[HN Gopher] No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says Wor... ___________________________________________________________________ No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation Author : caaqil Score : 120 points Date : 2022-01-20 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com) | pmdulaney wrote: | They're focused on heart health so they don't address the fact | that alcohol is also a carcinogen. This is sort of a "The sky is | falling!" kind of article, but it comes down to, as always: Be | aware of the risks in some intuitive way and decide what you want | to do. | atarian wrote: | Glad to see them calling it out but let's be honest.. we all knew | it was BS. | asdfsd234234444 wrote: | This has been obvious for a long time. | jasonhansel wrote: | In this thread: a lot of people trying to justify their | preexisting choice to drink or remain sober. | pcrh wrote: | Also many pointing out that the notion that avoiding _any_ | consumption of alcohol is a ridiculous notion, as implied by | the article, given that it 's a common component of many foods. | tapas73 wrote: | Sane people find arguments for stuff they do. If they don't | have reasoning (scientific or emotional) for their behaviour, | they either change or they aren't sane. | llamajams wrote: | Yeah but it's good for the mind . | known wrote: | kstrauser wrote: | Although I live in a place where weed is legal, I don't use it. I | enjoy the occasional glass of a nice scotch, though, and I love a | good stout or porter beer. This is where it gets a little strange | for me: by every metric I can think of, I'd be better off | replacing alcohol with weed. There seem to be fewer negative | effects, it's not a source of empty calories, and looks like a | better recreational drug in every way. | | And still, growing up with "Just Say No", I can't quite bring | myself to. In the back of my mind, a little voice asks if that's | the example I want to set for my kids, which is silly when | they've seen me (responsibly) using alcohol for years. I just | can't imagine using a vape or popping an edible in the same way I | might pour a little glass of whisky before settling down for the | evening. | notatoad wrote: | i'd recommend trying weed before putting too much more thought | into this. | | they're really not interchangeable as recreational intoxicants. | i find marijuana a very different experience to alcohol, and | personally i much prefer the alcohol. i had had the same | thought as you, that maybe marijuana would be better for me, | but ultimately i don't think it matters if it's better if i | don't like it. | | also, beer and whiskey are delicious and it's more about the | enjoyment of consuming them for me than the effects of the | alcohol. weed isn't very enjoyable - smoking is terrible, and | edibles are just worse version of sugary treats. | avgcorrection wrote: | Imagine being haunted by Nancy Reagan in 2022. | kstrauser wrote: | "You had to be there, man." | | It wasn't just her, but that the US went all-out stigmatizing | weed. According to the DARE program, after 2 marijuanas you | might as well be shooting up heroin. (Note: this | spectacularly backfired, as plenty of kids tried weed and | didn't die, figured the whole thing was a lie, and then tried | harder drugs that are much less forgiving.) | | I don't think a thing about other people using weed. I'm sure | plenty of my friends and coworkers in the Bay Area do, and | they're all awesome and productive people. It still feels | weird _for me_ , though, after a lifetime of being told it | was bad. | [deleted] | kbrannigan wrote: | I once fell into the trap of thinking that, this sticky green | leaf was just a fun harmless substance. | | It's a silent killer,compared to alcohol it's so easily | abusable because you can never have too much. | | What was half a roll after a long day of work became 2 or 3 | rolls a day. | | It makes you okay with being mediocre, and comes with a lot of | sneaky short and long term mental side effects that are yet to | be studied. | | Lately I would rather have a scotch and 24 hour later have it | out of my system, than live with a thin daily mental fog. | | Yeah I stay clear of it these days | darod wrote: | "it's not a source of empty calories" | | Until you get the munchies... | redisman wrote: | Healthy food tastes better too. Honestly I've grown sick of | simple snack foods by now. I'd much rather eat a nice meal | Broken_Hippo wrote: | I wish more folks realized this. I tend to eat healthier if | I smoke regularly because of this. | kstrauser wrote: | Hah, fair point. The Jack in the Box around the corner | advertises: | | - Late night "munchie meals" | (https://jackinthebox.fandom.com/wiki/Jack%27s_Munchie_Meal) | | - Delivery until 3 AM. | | That can't be a healthy combination. | hi_im_miles wrote: | For me as a daily weed user, this "type" of munchies only | persisted for so long. Curious to hear of others | experiences, but after about a year of developing the | habit, I became almost repulsed by very salty/greasy/sweet | foods and started to crave simpler meals comprised of more | fruits and vegetables. | mrguyorama wrote: | I avoid the munchies mostly by drinking a crap load of | water, which I need to do anyway to keep my sensitive | throat from getting sore. | | Microwave popcorn is also only about 400 calories a bag! | weedontwee wrote: | Weed isn't legal where I live however its easy enough to | access. A thing i really dislike about weed is in my (and most | of my friends) experience its possible to just accidentally get | to high and have a panic attack or freak out. | | While this is possible with drinking, I find its much more | difficult especially when drinking beer as I do. It has to be a | much more conscious decision for me to get wasted drunk than | for me to accidentally get so stoned I hide in my room. | redisman wrote: | Weed these days is so strong, smoking a full sized joint is | much like drinking a glass of vodka. If you do it more often | you learn your limits and dosage to get that two beers vibe | consistently | txsoftwaredev wrote: | A good alternative with similar results is Delta 8. Lower | potency and less likely to cause any freak out moments. | thefz wrote: | > I just can't imagine using a vape or popping an edible in the | same way I might pour a little glass of whisky before settling | down for the evening. | | Every drug has its uses, I guess. Different effects for | different situations. I can't imagine a social setting smoking | weed to, it has to be alcohol for me. | leonidasv wrote: | Well, media has been recently overwhelmed by studies showcasing | the benefits of weed so that the disadvantages of using it | appear to be lower or none at all, but that's not really the | case. | | If smoked, you're smoking tar and volatile compounds that can | harm the lungs, much like a regular cigarette - although you're | probably not going to smoke a pack of 20 joints in a single day | like the moderate-to-heavy smoker next door do. | | There's also an association between weed and schizophrenia (and | depression) in adults. I'm not going to say "weed causes | schizophrenia" (or depression), but the correlation exists and | some will argue it implies causation here. Weed is also | associated with some memory problems in adults too, although | they seem to wean off if you stop using it. | | There are cardiovascular risks associated with THC too, since | it can cause abnormal heart rhythms and elevated heart rate. | And, again, it's even worse if smoked since carbon dioxide and | smoke compounds are known for affecting the heart. | | So, yeah, weed has benefits, plenty of them, but I wouldn't say | it's necessarily "safer". Don't get me wrong, alcohol is toxic, | it's broken down in the liver into Acetaldehyde, a known | carcinogenic. This stuff can't be healthy. But, for weed, we | have less data on how it impacts the body - see how much time | did it take to scientists finally admit alcohol is toxic? -. | Similar studies on cannabis are still ongoing and we don't know | yet all the risks it poses, but we already can see they do | exist. | | Maybe the real healthy thing is not switching from one drug to | another, but cutting back on the overall consumption. | appletrotter wrote: | I think that the relationship between marijuana smoking and | lung damange isn't so cut and dry bad as smoking nicotine is. | Here's a blurb: | | > Regular smoking of marijuana by itself causes visible and | microscopic injury to the large airways that is consistently | associated with an increased likelihood of symptoms of | chronic bronchitis that subside after cessation of use. On | the other hand, habitual use of marijuana alone does not | appear to lead to significant abnormalities in lung function | when assessed either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, | except for possible increases in lung volumes and modest | increases in airway resistance of unclear clinical | significance. Therefore, no clear link to chronic obstructive | pulmonary disease has been established. Although marijuana | smoke contains a number of carcinogens and cocarcinogens, | findings from a limited number of well-designed | epidemiological studies do not suggest an increased risk for | the development of either lung or upper airway cancer from | light or moderate use, although evidence is mixed concerning | possible carcinogenic risks of heavy, long-term use. | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23802821/ | pydry wrote: | The schizophrenia and memory loss part seems to be for very | heavy usage. | | AFAIK infrequent use of edibles has no down sides. