citation for you) concluded
| the opposite: It's the alcohol that kept the arteries
| clear. Their study was motivated by the observation that
| the cadavers med students work on are typically homeless or
| strongly disadvantaged alcoholics. The bodies were often
| disease-ravaged, but their blood vessels were in very good
| shape.
|
| I think of it as an "alcohol as a plaque solvent" model.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Another way to see it is that if you starve and don't eat
| well and try to store as sugar in your liver (but you
| can't because the liver has exit the room) you don't have
| much remaining fat in any part of your body, including
| the blood vessels.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Hinduism/Buddhism/Sikhism has no role for alcohol as far as
| I am aware.
| [deleted]
| ninjinxo wrote:
| Feels somewhat disingenuous to combine the data for men and
| women, not sure about that discrepancy between surveys
| either: https://i.imgur.com/BVJvRx6.png
| kurthr wrote:
| Classic survivorship bias.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It sounds a lot like the ancient astronomers couching their
| studies in something like _bringing glory to god for his
| masterful clockwork_ or the like. See Copernicus in On the
| Shoulders of Giants. Really eye opening how many rhetorical back-
| flips they did even as they introduced the sun-centered solar
| system that they personally believed in.
|
| OP seems to push the idea that we could have trusted this study,
| even if it was funded by industry and run by a professor with
| cushy ties to that industry.
| mrpf1ster wrote:
| Did you not read the whole article? The author explains why his
| defense of this study and the players involved is wrong, and
| why they are "furious about every aspect of this story"
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I did. I had trouble editing my comment. In the end, they do
| propose that it would have been valuable to continue with the
| study, and others like it, provided many changes were made:
|
| ```Sixth, in the final review, the NIH made no attempt at
| cost/benefit analysis. Their final report is a fair summary
| of the problems with the trial. But it doesn't consider the
| information that was lost by cancellation, or the fact that
| that there was little cost to taxpayers. (Though Collins'
| letter to Senator Grassley reveals the NIH did pay around $4
| million out of pocket.) Could a different principal
| investigator be put in charge? Could the study design be
| modified to address the concerns? Could the monitoring bodies
| have been strengthened so people could trust the results?
| Maybe the trial was unsalvageable, but it's telling that the
| NIH didn't bother to make that argument.```
| [deleted]
| azalemeth wrote:
| I for one wish that they'd just do the study properly. Sure, it's
| now tainted beyond all belief, but it's such a societally
| important question that it's rather amazing we don't have a good
| answer to the question of how bad (or otherwise) light to
| moderate drinking is for you. Such a huge chunk of the population
| does it!
|
| If we look at another societal thing that historically a huge
| chunk of the population did -- smoking -- it was known that it
| kills you, horribly, but it took taken more than sixty to eighty
| years for the public to get that message, and now society is
| slowly adjusting [at least in Europe] with real public benefits.
| _If_ an effect is present with alcohol, even a small one, the
| integrated effect would be massive and it 's a very
| scientifically valid question to ask.
|
| Alcohol is really interesting -- people under report how much
| they drink, and how much they under report is a function both of
| the amount of booze, and the covariates that affect life
| expectancy like education (Prof Raymond Caroll at Texas A&M has
| an excellent book on this -- there's a method to correct for it
| by bootstrapping called SIMEX -- e.g. applied in [1], in which a
| sample of about 3000 adolescents and young adults around the age
| of 20 shows that binge drinking "may not be causally related to
| deficiencies in working memory, response inhibition or emotion
| recognition"). The paucity and conflicting of evidence _probably_
| means that the effect size is small, but the error bars are huge
| and as the article says, the covariates are many. It 's just a
| shame that we can't have nice things because of the bent actions
| of a few.
|
| [1]
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.15100?c...
| zeku wrote:
| This is completely anecdotal, but Whoop data could be used to
| uncover what moderate drinking does to you as people are self
| reporting their habits daily.
|
| It is common knowledge in the Whoop community that any amount
| of alcohol will impact your recovery score(a in house metric
| combined of HRV, amount sleep gotten, amount sleep needed,
| recent activity strain, & more) for near 72 hours.
| phonypc wrote:
| For others who were confused like me: Whoop is apparently a
| health/fitness tracker.
| adriand wrote:
| > If we look at another societal thing that historically a huge
| chunk of the population did -- smoking -- it was known that it
| kills you, horribly, but it took taken more than sixty to
| eighty years for the public to get that message, and now
| society is slowly adjusting [at least in Europe] with real
| public benefits. If an effect is present with alcohol, even a
| small one, the integrated effect would be massive and it's a
| very scientifically valid question to ask.