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | See, I'm of the opinion that problem drinking and/or weed is | escapism or a form of self-harm, and unless the underlying | issues are solved you'd just find an alternative. | | Anecdotal, but I drink less now that I'm in a comitted | relationship / living together. I still drink, but it's | social. I've only been sort of hung over once in the past | year. | kstrauser wrote: | Those are all good points. I still think evidence shows that | weed is _likely_ the _less harmful_ option of the two. In the | spirit of harm reduction, if I _had_ to choose one of them to | start with, weed appears to be the rational choice. But | there's no one telling me I have to use either of them. | | Coffee is still my favorite drug, and I'll fight for that | one. | carlmr wrote: | But humans aren't rational, we decide based on emotions | most of the time. Alcohol and coffee have rituals you've | been familiar with since childhood. Society says it's ok so | you feel ok about it. | | Also maybe you prefer one of the highs over the other? I | don't drink alcohol before doing sports or going to work, | but I might have a coffee. | | Granted weed is a depressant like alcohol. But maybe the | high is not as enjoyable for you. Maybe you don't find the | relaxation after work that you expect from the scotch. | jokethrowaway wrote: | You're already giving a bad example to your kids by drinking | alcohol. | | That's fine. They'll grow up and decide what to do. If they'll | drink themselves senseless there must be a bigger problem than | seeing you drink alcohol in small quantities. | | I certainly am not doing all the mistakes I saw my father's | doing and I hope my kids will grow up to be responsible adults | which will make their own decisions. | | I never lived in a place where weed was legal but for a couple | of years I used it as an antidepressant and as a way to unwind. | I bought a vaporiser (the healthiest, quickest and hassle-free | way to absorb weed - very little smell lingering and you're not | smoking paper) and vaped nearly every evening (after kids | bedtime) and it was great to survive a hard period of my life. | After 2 years I didn't feel the need anymore and I stopped. I | can't be bothered to go to onion to buy weed anymore and just | drink a beer every once and then when I want to unwind - but if | weed was easy to buy I'd definitely buy it and treat it like I | treat beers. I'm glad I didn't use alcohol in the same way, | merely for the extra calories and for the liver damage. | | Still, there is a good reason you're fine drinking a beer in | front of your kids but you should avoid vaping in front of your | kids - and that's merely to avoid exposing them to passive | vapour. | kstrauser wrote: | I'm torn on the setting an example bit. My parents never | drank at all, that I know of. Growing up I was led to believe | that you drank either _never_ or _always_ , like there was no | middle ground. I wish someone had told me or demonstrated | that it's OK and normal to have the occasional drink and then | stop. | | We're fortunate to live in a house with a yard. If I were | going to smoke or vape, it'd be on the back deck. I wouldn't | use it inside any more than I'd use tobacco smoke or vape in | my living room. More likely, I'd use an edible. | | The downside to doing it secretly is that I'm pretty sure my | kids in high school know what a stoned person looks like. The | last thing I'd want is to have them notice I was under the | influence, then come to their own (and wrong) conclusions | like "huh, does Dad do this every night? Has he always?" | freedom2099 wrote: | My parents drink wine at every meal... there is never water | at their table! And yet I have never seen them drink any | alcohol without food... my perception when I was young was | that wine was just another beverage. As an adult now I | pretty much follow their example... I don't drink if I am | not dining... but unlike them I do it onto certain or twice | a week. | ilaksh wrote: | Best example is to do neither and find something that actually | is interesting or sort of fun to do at night. | paraph1n wrote: | Sounds like you already realize the error of your reasoning. | | Don't be so set in your ways. As we get older, it's harder and | harder to convince ourselves to try new things. You should | actively fight that to keep life fresh and full of excitement. | Don't let the words that were burned into you as a kid | influence your rational adult decisions. | kstrauser wrote: | Specific subject aside, I totally agree with you. Life's too | short and the world is too amazing to get stuck in a rut, and | I'm ready to give it all a try. You've got a vacation planned | to live with shepherds in the Alps for a couple of weeks? | Save me a space in your yurt. Let's do this. | | But truthfully, the third alternative in alcohol vs weed is | "none of the above". I'm not obligated to choose a vice, and | if I _had_ to give up alcohol today, say for health reasons, | it'd be a small bummer but I don't know that I'd rush to | replace it. | allturtles wrote: | Setting aside tradition/ritual, which I don't think should | count for nothing, I can think of many objective metrics on | which alcohol is superior: | | - Flavor | | - Fills the stomach (can be a disadvantage too, but is | advantageous in some situations, e.g. while waiting for dinner | to be served at a party) | | - Doesn't consume itself (i.e you can set down a drink and come | back to it 30 minutes later) | | - Easy to consume a small amount without substantially altering | your mental state. | | - No fire/burn risk | | - Doesn't generate smoke/odor, which is unpleasant for other | people and gets in your clothes/furniture | railsgirls112 wrote: | > _- Flavor_ | | This is obviously not an objective metric of superiority. | | > _- Fills the stomach (can be a disadvantage too, but is | advantageous in some situations, e.g. while waiting for | dinner to be served at a party)_ | | Also subjective, as you realize its inconveniences and give | one positive use case. In my experience this bloat is largely | uncomfortable and inconvenient. | | > _- Doesn 't consume itself (i.e you can set down a drink | and come back to it 30 minutes later)_ | | This is only true if you leave something lit that is burning, | something I doubt most would do on purpose | | > _- Easy to consume a small amount without substantially | altering your mental state._ | | Sister comment addresses this well | | > _- No fire /burn risk_ | | Valid concern, but there are many common ways to consume weed | that don't carry that risk | | > _- Doesn 't generate smoke/odor, which is unpleasant for | other people and gets in your clothes/furniture_ | | Same as above | | Ironically I think the traditions and rituals around alcohol | is the best thing it has going for it, on most "objective" | measures weed is regarded superior. | thebean11 wrote: | How can flavor possibly considered an objective metric? | allturtles wrote: | In the sense that alcohol beverages sit on your tongue and | most have a designed flavor, of which there are many | varieties to enjoy. But I suppose you're right, marijuana | smoke does have a flavor, and you may prefer that to any | alcoholic beverage. | | But granting that it's not objective, it still something | one could point to (and I would) as a reason for preferring | alcoholic drinks. | jjcm wrote: | Most people looking for flavor aren't smoking. Vape | products these days are designed with specific flavor | profiles. I'm not talking about the strange | mango/bubblegum/etc flavors, I'm saying most weed itself | has designed flavor for extracts these days. In the same | way that orange juice is a design flavor (manufacturers | will work with the brand to combine | sugar/juice/oils/scents/pulp ratios), most dab vape | concentrates are reduced to their bare components then | recombined to achieve a flavor profile desired. Want it | more skunky? More piney? Sharper? Softer? It's all | achievable and designed. | | The industry has changed drastically in the last decade. | Consider smoked weed to be analogous to moonshine when | comparing it with alcohol. That's not a dis towards | flower, but many products are just as heavily designed as | a bottled beer or scotch is these days. | kstrauser wrote: | There are lots of ways to consume weed that don't have those | drawbacks. There's a dispensary around the block from me, and | even though I don't use it, I went in to look around to see | what our new neighborhood shop looked like. They had a wide | selection of edible candies, vape pens, and even drinks. It | looks like it'd be very easy to get a consistent dose without | burning anything. I know how much alcohol I can drink to get | a pleasant effect without getting drunk, and I'm supposing I | could do the same for weed if I wanted. (Or maybe not: it | looks like the effects greatly vary based on strain, or how | much CBD you take with it, etc. The "how much should I take | to relax?" formula looks quite a bit more complicated.) | benatkin wrote: | I prefer edibles. Maybe it's because I don't really want | the full experience, at least right now (perhaps I'll | benefit from a higher level later on for medical reasons). | I learned I like CBD and am glad to be in a state where I | can have THC as well, at any ratio to CBD. It isn't a | consistent dose, but it's easy to dial in what the top dose | I might have is, and I like the randomness below the top | dose. | allturtles wrote: | Fair point, I was thinking of just smoking, and not other | forms of consumption. | kstrauser wrote: | I get it. When I think of weed, my first mental image is | still of someone passing a joint or bong around. I was | surprised at how many measured dose options there were, | though. Want a bag of watermelon gummy candies with X mg | of THC? They've got you covered. | | I do wonder how much variance there is in those. Is that | 5.0 mg += .1mg, or "eh, about 5 on average". It's easy to | dose alcohol as you know how much alcohol is in an ounce | of whisky. If you find one that's stronger than another, | your taste buds will let you know quickly. | mrguyorama wrote: | Worth noting, for many people there is a significant | difference in experience with edibles vs smoked/vaped | weed. | | My recommendation is to not overthink it. If you're | curious at all, go spend $7 on a single pre-roll, light | it up, and try it out. There's plenty of unpleasant-ness | in it for a first timer, but if you like being high, then | you'll probably want to do it again. | | Dosing for smoking is pretty easy; take a few puffs and | wait ten minutes. If you don't feel what you want, take a | few more puffs. You don't need to understand your mg dose | unless you become pretty habitual | criddell wrote: | Alcohol is pretty versatile. Not every use of it is for | intoxication. For example, nobody is getting a buzz from | deglazing a sauce pan with red wine. | benatkin wrote: | erm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp | [deleted] | redisman wrote: | Just get a vape pen. It's even more convenient than a beer. | Fits in your pocket. You can take a tiny puff and put it back | if you wish. Barely any smell | josefresco wrote: | > Flavor | | I vape flower cannabis, flavor is a key component of this | process. | | > Fills the stomach | | Cannabis stimulates my appetite. This is welcome and paired | with a glass of wine (on an empty stomach) before dinner | makes the experience amazing! | | > Doesn't consume itself | | My vape shuts off with inactivity - it doesn't "consume | itself. Neither would a "bowl" of cannabis. Even a "joint" | would stop burning if you put it down. | | > Easy to consume a small amount without substantially | altering your mental state. | | This is one of the major advantages of consuming cannabis via | the vaping/smoking vs. edibles (also alcohol). The effects | are felt in seconds which allows you to eaasily regulate | dosage. Edibles and alcohol can easily be overconsumed | because of the delay involved in stomach/liver process. | | > No fire/burn risk | | My vape is electric, the risk of fire would be similar to | using any of my other electronic devices with heat, such as a | wax melt device etc. | | > Doesn't generate smoke/odor, which is unpleasant for other | people and gets in your clothes/furniture | | While the vape does create an odor, it's short lived and | doesn't smell like smoked cannabis. | Broken_Hippo wrote: | Each of of these can be solved with a either edibles, vaping | (or a number of non-fire options), or a pipe with small bowl. | dokem wrote: | Personal anecdote but I disagree. I started smoking pot | regularly after college and moving to a state where it was | legal. It mostly displaced alcohol in my social circle. I | thought it was harmless and 'superior' to drinking. I cannot | have pot around anymore and was somewhat difficult to finally | quit. While the consequences of pot addiction and difficulty in | quitting