|
| But it's not _if_ an effect is present: we do in fact know that
| alcohol consumption causes cancer. The link is well-
| established. What is surprising is that most people aren 't
| aware that this link exists. IIRC the number of Americans aware
| of the link is something like 30%. According to this
| (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/08/only-
| one-10-...) only 1 in 10 Britons is aware. (I assume even fewer
| people are aware that processed meat causes cancer.)
|
| I understand what you're saying, of course, given that there
| might be some benefits that outweigh the risks when you
| calculate overall mortality. However, speaking personally, I
| think I would rather die of heart disease than cancer. In fact,
| compared to death by cancer, a heart attack sounds like a
| blessing (of course I'm aware there are other, slower and also
| nasty ways to go that are related to heart disease -- but
| still). The main issue being, of course, that at least a slow
| death gives you some time to say goodbye and arrange your
| affairs. Still: I'd rather go quick and clean.
|
| It's a morbid subject, but after recently reading The Emperor
| Of All Maladies, a masterful "biography" of cancer, this has
| been on my mind quite a bit. I love to drink, but I'm wondering
| if it's worth it.
| bserge wrote:
| You don't have to die of cancer. If you got it, and you're
| sure it's terminal, there's really not much need to wait,
| there are ways.
|
| I'm _still_ an alcoholic. I may drink less than before, but
| it 's the only drug that affects GABA receptors that I can
| reliably get. If doctors won't help me, well, it's the only
| thing that keeps me sane lol.
|
| I used to be careful with drugs, now I try everything I can
| get my hands on and note the results. It became sort of a
| hobby of mine.
|
| Still remember the time I was fading in and out of
| consciousness from phenylethylamine and alcohol (wack
| interaction, do not recommend), the absolute despair that 7+
| grams of pure GABA puts me into, and the time I passed out
| and pissed myself on too much Imipramine+L-DOPA+Valerian
| extract.
|
| Ah, if only I could get the good stuff that works for my
| actual problems, but apparently prescriptions are not for
| subhuman citizens like me.
|
| If I die, I die. If I become disabled/impaired, I die. Harder
| than it sounds, but I'm gonna test the limits.
| [deleted]
| clusterfish wrote:
| Most of Europe is actually rather backwards in terms of smoking
| prevalence and culture, compared to other western countries
| like US / Canada / Australia / NZ.
|
| I don't know if it's improving but the current state is pretty
| shocking if you're used to seeing better.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> In principle, firewalled research could be the solution.
| Supplement companies could pay to have tests done by independent
| researchers. Consumers would have a quality signal for what
| products to trust, and the companies that make good stuff would
| make more money._
|
| The UK tried something like this for building materials -
| unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work very well.
|
| To achieve certain standards of fire resistance, manufacturers
| could choose from a range of independent test houses, who would
| conduct the relevant fire performance tests at the manufacturers'
| expense.
|
| Except it turns out, manufacturers don't want to go to difficult,
| argumentative test labs. They choose the friendly test lab, that
| knows how to treat its paying customers. The lab that will advise
| them on how to pass the test, that will leave them unsupervised
| as they add defeat devices to the test rig, and that will remove
| problematic photos from the test report.
|
| The result? Loads of our tower blocks are clad in flammable
| insulation and ACM panels - including one where 72 people died in
| a single fire.
| rocqua wrote:
| I think the difference between the testing for materials you
| describe, and the firewalled research OP wants is an
| intermediate institution.
|
| Here it was the NIH, it should always be an independent
| organization. The money is committed to the institution before
| the institution decides who gets the job.
| gxqoz wrote:
| I'm reading this interesting book on the global history of
| prohibition that challenges a lot of traditional narratives. [1]
| One novel thing in the air at the time was the rise of social
| science and scientific thinking. Before the early 20th century,
| there wasn't much hard data on how alcohol led to bad health and
| safety outcomes. Some of this research probably went too far
| (equating all alcohol to poison). But new awareness of the real
| dangers (and lack of evidence for many folk remedies of alcohol
| like warming you up) had a big impact in convincing people and
| governments to get on the temperance bandwagon.
|
| [1] Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition
| - https://www.amazon.com/Smashing-Liquor-Machine-History-
| Prohi.... Especially Chapter 14.
| brightball wrote:
| There's a lot of people who have been waiting on an aluminum and
| autism study for > 15 years.
| aantix wrote:
| What's the hypothesis? Why would autistic individuals have more
| aluminum than the typical individual?
|
| What's the protocol for detox?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'm not an expert, so take this with some salt:
|
| Autistic individuals appear to have more aluminum
| (specifically in their brains, maybe?) than others. But this
| is only correlation, not causation (and, so far as I know,
| not _proven_ even as correlation).