are much lower than that of alcohol; the barrier to | forming an addiction is also much lower. Pot undermined my | life, mental health, social life, and motivation while using | it. It's just too easy to get high, and too easy to tell | yourself 'it's only pot, and it's not harmful.' Now I'll drink | a couple beers after work some days, or some days I wont. But I | don't think about how I want to go home and drink while I'm at | work and it doesn't leave me in a groggy anti-social haze for | 24 hours after using it. For me, alcohol is a much healthier | drug. | kbrannigan wrote: | Exactly, with alcohol I know play that's my 2 drinks of the | night on weekends, call it a day. | | Weed : the effects can last for days, paranoia, delusion, | short term memory loss, not wanting to socialize, depression. | | Sample size of one, I know! Your mileage may vary . | kstrauser wrote: | I appreciate that. And again, I have little experience with | pot so I can't counter that with a personal story. I'm a | little surprised, though, as it's _so_ easy to stumble across | alcohol with it being sold in every store and restaurant. I'd | have to go out of my way to acquire pot, but I could pick up | a 6-pack of beer on my way to the cheese section of the | grocery store. | | I wonder what the relative numbers are of people who | occasionally use pot vs weed and become addicted to it. | m463 wrote: | My parents were responsible cigarette smokers. They were not | chain smokers or even pack-a-day smokers. My father quit cold | turkey when the surgeon general warning came out for tobacco. | | I wonder how accurate or fair a comparison my statement makes? | tedmiston wrote: | For anyone curious to collect, explore, and becoming mindful of | their own personal data more, there's a nice free alcohol tracker | app called Less (iOS only) [1][2] from the same company that | created the fasting app Zero. | | [1]: https://lessdrinks.com/ | | [2]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/less-alcohol- | tracker/id1484828... | quantumloophole wrote: | great, now they will want to ban alcohol | mmastrac wrote: | Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm | scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should | probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful | to at least be consistent. | | While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances | and treat it like a real mental health issue. | drinchev wrote: | Well I think there are far more dangerous substances than | alcohol which are considered legal and advertised. | | Eating sugar for example in excessive amounts leads to way | worse diseases - https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how- | sugar-affects-yo.... | kingkawn wrote: | Alcohol is legal because the population would tear the society | down if it weren't. That's it. None of the other drugs have | that kind of following. | mnw21cam wrote: | Agreed. Banning it has been tried at least once, in the USA, | and apparently it didn't work very well. There were too many | people that wanted alcohol and were willing to defy | government to have it. Government is at least partially (more | in some countries than others) by consent of the governed. | | But also on the contrary to your "none of the other drugs" | point, I can't think of any possible reason why cigarettes | weren't outright banned 40 years ago, except that they have | exactly the same mechanism keeping them legal. | mc32 wrote: | There is such thing as a slippery slope and a dam that | overruneth. | | We've inherited use of alcohol over millennia --it'd be an | uphill battle to rid ourselves of it short of fundamentalist | dogmatism. | | Some places in Central Asia have socialized opiate usage --but | they too have unwritten rules about usage, or at least | traditionally had them observed (it was a 'luxury' of old age). | | If you allow an anything goes policy, you'll end up with a | decaying society. While I don't propose prosecuting consumption | because it's the wrong focus, we should prosecute production | and distribution of hard drugs. | | Else you may end up with the likes of XIX century in China, or | huffers in metro Manila. | jeffbee wrote: | The worst thing about alcohol today is how America is letting | alcoholics dictate pandemic responses, as if we believe that | bars are more important than schools. | caeril wrote: | Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the planet | for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to crippling social | anxiety. | | In all my (many) years, I have found no better path to becoming | socially acceptable (even likable) to neurotypicals/extroverts | than 3-4 shots of vodka. This is an unfortunate, but very real | fact for many of us. I've heard good things about Phenibut, but | (1) it's very difficult to obtain, and (2) it is also | apparently habit-forming. | the_only_law wrote: | I've recently taken to trying Kava, which seems to be | relatively popular among people trying to quit | alcohol/benzos/etc. | | Supposedly it also helps with disinhibition and | socialization, but admittedly I haven't tried it in a social | setting so I'm not sure myself. It certainly does relax me | and chill me out though without the dumbing down of alcohol. | | Of course, by the things I've seen in those "pop-medical" | sites that fill Google search results, you'd think it's much | more dangerous than alcohol. | tsol wrote: | I love kava. I used to use a lot of substances when I was | younger, but quit for health reasons. Still, I get bothered | by stress pretty often. Kava at the end of a long day is | exactly what I need. Bonus points that there's no | habituation. | pmlamotte wrote: | Can definitely second kava. I went to a kava bar several | times a few months ago and found it to be a great alcohol | alternative. It also filled the niche of being a place | where the atmosphere was more similar to a cafe so I could | read a book or work on something in isolation, but without | the downside of caffeine where you can't do that in the | evening without ruining sleep quality. The social effects | were definitely there. | | Like you said, the crowd was largely people trying to quit | or who had quit alcohol or benzos along with a fair amount | of neurodivergent people. Being able to set aside some of | my social anxiety and talk with them is part of what led to | me getting assessed and diagnosed for autism recently. | | The grandparent comment also mentioned phenibut which I | find even more enjoyable, but like they said it can be | habit forming and has a tolerance build up that limits safe | use to once or twice a week. | jsonne wrote: | Kava is great and for sure is wonderful in a social | setting. I've taken to Kava recently and enjoy it casually | (1 to 2 times a week) as its a shorter duration than | alcohol, I get no hangover, and while I relax I don't lose | my inhibitions. I also have drank it at a kava bar and find | it to be an enjoyable social experience where the | atmosphere is very bar like. I'm not totally against | alcohol but Kava for sure is underrated and scratches many | of the same itches as it were. Highly recommended. | Tenoke wrote: | GHB is probably an even better replacement than Phenibut as | it's safer, has less of a hangover/rebound and can be used | more often to no detriment but it has a worse reputation, | needs to be dosed correctly (taking twice the dose | accidentally means you pass out for 4 hours), and if you for | some reason end up using it 24/7 the addiction is as bad to | kick as with benzos or alcohol. | perardi wrote: | Oh-ho, no, not in my experience. | | I used to be devastatingly introverted. Alcohol helped, but | it's nothing compared to GHB or MDMA. Ecstasy will give you | the gift of gab like you can't believe. | | _minor edit:_ I should say I am ignoring the context of | where it's acceptable to do such things. You probably | shouldn't do G at Christmas with the in-laws. _(Though our | quarantine Christmas this year with friends...)_ I'm just | making a bit of a pedantic bit that there are club drugs out | there that are pretty wild in how they can open you up | socially. | wonderwonder wrote: | sure, but its not really socially acceptable to drop X at | the company happy hour. also mistakenly falling into a G | Hole at the local BBQ is generally frowned upon. Having a | couple beers is unlikely to lead to career or social | suicide. | monkmartinez wrote: | IF the "few beers" turns into ONE too many, it will lead | to the same career and social suicide. Driving under the | influence, fighting, lewd acts, etc... I live in a state | where Weed is legal. I don't see people high decide to | fight everyone at the party. I have seen this with | alcohol more than I care to admit. | Tenoke wrote: | G yes, but MDMA can hardly reliablyreplace alcohol for | general social settings given that you cannot do it all | that often without issues, and that it has an even worse | comedown for most people. | [deleted] | carnitine wrote: | You can drink alcohol after work with colleagues though. | It's far more helpful socially than party drugs due to its | ubiquity. | perardi wrote: | I'll grant you that 7 years of working remotely have | slightly warped my idea of what people do at office | parties. | InitialLastName wrote: | > it is also apparently habit-forming. | | I hear that vodka shots also have this property. | nradov wrote: | There are also many people who self medicate with opioids to | treat chronic depression. I certainly wouldn't recommend that | depressed people try opioids, but empirically it seems to be | effective in reducing symptoms for some patients at least | temporarily. | clsec wrote: | Speaking from experience, as an older guy with crippling | social anxiety and 30+ yrs of alcohol use/abuse, I can say | that it superficially helps with social anxiety. However, it | does not get to the root cause(s) of said anxiety. | Professional help is needed to find and work on fixing those. | The side effects, physical and psychological, of regular | alcohol consumption are far worse than living with social | anxiety. I also think it's unhealthy to try to fix one's | psychological issues with drugs/medications without also | looking at and trying to fix the reasons for their use in the | first place. | | Also, I now have to undergo quite a few yearly medical tests | to keep an eye on my body after years of self medicating for | my extreme social anxiety. | | FWIW, I don't say these things as a teetotaler. I believe in | harm reduction. | [deleted] | hnuser847 wrote: | > Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the | planet for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to | crippling social anxiety. | | I completely disagree and I think you should consider the | possibility that alcohol is creating your anxiety in the | first place. My years-long struggle with social anxiety | disappeared after I decided to quit drinking for good. | mountainriver wrote: | Two bad things is worse than one bad thing unfortunately, but | yes I agree that alcohol is one of the worst | golemotron wrote: | This comes from the point of view that harm is a scalar | quantity. There are many different dimensions of harm and they | vary wildly for each activity/drug. Reality is more nuanced | than any single measure we select. | BirAdam wrote: | All drugs should be decriminalized. Shooting people in drug | raids is far worse for those people than are the drugs. | Likewise, locking people in cages with other misfits, | criminals, malcontents, and addicts isn't smart (especially | considering that drugs are in the prisons too). If the goal is | truly harm reduction, people need to simply work to convince | drug users to not use drugs (whether those are opioids, | alcohol, tobacco, meth, whatever). | lancesells wrote: | I'm not refuting and generally agree with your sentiment here | in harm reduction but I tried to see the collateral damage of | drug raids vs drugs. | | In the US the CDC reported 100,000 overdoses from drugs in | the 12 months preceding April 2021[1]. I can't find how many | people die from drug raids specifically but this Al-Jazeera | article shows 1,068 people being killed by the police a year | after George Floyd died[2]. | | And for a little more context Statista[3] shows 21,750 people | being murdered in 2020. | | Police kill at ~1% the rate of drug deaths. Citizens kill at | ~20% the rate of drug deaths. | | 1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/202 | 1/... 