|
| If the correlation is correct, it remains to be determined
| whether the aluminum _causes_ autism, or whether autists
| absorb aluminum as a _consequence_ of their autism.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > so take this with some salt
|
| haha I actually laughed out loud that a very good line.
|
| (aluminum salts being in antiperspirant is the "biggest"
| source for odd levels people bring up)
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > so take this with some salt
|
| haha I actually laughed out loud that was a very good line.
|
| (aluminum salts being in antiperspirant is the "biggest"
| source for odd levels people bring up)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Glad you liked it. But, um, it was not done on purpose...
| aantix wrote:
| Interesting.. My son has been formally diagnosed with
| Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
|
| He had a hair tissue mineral analysis done last October,
| and it showed a high level of aluminum in his system.
|
| https://imgur.com/pdlywQO
| 4ec0755f5522 wrote:
| Some people say ODD doesn't exist and that it's just
| "PDA" profile of ASD.
|
| I mean technically anything can exist if it has a label
| in the DSM, but you know what I mean.
| rybosworld wrote:
| Aluminum has been correlated with lots of diseases that
| affect the brain and nervous system. I don't know if the
| mechanism is understood though.
| brightball wrote:
| Correlation noticed by a lot of people. Supposedly glyphosate
| can increase absorption of aluminum in the digestive tract.
|
| At the very least, a study has been warranted but to date
| never produced.
| aantix wrote:
| I assume that there are anecdotes of people doing toxic
| metal detoxes and having some success with reducing
| symptoms?
| brightball wrote:
| No idea on the detoxes. Just a lot of self reporting of
| high aluminum levels in both mother and child.
|
| Because aluminum is associated with so many neurological
| issues and autism comes with consistent gut issues,
| there's a thought that some type of gut issues could be
| causing higher levels of absorption of aluminum from the
| environment when your body would normally filter most of
| it out.
|
| The biggest issue is that it's compelling enough to
| warrant a study.
| derefr wrote:
| There are a number of substances that act like alcohol in the
| brain, but which are _not_ fundamentally antithetical to animal
| cellular biochemistry the way ethanol is. Most-all GABA-A agonist
| drugs fall into this class.
|
| I've always been curious how harmful these drugs would be under a
| profile of long-term recreational abuse, _when contrasted with
| alcohol_. I have a sense that you 'd be far better off being
| addicted to such drugs, than you would being an alcoholic.
| Similar to how vaping, no matter its absolute health
| consequences, could still be beneficial _relative to_ smoking
| tobacco, if that would be your alternative.
|
| Maybe if we could figure out how to make an aqueous GABA-A
| agonist with a really high LD50, we could see the development of
| a "synthahol" in our lifetimes?
| danachow wrote:
| You're hung up on GABA, but it has little to do with alcohol
| other than being part of the physiology of physical dependence.
|
| LD50 for benzos is already "really high" - that is not an
| issue. Alcohol affects other neurotransmitter pathways other
| than GABA. That isn't even the one responsible for the
| psychological dependence. So a GABA-A agonist with a high LD50
| exists in multiple (benzos), but it's not an alcohol
| substitute. There is a reason why these medications are used
| for acute withdrawal, but are not used for treating dependence.
|
| Also, being addicted to benzos is far more debilitating than
| the "vaping" equivalent. They're quite harmful for chronic use
| except in very limited circumstances.
|
| Maybe synthahol might be a thing - I mean you're probably
| closer with something like ecstasy - but a GABA agonist isn't
| it.
| danachow wrote:
| You're hung up on GABA, but it has little to do with alcohol
| other than being part of the physiology of physical dependence.
|
| LD50 for benzos is already "really high" - that is not an
| issue. Alcohol affects other neurotransmitter pathways other
| than GABA. That isn't even the one responsible for the
| psychological dependence. So a GABA-A agonist with a high LD50
| exists in multiple (benzos), but it's not an alcohol
| substitute. There is a reason why these medications are used
| for acute withdrawal, but are not used for treating dependence.
|
| Also, being addicted to benzos is far more debilitating than
| the "vaping" equivalent - this has been well studied since they
| had their heyday in the 70s. They're quite harmful for chronic
| use except in very limited circumstances.
|
| Maybe synthahol might be a thing - I mean you're probably
| closer with something like ecstasy - but a GABA agonist isn't
| it.
| skhm wrote:
| David Nutt shares your hypothesis and is working on such a
| substance [1].
|
| I agree with you that something like chronic Diazepam abuse is
| probably less harmful to the body than a similar alcohol habit
| - but I'm skeptical (but hopeful) one could design an
| effective, recreationally-useful GABA-ergic drug that didn't
| come with the baseline shift and rebound anxiety (and in the
| limit, seizure/death) usually associated.
|
| You can already choose to abuse pills _in contrast to alcohol_
| , and it's generally not very pretty either.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/26/an-
| innocent-...
| GordonS wrote:
| I've never tried it, but I heard a lot of folks take GHB as an
| alternative to alcohol, and that it has the same effects, but
| without the hangover. I also heard you have to be really
| careful with dosing, as you only need a very small amount of
| the stuff.
| whiterock wrote:
| Be careful with that. The hangover provides a negative
| feedback that keeps the vast majority of (any)-alcohol
| consumers from becoming addicted. Now leave that out and see
| what happens.
|
| Note: Alcohol hangover is not the same as the immediate
| withdrawal symptoms of other drugs that let's you crave for
| taking another hit shot whatever. It's caused by the myriad
| of trash by-products in metabolizing ethanol, not for the
| lack of alcohol. (and for certain alcohols additional also
| tannins, aroma substances and similar - think of whiskey and
| cheap wine)
| laurent92 wrote:
| And, I suppose, more simply, the diabetus! Pickles * beer^2
| * burger * fries = (sugar * fat)^2 = pike of insulin over
| several hours * abundance of bad fats that the liver is
| supposed to absorb. I do realize not every alcohol binging
| happens in this form, but it's the classic modern/hipster
| form. Any such behavior, even without alcohol, would turn
| the liver upside down.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| We have plenty 'safe' GABA-A agonist, the issue is alcohol's
| greatest risk and greatest hard is dependence. The health
| effects in non-addiction scenarios are not related to its
| function as a GABA-A agonist but rather the specific metabolism
| of ethanol produces toxic metabolites.
|
| The withdrawal from any type of GABA antagonist/PAM type drug
| can be lethal. The acute and long term side effects of ethanol
| discourage abuse.
|
| Also acute overdoses of the safe benzo/Z-drugs are strange &
| alarming since you can put yourself into a 24-48 hour coma but
| recover pretty quickly.
| GordonS wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Dr Nutt was/is trying to market a synthanol
| product, which even had an "antidote" to get you sober again
| quickly.
|
| Realistically his chance of any nation (especially a western
| one) legalising such a thing is _very_ slim indeed, at least in
| the medium term. Which is a real shame, as alcohol causes huge
| harm to society.
| bduerst wrote:
| Acid ketosis is linked to increased GABA levels in the brain,
| so you could always work out or go on a keto diet to get
| similar effects.
| drew1492 wrote:
| Benzodiazepines (Xanax, Valium, etc.) are basically that -
| GABAergics with very high LD50. They're positive allosteric
| modulators, rather than direct agonists, but the
| pharmacological action is similar. But benzos wouldn't be a
| good alcohol substitute - they're often described as less "fun"
| than alcohol by people who use them recreationally, they're
| more prone to delusions of sobriety (possibly because it's
| missing the other non-GABA effects of alcohol that help us
| gauge drunkenness), can be very addictive, and there's some
| link between long term benzo use and modest elevation of cancer
| risk, especially brain cancer.
| qlm wrote:
| I still found benzos "fun" but they definitely made me more
| sleepy and chilled out than alcohol. The disinhibition is
| still there which is where I suppose the "fun" comes from.
| The memory loss was far more extreme for me than alcohol
| though, which eventually made me stop taking them.
| friendly_chap wrote:
| I would like to give a word of warning for people who would like
| to enjoy alcohol all their life: try to avoid kindling at all
| cost.
|
| If you, like most professionals, consume alcohol for social clout
| and for fun, this is extremely crucial.
|
| Once you develop kindling (sneaks up on you), even a few beers
| can trigger almost life threatening withdrawals, so your option
| is to not drink any, or drink yourself to death. There is no
| middle way.
|
| For those interested, check out the cripplingalcoholism subreddit
| on reddit. Tons of first hand experience there. You have been
| warned. Kindling is a pandoras box of all kind of regrets and
| there is no way to reverse it apart from abstaining from alcohol
| for 10+ years.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| For those (like myself) who are unfamiliar with "kindling", it
| appears to mean an effect where subsequent withdrawals are
| progressively worse than the first one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindling_(sedative%E2%80%93hyp...
| rpmisms wrote:
| Drink occasionally, responsibly, and take breaks.
| amelius wrote:
| They should put an obligatory message on every bottle of booze:
| "drinking causes a reduction of libido".
| parenthesis wrote:
| `These spirits may make you willing, but your body will be
| weak'.
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