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/25/how-many- | people-hav... 3. | https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported- | murder-a... | BirAdam wrote: | An addict can become not an addict. A person killed by | police cannot become anything other than a corpse. The | severity of the harm has a temporal component due to time | preference. | | EDIT: Also, dying of overdose is both a symptom of | illegality and of the addiction. If a thing is outlawed the | production isn't exactly regular and therefore | strength/purity of the substance varies. | lancesells wrote: | Agreed. I'm in no way advocating people dying from any | source. Drugs laws are ridiculous in so many ways. I was | just trying to wrap my head around what the true numbers | are as it helps put things into context. | wonderwonder wrote: | Now count how many people are sitting in jail for marijuana | possession and the impact that arrest has over the course | of their lives. | lancesells wrote: | Oh absolutely. Something like marijuana should not have | ever been a crime. It's absurd and horrifying to think of | people spending their lives behind bars for that and many | other drug offenses. | cjbgkagh wrote: | I take a lot of Non-FDA approved gray market and black market | medicine. If all drugs are legal then such medical drugs | should be legal as well. At least the ones I take are health | promoting, non-addictive and non-habit forming. | | I think a big part of the resistance to legalization is the | medical establishment maintaining their monopoly supplier | status on medicine. | wonderwonder wrote: | I am not sure where I fall on the all drugs should be legal | argument but I do know that because I spent ~$400 to get a | medical marijuana card I can legally buy pot at the local | dispensary in my state and smoke it with zero repercussions. | In the mean time the jails are absolutely full of people who | are there because they did not spend the $400. It is morally | insane for that to continue. People are getting rich off | selling marijuana in a dispensary while others are serving | life sentences for selling it out of their home. | RobertRoberts wrote: | Slippery slope. | | What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks | someone? This is why we have drug laws to start with, was to | protect people. | | There are no simple answers here. | reverend_gonzo wrote: | Assault is already a crime. | | What happens when a person robs someone so he can buy a new | car? You don't outlaw cars. | _-david-_ wrote: | Cars don't cause impaired judgment and withdraw. | tikkabhuna wrote: | I don't believe the poster above is saying that there | should be no intervention, they're saying they shouldn't be | criminally prosecuted. | | There should be a non-criminal route for helping drug | addicts that doesn't result in prison. | RobertRoberts wrote: | I can agree with that, but what is it? It can't be forced | rehab, that is just jail but different. And addicts by | definition _won't_ seek help or a solution. | destar wrote: | I don't agree with your definition, often people affected | by addiction will desperately seek help. Unfortunately, | many fall into relapse cycles and it's a long and hard | process to recovery. | | I think a good solution would be making quality non- | forced resources available for free. For example, rehab, | therapy, or jobs specifically created for those seeking | to overcome their addiction. Ideally these programs could | pay for themselves in net returns for society as a whole. | haroldp wrote: | What you are thinking of as the side effects of drug | addiction are mainly the side effects of prohibition. | Alcohol addiction is a serious problem, with serious | negative consequences. So we made it illegal. And then we | had two problems instead of one. Drug laws do not decrease | addiction rates. They do make drugs unnecessarily | expensive, and force addicts to interact with violent | criminal gangs to get them. The negative unintended | consequences of drug prohibition are worse than the problem | they purport, but fail to solve. | RobertRoberts wrote: | Which drug will do more harm if freely available to all | children? Alcohol, meth, heroin or crack? | | I will pick alcohol every time over the others. | haroldp wrote: | Which vehicle will do more harm if freely available to | all children? Car, tank or crane with wrecking ball? | | I would suggest that children shouldn't be driving at | all. | boomboomsubban wrote: | Why am I forced to choose any or just one? Why do you | think alcohol does less harm then any of the others? | | Currently far, far more children die due to alcohol than | the others, and while that's definitely due to | availability it's not obvious that wouldn't still be the | case if all were legal. | RobertRoberts wrote: | > Why do you think alcohol does less harm then any of the | others? | | A simple test, give each to a baby/small child and see | what happens... I lived in a time where babies were given | tiny amounts of alcohol for pain relief and it did no | harm that I ever heard. I doubt you can say the same for | meth. | boomboomsubban wrote: | I believe that the consensus is that it did cause a small | amount of harm and there likely are horror stories you | never heard, that's why the practice stopped, but giving | children meth is called adderal. | | Children also had regular access to small amounts of coke | and heroin probably in your grandparents or great | grandparents life, remember Coca Cola and laudanum was | used for teething. You've never heard of harm from that. | Your test says all of them pass. | the_only_law wrote: | > What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix | attacks someone? | | You arrest and charge them for attacking someone? | josephcsible wrote: | But if the person they attacked dies, arresting the | attacker after the fact doesn't bring them back to life. | Do you also think DUI should be legal until you get in a | crash? | the_only_law wrote: | > Do you also think DUI should be legal until you get in | a crash? | | No clearly we should charge anyone found in possession of | alcohol with a felony to lower the possibility. | | Drinking is not a crime, being drunk alone is not a | crime, driving is not a crime. Being drunk, while driving | is. On the other hand, assault is a crime regardless. | [deleted] | AQuantized wrote: | Arrest them for assault...? Basically every study or | reasonable implementation of decriminalization has shown | both fewer negative effects of drug use, and in many cases | decreased drug use itself. | | So there is in fact a simple answer, and I think you'll | find that drug laws were likely conceived much more | cynically than for the protection of the common person. | RobertRoberts wrote: | We have already (as a society) decided we will no longer | forcibly help people, so what do you do with someone that | hurts others to feed their addiction? | | Put them all in jail for every little offense? Fine them? | (they have no money) Force them into rehab? (another form | of jail) Let the roam the streets attacking people? | (recycle through jail or rehab) | | No, it's not simple. | haroldp wrote: | Assaulting people for drug money is an artifact of the | drug war, not the drug. Alcohol addicts don't typically | assault people for alcohol money. Alcohol gangs do not | shoot each other up on the streets over alcohol | territory. Or they haven't since 1933. | nradov wrote: | Assault is not a "little offense". Anyone convicted of | criminal assault should spend a significant amount of | time in prison (regardless of whether they're a drug | addict or not) in order to protect the rest of society. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | We just elected a district attorney in Manhattan who has | adopted a policy that he will not seek imprisonment for | charges of simple assault. | leishman wrote: | It is in San Francisco | wonderwonder wrote: | Have assaults gone up in the states where marijuana has | been legalized? | jancsika wrote: | Just to show how facile this reasoning is, let's flip the bit: | | "Alcohol is one of the worst 'drugs' on a personal/societal | harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we | should make sure we keep other drugs illegal _by default_ | unless shown individually, through decades of research, to be | safe. Otherwise we will burden our healthcare system and create | a national catastrophe. As evidence of this danger, I submit | the history of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and liver disease, | and their effects on our healthcare system. " | | I offer that you can only do one of two things now: | | 1. Argue against my advocacy for inconsistency using personal | incredulity | | 2. Provide a _deeper_ argument that relies on something more | than an appeal to consistency | | Edit: added a clause to sweeten my argument for inconsistency | bumby wrote: | > _to at least be consistent._ | | Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by | outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an | impractical solution. So I don't think "we allow one bad thing | and we can't get rid of it, so let's allow all bad things" | makes a particularly compelling argument. | | (FWIW, I'm generally not against legalization nor do I think | all drugs are net-negative. I just find the argument as laid | out to be unconvincing.) | dragonwriter wrote: | > Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by | outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an | impractical solution. | | It was _recognized as impractical_ fairly quickly, despite | having fairly similar concrete outcomes to the drug war, for | which a similar recognition has been much slower and less | complete. But, again, that 's just another layer of | inconsistency in the same direction, not a mitigation of it. | bumby wrote: | Again, I'm not against legalization. But I'd like to see | more concrete mitigation of the downsides. Just stating | that we should aim for consistency does nothing about the | blowback. "Legalize it to be consistent" seems as facile a | solution as "Prohibit it because it can be dangerous" in | that they ignore the complexities of implementation. | [deleted] | ravenstine wrote: | I agree with the point on consistency, but must substances be | viewed through the lens of "abuse" and "mental health"? It's | not clear if you are implying that use of alcohol is generally | a form of drug abuse related to mental health. In fact I'm not | sure we can adequately define what is "abuse" in this case. | | Take for instance Lemmy from Motorhead, who used alcohol and | drugs heavily throughout his life and probably died an early | death as a result; can that really be considered abuse when he, | pardon my French, _didn 't give a shit?_ | | For some people, things like alcohol are a serious issue and | overuse can stem from both physical and psychological | addiction. Then you've got people who use it sparingly. And yet | there are people who drink heavily, know exactly what they're | doing, and can't easily be classified as addicts without | projecting one's own life choices unto them. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | > _if we 're going to tolerate this at large, we should | probably consider legalizing everything else that's less | harmful to at least be consistent._ | | Please do not decide policy using this kind of reasoning. Maybe | we _should_ legalise more stuff, but "worse things are legal" | is not a good reason. | | > A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, | adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. -- | Ralph Waldo Emerson | scotty79 wrote: | It would at least give people some options and some would | choose less harmful ones. | cies wrote: | Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing it. | | There's a difference between an offense and a crime (in most | countries). | | Making buying/selling/using some substances a crime is | limiting freedom, and hence should only be a measure of last | resort. So no "the alc lobby push for laws against weed" kind | of story that ended up with the "reefer scare" tactic. | mnw21cam wrote: | > Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing | it. | | Many things are illegal not because a law has been passed | against it, but because something seemed bad, was brought | before a judge, and the judge made a judgment that set a | precedent. That's what is called common law. | | Having a law created is a separate way that things can | become illegal. That's what is called statutory law. | | Not all countries have common law. | cies wrote: | >but because something seemed bad, was brought before a | judge, and the judge made a judgment that set a precedent | | Like growing MJ in yr garden?, gimme a break. | | Hoe can substance use ever become a crime under common | law? Some penalty okay, but a crime??? | kmonad wrote: | That is one amazing quote. Thanks for making it known to me. | merpnderp wrote: | This kind of reasoning is perfect. You remember when alcohol | was made illegal in the US? Remember the harm that caused | from gangs, uneven police crackdowns on illegal bars, and | such rampant criminality that alcohol was quickly re- | legalized? The drug war is 100x worse. | | If we'd been consistent, we'd have dodged 50 years of a | brutal drug war that has done so much damage to society, the | rule of law, our democratic institutions, the role of police, | basically everything, that it's hard to imagine the | vacationing on the moon type of future we missed out on. | | Treating drug addiction like alcohol addiction and drug | dealers like liquor stores, would have been the road less | taken and would have made all the difference. | dataviz1000 wrote: | Countering an Emerson quote with a Frost quote. Well done. | jasonhansel wrote: | That popular view of Prohibition--as an unmitigated failure | that only created problems--may not be supported by | historical evidence: https://www.vox.com/the- | highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit... | | From that article: | | > Across the Hudson River, in Manhattan, the number of | patients treated in Bellevue Hospital's alcohol wards | dropped from fifteen thousand a year before Prohibition to | under six thousand in 1924. Nationally, cirrhosis deaths | fell by more than a third between 1916 and 1929. In | Detroit, arrests for drunkenness declined 90 percent during | Prohibition's first year. Domestic violence complaints fell | by half. | shawnz wrote: | The argument you are making here is not that drugs should | be legalized _for consistency 's sake_. The argument you | are making is that drugs should be legalized because the | dangers of prohibition outweigh the benefits. That is a | completely different line of reasoning | merpnderp wrote: | If our threshold for badness is X and we apply that to | alcohol, but don't apply that to drugs, then we're being | inconsistent with how we apply our threshold for badness. | You just had to take your argument a step further to see | the consistency argument. | jasonlotito wrote: | > Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but "worse things are | legal" is not a good reason. | | That's not the reasoning to legalize things. That's the | reasoning used to filter out what we should consider further. | diob wrote: | The reasoning used to put the policies in place on those | "illegal" substances was hardly reasoning in the first place. | | So many countries have had great success with legalization, | so what is your reasoning for so much caution? It's only | continuing the legacy of pain. | funklute wrote: | > but "worse things are legal" is not a good reason. | | It's a very good reason to at least change one of the two. | Either make the worse thing legal, or criminalise the | "better" thing. Arbitrary rules are never a good thing. | lostgame wrote: | >> Arbitrary rules are never a good thing. | | Any parent, ever - will be able to tell you this is a fact. | | If you think arbitrary rules can stick, wait until your kid | hits the 'why'/'how come' phase. | | In this case, the government is the parent making an | arbitrary rule and the people represent the 5-year-old kid | asking why. | | Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' | | Kid: 'Why?' | | Parent: 'Because cocaine is bad for you.' | | Kid: 'But why? Isn't drinking bad for you?' | | Parent: 'Cocaine is worse.' | | Kid: 'Why?' | | Parent: 'It's addictive and it ruins lives.' | | Kid: 'But doesn't alcohol do that too?' | | Parent: 'Well, yes...' | | Kid: 'So why is cocaine so much worse?' | | Parent: 'It just is! Just stop asking questions and listen | to your parent.' | | This kind of shit stops a kid from _respecting_ their | parent, because they trust their parent to know what 's | good for them, and to have _reasons_ behind rules and | restrictions. | | Similarly, when the government starts making arbitrary | decisions for us, but can't provide the logic behind it - | and - worse - the evidence from the medical, scientific and | psychology communities state the complete opposite - we | lose respect for and faith in the government. | gwd wrote: | > Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' | | > Kid: 'Why?' | | Parent: 'Because alcohol is legal and cocaine isn't; that | has several consequences. | | 'Governmental regulations provide some confidence that | alcohol is safe and as-advertised; there is no regulation | of the manufacturing quality of cocaine. | | 'Buying alcohol brings you into close proximity to the | liquor supply chain, all of whom can settle disputes by | using the court system. Buying cocaine brings you in | close proximity to the cocaine supply chain, all of whom | can only settle disputes using violence. | | 'And of course there are no legal repercussions for the | possession of alcohol; there are legal repercussions for | the possession of cocaine.' | endisneigh wrote: | This isn't actually a reason, though, as it begs the | question. Cocaine could definitely be manufactured | legally if made legal. | gwd wrote: | These are what I consider to be the strongest reasons why | my child shouldn't do cocaine _in my country right now_. | If they go to a country where it 's well-regulated, then | the cost/benefits calculation changes quite a bit. | sidlls wrote: | How does it beg the question? | gwd wrote: | Not GP, but a lot of people have trouble distinguishing | "illegal" from "wrong", and the cause and effect. It's | "wrong" to take cocaine because it's illegal; it's bad to | legalize cocaine because it's "wrong". Cocaine is bad | because of all the harms it causes to society; but a lot | of the harms it causes to society (some of them listed | above) come about solely because it's illegal. | lostgame wrote: | But...that's just one more step of 'why', the next one | after this is the one that doesn't have a good answer - | so - kinda proving my point. | _jal wrote: | Reasoning about society by infantilizing adults is _also_ | a terrible way to reason about policy. | | Leaders are not parents, states are not families, | national budgets do not compare to your bank account, and | adults are equal partners in our society. | | I realize you're trying to get at psychological | tendencies, but the premise is flawed and leads to | applying faulty intuitions in disasterous ways. | avgcorrection wrote: | It's not necessarily meant to be used as an argument as such. | It could also be intended as a rhetorical device in order to | force the opponent to concede on another point: | | Person A: We should legalize weed in order to be consistent | [see above argument] | | Person B: Nonsense! Weed has harmful effects on society! | | Person A: Alcohol objectively harms society more than weed | [insert citations here]. So you would agree that we should | regulate alcohol more, yes? | lotsofpulp wrote: | Consistency in legal matters seems like a good and necessary | thing for ensuring fairness. What is the basis for Emerson's | quote to apply here? | [deleted] | sokoloff wrote: | I'm generally pro-legalization, but there are many things | that we hypothesize are safe _but do not know_ the long- | term effects of and, within living memory, have discovered | that many things initially thought safe were not. | | People were taking X-ray images of shoe fit in department | stores, we used thalidomide to treat morning sickness, etc. | | What society says is legal has an effect on how it is | perceived and how frequently it's accessed by minors, | teens, young adults, and adults. Exercising a modicum of | conservatism in approving all things that we _think_ are | safer than alcohol seems appropriate to me. | nradov wrote: | That is faulty logic. We hypothesize that mRNA vaccines | for COVID-19 are safe _but do not know_ the long term | effects. Why should we exercise conservatism for some | drugs but not for vaccines? | | To be clear, I'm just using that as an example of logical | inconsistency and I recommend that everyone eligible | protect themselves by getting vaccinated. I also think | that all recreational drugs should be legalized (or at | least decriminalized) because regardless of the potential | long-term effects the failed war on (some) drugs is | causing far more harm than the drugs themselves. | JaimeThompson wrote: | Scientifically speaking we know nothing at 100% | confidence level. | bluGill wrote: | While that is technically correct, mRNA is something your | body makes in relatively large quantities every day. As | such if it was harmful life itself wouldn't be possible. | oceanplexian wrote: | Really the argument should be about strengthening | informed consent. "Safety" is not objective; something | that one individual would consider safe might not be safe | for another. For example I have friends that like to go | sky-diving. For them it's "safe". For me, it's not. Drugs | should require a waiver similar to signing up for a | credit card. e.g., | | "This drug completed a 12 month Phase 2 clinical trial | with 65,917 participants in which the drug demonstrated | efficacy of Y against symptomatic disease. 1.5% of | participants experienced adverse effects which included | runny nose. 0.01% of participants experienced a fatal | allergic reaction. These drugs are still undergoing | trials and our understanding of safety and efficacy can | change in the future. | | [ ] Check to indicate you understand and consent" | | I think this should be the standard for vaccines, drugs | like marijuana and alcohol and cigarettes. Do it at the | point-of-sale. For things that are particularly | dangerous, maybe require an interview with a physician to | make sure the person is of sound mind and capable of | consenting. I believe that if you treat people like | adults they will naturally make the best decisions for | themselves. When you treat people like children, they'll | act like children. | selectodude wrote: | For what it's worth, mRNA immunotherapies for cancer have | been being injected into people for almost 20 years now. | Efficacy aside, we know the medium-long term outcomes of | injecting ourselves with mRNA. | yonaguska wrote: | The relative risk reduction for potentially catching | covid-19 vs actually having cancer are radically | different. Long to medium term risk of adverse effects | from mRNA therapies are probably not weighed heavily | against imminent eventuality of short term death with | cancer. Edit- that's not to say I don't disagree with you | on us knowing the long-medium term risks of mRNA | therapies. | selectodude wrote: | I'm not getting into the relative merits of vaccination, | I'm merely saying that mRNA isn't going to hurt you. Even | decades from now. We know there are no medium-term risks | of mRNA therapies because the otherwise healthy people | who have injected themselves with mRNA are still alive | and kicking. | | Here is the first Phase I test of an mRNA vaccine from | 2013. | | https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02241135 | | Here's a phase I trial for mRNA therapies from 2005. | | https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00204516 | sokoloff wrote: | We make trade offs of short-term benefit and long-term | risk all the time. When considering the purely | recreational intake of a substance, the long-term risks | are more relevant (due to the relatively small short-term | gain) than for a vaccine which has unknown risks but has | now-proven significant short-term benefits. | Zigurd wrote: | Legalization brings production and sale of recreational | drugs under regulation. That will not stop all harms, but | those harms are then more likely to be known. Addiction | treatment is more accessible when drug use is not | criminalized. | Accacin wrote: | I do agree with this argument, but most of the time | legalising doesn't just make problems disappear. It needs | to be paired with better access to mental health | facilities, rehabilitiation, etc. | | Making drugs legal doesn't mean people will start abusing | them. I do not drink or take drugs, and both are easy as | hell to access here in the UK. | | The benefits for me of legalising drugs would be making | it easier for people to seek help with less stigma | attached to it, remove drug dealers out of the equation, | make it safer to procur drugs if people are going to take | them anyway, I believe it would also make scientific | research much easier which in turn might help us to know | the long term effects of these drugs. | sokoloff wrote: | Does legalization make things better or worse than now? | If it makes things better but still not perfect, perhaps | we _don't_ need to hold up legalization until we can | provide better mental health facilities, rehab, better | public transport so people can get to these facilities | easier, etc. | | Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. | avgcorrection wrote: | > What society says is legal has an effect on how it is | perceived and how frequently it's accessed by minors, | teens, young adults, and adults. Exercising a modicum of | conservatism in approving all things that we think are | safer than alcohol seems appropriate to me. | | Considering that we are talking about _alcohol_ , this | argument could just as well be used in favor of | liberalization. | sokoloff wrote: | I (and at least one other poster) were talking about | things thought comparatively safe to alcohol. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30010236 | avgcorrection wrote: | Sorry. I didn't read the context correctly. :) | | In that case the question becomes: has use (and in | particular abuse) of substances increased after | legalization? Which I will just throw out there since I'm | too lazy to research it myself. | 999900000999 wrote: | I can guarantee you the most dangerous part of using any | substance is our legal system. | | Legalize everything for anyone 21 or older, and while | we're at it, raise the enlistment age to 21. | | If you're old enough to die for this country, you should | be old enough to light a j in it. | ahtihn wrote: | Meh decriminalize possession and consumption, sure. I | don't think something like heroin should be easily | available though. | 999900000999 wrote: | You can either tax, regulate and make it safe. | | Or have addicts die in the street. | | Prohibition doesn't work. | [deleted] | WillPostForFood wrote: | And raise the voting age to 21 too? | temp0826 wrote: | I don't see a problem here, politics is probably bad for | brain development. 25 might actually be more appropriate. | rcpt wrote: | Voting age should be low. Maybe 8? 0 is good to | | I'm not kidding. Talk to any 8 year old and they're much | more level headed compared to those 10x their age. But | the current system is set up to crush them relying only | on the good will of seniors to protect their future. | | This isn't a new idea btw https://www.theguardian.com/pol | itics/2021/nov/16/reconstruct... | 999900000999 wrote: | Wouldn't this in effect give a parent with multiple | children multiple votes. | | Mail in voting means you'd just fill out the ballots for | your kids. | | I think voting should remain at 18. Although I have some | ideas on making more concerns local. Why does most of my | tax dollars go to the federal government rather than the | state. | | At the State level at least I have a remote chance of | being heard. And if I don't like what my state is doing, | I can drive 50 miles to another. | Asmod4n wrote: | Humans have consumed it for several millennia, we know | all side effects of it. | geodel wrote: | Point was foolish consistency. I see an IT diktat that a | function should not be longer than 100 lines. I would even | go ahead and say seems reasonable for lot of cases. But to | make it absolute would be foolish consistency. | kergonath wrote: | Unless we have a perfect metric quantifying the "amount of | harm" for every substance or practice, we will never have | this kind of consistency. And then, there is the issue of | harm to self versus harm to others, and how we can weight | both aspects. | | Consistency is in the eye of the beholder. For some people, | sex is just as bad as alcohol, and they include some kind | of spiritual damage as "harm to self" in their analysis. | These things are necessarily subjective. Psychological | damage cannot be quantified either. | | So it follows that consistency is subjective, and even if a | legal framework could be consistent from the point of view | of a certain group of people by chance, it would not be | consistent in the eyes of everyone. | dasil003 wrote: | Consistency in how the law is applied is important, but not | that the composite of all laws be absolutely fair relative | to each other. That is "foolish consistency" because it's | impossible except by very closed-minded fundamentalism. The | idea that you find the "worst" thing that is legal and then | repeal all laws against things which are "better" is not a | viable legislative strategy. | kukx wrote: | Also the exceptions exist usually for a good reason. | Trying to get rid of them without understanding it is a | bad idea. | locallost wrote: | There is nothing foolish about treating things that are | the same consistently. It would be foolish to grant | animals citizenships to keep it consistent with humans, | but just as e.g. human rights are applied consistently to | people no matter where they come from or how they look | like so should our policies to things be in general. | Alcohol is a drug with a tremendous potential for harm, | and if a society decides it wants to ban those, again | there is nothing foolish in doing that consistently. But | when looked at like that, it's clear there is not much | rational in the way we regulate things. It's just a bunch | of traditions and whims. | mlac wrote: | Statesmen saying "alcohol is legal, might as well legalize | everything else that is less harmful on some dimension". | Where the alternative may be just leaving alcohol as an | exception, or outlawing it (but yeah... don't mess with | Americans and their Alcohol - see prohibition and the | whiskey rebellion). | dkarl wrote: | No two situations are the same, and demanding consistency | at an arbitrary level of reasoning means disregarding | everything you would see when looking closer. For example, | banning something that has been legal for a long time is | difficult because of the economic aftershocks and cultural | resistance. If something new was invented that was just as | harmful as alcohol, it might be best to ban it and leave | alcohol legal. | | FWIW, I probably mostly agree with you on policy. Just | wanted to chime in on why people might object to the | reasoning. | pixl97 wrote: | Also attempting to ban things that are both desirable and | very easy to make is a great way to create an enormous | criminal black market like we did with prohibition in the | US. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Suppose the law states that David Haroldson (or the | Glorious Leader, or foreign diplomats) cannot be convicted | of any crime. That's inconsistent, (perhaps) arbitrary, and | unfair. Yet, it would be foolish to extend this conviction- | immunity to everybody. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I feel like that supports what I wrote. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Or make it so glorious leader is not above the law. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Yes. _Consistency_ is not necessarily the problem; | _foolish_ consistency is. | virgildotcodes wrote: | For the sake of consistency, wouldn't it be desirable for | the glorious leader to be subject to the same legal | punishments as the masses? | throwaway0a5e wrote: | That's his point. | kergonath wrote: | Arguing about consistency in a system without the rule of | law seems a bit foolish as well. Diplomats are a more | interesting edge case. And AFAIK they can always be | prosecuted and convicted in their home country. | bluGill wrote: | That can be abused as well. Just frame the leader for a | crime and he sits in prison until it is proved that he is | innocent, then do so again for a different crime. | | For the above assume the leader is actually glorious, | though of course most leaders who are called glorious are | awful (IMHO) | kazinator wrote: | > _"worse things are legal" is not a good reason._ | | Seems pretty excellent to me. Things should be arranged on | numerically indexed scale from benign to deadly. We should | identify a point on that scale where illegality begins, and | everything to the left is legal. | greenpresident wrote: | David Nutt did important work in this area. See for example his | scale of drug harmfulness here: | | (Edit: see archive link below) | | And | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361... | michaelbuckbee wrote: | That's interesting, I do wish it had a few more items on the | "lower" end of the harm spectrum, just to help me gauge this | better. Things like Caffeine, or the other "Energy Drink" | supplements. | infogulch wrote: | That pdf 403's. Here's an archive.org snapshot: https://web.a | rchive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan.... | | Alcohol is one place behind street meth in Figure 1. Damn. | [deleted] | pkulak wrote: | Do you really think it's worse than the current wave of | synthetic opioids? I think I could even make a good case for | cigarettes being worse than alcohol. | [deleted] | kritiko wrote: | the parent said "one of the worst" not the worst. | | also, at least for now, cigarettes are legal, which just | bolsters the point above. | hbosch wrote: | I don't know, the ways in which they stack up is like apples | and oranges. Cigarettes are certainly _bad_ for you, and it | 's known they cause cancer but cigarettes don't have the same | severity when it comes to withdrawl in my understanding. | Alcohol withdrawl can cause hallucinations, seizures, even | death. Also, I would say the danger is greater with alcohol | because it impairs your judgement in a far greater way than | cigarettes... have you ever been scared of someone who is | driving while smoking? | | Extrapolated out over time, I would guess that alcoholism is | a cofactor in more deaths annually than cigarettes (edit: | that is to say, deaths not caused directly by drinking, | including drink driving, but conditions such as diabetes and | heart disease which are greatly exacerbated by drinking for | example... I wonder if someone who dies of cirrhosis gets | chalked up as a death by alcohol?) | shafyy wrote: | Smoking is for sure worse than alcohol consumption: | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-by- | risk-... | | Global yearly deaths by smoking: 7.1 million | | Global yearly deaths by alcohol usage: 2.84 million | saberience wrote: | This doesn't include all of the other harmful effects from | alcohol, like violence and injures. How much marital | physical abuse happens due to alcohol? I'd rather have | someone harm themselves from smoking then someone beat | their wife while drunk. | shafyy wrote: | Not to defend violent alcoholics, but people who get | violent when drunk already have a problem, and would also | violent when sober (they probably are). Most people who | drink are not violent. | | Regarding injuries: Sure, but the statistics in general | doesn't include stuff that doesn't kill you but still is | bad, like non-lethal lung problems from smoking. | hallway_monitor wrote: | To be clear, this data is showing correlation, not any kind | of causation. | | Regardless, if we accept the argument that people need to | be coerced for their own good into avoiding harmful | behaviors, the data linked seems to argue that we should be | restricting access to sugar and high glycemic index foods | (flour) much more than alcohol since "High blood sugar" at | 6.5MM and "Obesity" at 4.7MM both beat alcohol by a large | margin. | shafyy wrote: | Yes, I agree that we should do more about unhealthy | foods. Not restrict access to them (after all, smoking is | also not illegal), but set in places incentives that | nudge people towards healthier foods (these can be | financial, educational, psychological, etc.). | Alex3917 wrote: | The difference is that the average smoker dies at 80, and | the average alcoholic dies at 35. | the_only_law wrote: | Source? 35 feels realllly young, but I guess it depends | on what's considered an "average" alcoholic. If someone | is spending their entire day drinking string liquors | everyday, I can maybe see that. | Alex3917 wrote: | I was being approximate, but here is the more nuanced | explanation: | | "This study found an average of 93,296 alcohol- | attributable deaths (255 deaths per day) and 2.7 million | YPLL (29 years of life lost per death, on average) in the | United States each year." | | https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6930a1.htm | | Whereas smoking reduces life expectancy by "only" ~12 | years. | rcpt wrote: | 80 sounds old for smoking to. | [deleted] | bastardoperator wrote: | While I don't disagree with smoking being extremely | harmful, most people addicted to nicotine can still | function regularly. Regardless of which kills more, they | both kill via proxy and that's where I see the biggest | issue for both of them. Interestingly enough I've found | that many people smoke when they're drinking. | michaelmior wrote: | The comment never claimed that alcohol is worse than | synthetic opioids or cigarettes. The comment stated it is | _one of_ the worst drugs. | josephcsible wrote: | "one of the" is weasel words. | echelon wrote: | The paper referenced in sibling comments purports that | alcohol is worse than tobacco. | | https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan.. | .. | | I wouldn't be surprised. There are studies that are beginning | to link liver health to neurodegeneration, and that's just | one set of potential disease states. | | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210914152531.h. | .. | asteroidp wrote: | The two are actually on par with each other | greenpresident wrote: | Parent is most likely basing their comment on the work of | David Nutt, see my other comment on this thread. | blfr wrote: | > we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's | less harmful to at least be consistent | | This argument is brought up fairly regularly but I don't think | it's very good. We cannot go back on alcohol, Americans tried | pretty hard. | | Our choice is limited to alcohol or alcohol plus whatever we | legalize. Harm from alcohol is the hard lower bound on harm | from substance use. | reaperducer wrote: | _Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal | harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we | should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less | harmful to at least be consistent._ | | I've never understood the arguments like yours, which I used to | hear a half-century ago in high school, and now see presented | online. They distill down to "We allow this one bad thing, so | we should allow all of the other bad things, too." As if having | more bad things is better than having fewer bad things. | | I don't drink, so I don't care if alcohol gets banned or | restricted or whatever. But these type of arguments always | strike me as little more than "Billy jumped off the bridge, so | I can, too!" | | I really don't see the logic here. | jcadam wrote: | Banning alcohol didn't work out so well the last time we | tried it and I seriously doubt it would go any better if we | tried it again now. | jbirer wrote: | Legalize medicinal meth. | qwytw wrote: | Isn't it already legal if you have prescription? (In pill | form ofcourse) | ejolto wrote: | Yes, it's sold under the brand name Desoxyn. | mythrwy wrote: | Please no. | | Back in the 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a summer. | Building big box store type buildings. They pour the floor, | then pour the walls on top of the floor, then tip the walls | up and weld them together with metal flanges embedded in the | concrete. | | Nearly everyone on the crew did meth (except like 2 guys, I | was one). Often work would start like 3:00 AM to prevent | rapid drying. No lunch to speak of. Expected to literally run | on the job site from one task to another. I suppose there may | have been potential labor complaints but they never happened | or weren't investigated. | | It wasn't unusual for people to burn out and just not show | up. That was part of the calculus I think by management. One | guy fell asleep in his truck and could not be woken up (after | presumably being up for a few days). | | I quit after a few months but later saw my (low level) | supervisor at a restaurant. He was alone and didn't look | good. He told me how his life had gotten increasingly out of | control and he had tried to kill himself (before finding | Jesus per his words). | | Company didn't care. They were making money. They turned a | blind eye to what was going on. The human wreckage generated | was awful however. | | You think if meth is legal over the counter this won't be | more prevalent? I'm pretty sure it will. Meth kills, and not | just the body. | bastardoperator wrote: | I would consider it the worst or most powerful drug in terms of | access, addiction and intoxication. It's literally poison, and | what it can do to an individual I feel is unlike most other | illicit substances. | hungryforcodes wrote: | Or glue sniffing? | | Alcohol is only a problem because some people do it so much. | Alot of people I know drink all the time-- like several times | a week. They could look a little younger but generally have | passable bills of health. | | Also we have to question who's behind this statement. For all | we know it's the PRC starting a new teetotalling campaign in | their land. | RobertRoberts wrote: | What about meth, fentanyl or oxycotin? (to name just a few) | | I would consider these more literal poison by comparison to | alcohol by any objective manner. If they are all legal, then | access/addiction/intoxication are not even close to compare | to alcohol, they are all far worse. | bastardoperator wrote: | They're not poison though based on they way they work with | neuroreceptors whereas alcohol limits neurotransmission all | together. None of them are good, and in excess they're both | terrible. | RobertRoberts wrote: | An argument I have often heard is that everything can be | poison based on the amount ingested. | | Therefore, if we can classify water as poison (which it | can be) it sort of makes any of these simplistic | comparisons moot. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | If alcohol in moderation is so bad then why is it taking so | long to prove it? | lm28469 wrote: | > Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal | harm scale | | Addiction is, not alcohol in itself. I haven't been anywhere | close to drunk in a decade. I still enjoy a glass of whisky or | a cold beer here and there. | | People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with | "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality | trait. I've seen the damage of weed in my friends, it's just as | bad as alcohol tbh. I never understood the "it's bad so let's | legalise other bad things" | helloworld11 wrote: | >People who have problem with alcohol would have problems | with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a | personality trait. | | You're blatantly assuming here and making it a categorical | statement. They usually don't, neither statistically or at | least in my experience, anecdotally. I and many friends of | mine regularly drink, but most of us barely touch other | drugs. Weed occasionally for some of my friends (I personally | dislike it intensely) but things like coke and so forth, | pretty much nothing, in a wide group of people who are | regular consumers of alcohol. | SubiculumCode wrote: | I hate the term "legalize" because all things are legal (in the | U.S.A.) until they are made illegal. "Legalize" verbiage | constantly tells people that they have to be selectively given | rights, not selectively taken away. | lenkite wrote: | Yep! We should legalize 'political' drugs like | Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin too. | trentnix wrote: | _While we 're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of | substances and treat it like a real mental health issue._ | | Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of | substance abuse does that, whether it's treatment facilities or | social groups like AA and Al-Anon. As they should. Every family | I know has been affected in one way or another by drug or | alcohol addiction and has firsthand knowledge that substance | abuse must be treated like an illness and to forgive (but not | forget) the damage it causes. So I'm not exactly sure your | statement reflects reality. | JshWright wrote: | "Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of | substance abuse" is a small percentage of the population as a | whole, and a very, very small percentage of the people who | make policy and resourcing decisions related to how substance | abuse is handled. | | You may be in a particular microcosm that handles this well, | but that is definitely not the universal experience (not by a | long shot). I'd also dispute the "literally everyone" part of | your comment, as I can think of countless examples of | attempts at substance abuse treatment and support being | actively harmful to the person struggling with addiction. | sokoloff wrote: | Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid | leave to deal with an acute cancer treatment or recover from | a kidney transplant. | | Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid | leave to deal with alcohol addiction. | | Measure the immediate reactions and future performance review | and employment outcomes of the two groups. Do you expect them | to be the same as each other? I don't and I think it comes | down to "I or a family member could get cancer or kidney | failure" vs "alcohol addiction is a choice" thinking. | trentnix wrote: | Apples and bowling balls. As I said in another comment: | | While substance abuse is an illness and should be treated | as such, it's not leukemia or muscular dystrophy. It | requires an active participant to make a concerted effort | to obtain and abuse an addictive, destructive substance. So | it's no surprise that substance abuse might not be given | the same level of sympathy. | [deleted] | kritiko wrote: | I think many managers would prefer the latter because | getting sober should have mainly positive effects on my | employee's health and performance whereas an organ | transplant or cancer seems much more likely to come with | longterm disability and accommodation needs... | hiptobecubic wrote: | It's not treated that way by society at large. | | Treat here not in the "provide medical care for" sense but in | the "interpretation" sense, as in, "I know it's a polka, but | I'm going to treat it like a waltz." | trentnix wrote: | Once again, I think that's a fun thing to see because it's | always nice to dunk on the broader culture, but that's | genuinely not been my experience. People are generally very | understanding and considerate of substance abuse situations | and the carnage that surrounds it. | | And it should be noted that while substance abuse is an | illness and should be treated as such, it's not leukemia or | muscular dystrophy. It requires an active participant to | make a concerted effort to obtain and abuse an addictive, | destructive substance. So it's no surprise that substance | abuse might not be given the same level of sympathy. | fleddr wrote: | What is the value of "consistency" in this matter? | wizzwizz4 wrote: | Legal consistency has many benefits. The two that first come | to mind are: | | * making it easier for non-experts to reason about the law | | * consistency is, in my experience, usually a property of | fairness | fleddr wrote: | Let's keep it practical. Alcohol is here to stay and will | not be prohibited. For historical reasons, culture, | whatever...it stays. | | Yet other harmful substances are currently banned and you | opt to unban them for...consistency. It's like saying when | two countries are at war, why can't we all be at war? Seems | "unfair". | cies wrote: | > to at least be consistent. | | No not be a total joke as a gov't. I love the stories on "refer | scare" and the prohibition (which has become some big | historical period like the renaissance, merely by retarded | gov't policy). | | And not like we're done with it. New Zealand is considering to | ban tobacco sales to the next generation. What could probably | go wrong with that? Is age discrimination now all of a sudden | okay? (this is not about prohibiting sales to kids -- which im | cool with obviously -- but also to adults of the next | generations, when they are of age). | josephcsible wrote: | > Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay? | | Hasn't society already decided a while ago that, for some | reason, age discrimination is okay as long as it's only | against younger people? | matheusmoreira wrote: | The only reason tobacco isn't banned straight up is it would | cause untold disruption in the older addicted population. By | banning sales to younger people, they are trying to prevent | the next generation from becoming addicted, reducing the | impact a future complete ban would cause. It's a temporary | solution that will eventually lead to total ban. | Spivak wrote: | > Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay? | | This line of reasoning doesn't capture any nuance. These | kinds of things operate on an allowlist. Unless there is a | law enacted specifically as an exception then no, in general | age discrimination is not okay. | | Voting, alcohol, weed, driving, truancy, parental control, | marriage, consent for sex, contract law, criminal law, social | security, retirement accounts, and military service all | discriminate based on age despite it being the guiding | principle that you should avoid using age for restrictions | when possible. The law has plenty of examples of min and max | ages. | | If there was any other way to ban cigarettes without making | life miserable for people who are currently addicted? Because | we should absolutely ban cigarettes. The victim is the | cigarette smoker and the crime is the manufacture and sale of | a an addictive substance that it not safe to use in any | amount. | | I agree with you that a law making it illegal for people to | smoke is silly, the law should apply to manufacturers and | distributors. | cies wrote: | We need a constitutional law prohibiting all victimless crime | or this insanity will never end. | kube-system wrote: | Most victimless crimes have victims, they're just hard to | singularly identify. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | No. Not even close. | | Most victimless crimes have literally no victim. There is | no victim without some sort of harm. The reason we have | speed limits and drugs are illegal is because if you go | overboard enough with them there is a high likelihood of | harm. In the vast majority of cases people don't go | overboard and there is no actual victim though. These | things are crimes because our system of justice is not | good at punishing people for "going overboard" with the | consistency and fairness we desire. | kube-system wrote: | While I disagree with some victimless crimes, like drug | possession, victimless crimes that put others at risk | _does_ victimize them. | | It's the reason that shooting a shotgun down a busy | street is (and should be) a crime even if you don't hit | anyone. | | Also, many violations of regulatory requirements are | "victimless" but are entirely necessary cooperation for | things to work properly, or to prevent consequential | harm. Particularly for things where shared resources are | used, like spectrum, roads, airports, the air we breathe, | etc. | | Who is hurt when I blow a little bit of lead dust into | the air? Probably no one, and certainly nobody | identifiable. Who is hurt when everyone blows lead dust | in the air? Potentially many, and still likely | unidentifiable. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | You aren't getting it. Who does the bare risk itself | victimize? Where is the damage? The risk is just that, a | risk. There's a chance it may go bad and a chance that it | may not. The risk produces no damage, no victim. But in | sufficient quantity the bad outcome will happen enough to | be worth making the activity is not allowed. Normally we | prohibit the bad outcome but for some highly subjective | cases we have to just draw a somewhat arbitrary line. | kube-system wrote: | Risk victimizes those who are exposed to it. When it is | trivial to identify a single person who is exposed to the | risk, we don't call it "victimless", we call it | "endangerment". | | Why, when an act exposes multiple unnamed people to a | risk, do some call it a "victimless" crime? Just because | it's _difficult_ to identify those exposed to a risk | doesn 't mean that people _haven 't_ been placed at risk. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >Risk victimizes those who are exposed to it. | | If you share the road with a drunk driver but they crash | into someone else are you a victim? Does their insurer | compensate you? | | Being exposed to risk does not make you a victim. You | need to actually be harmed. | | If your brother takes opiods but stops you are not a | victim. If your bother takes opiods, gets addicted and | ruins your family then you are. | | Shooting a gun in the air, speeding, all sorts of unsafe | things can have no victim, or they can have a victim | depending on how things go. | | We don't criminalize these things because they have | victims when you do them right. They are usually | victimless. We criminalize them because there's too much | luck involved and we don't like the odds. | kube-system wrote: | > Being exposed to risk does not make you a victim. You | need to actually be harmed. | | Crimes of endangerment are an exact counterpoint to this. | They often do have identifiable victims, in a way that | most people would agree. | [deleted] | matthewfcarlson wrote: | I would much rather legalize pot over alcohol being illegal. If | alcohol had the same usage as pot we would have far fewer | deaths. My only complaint is that pot smells awful (though | alcohol isn't much better). | thehappypm wrote: | Tangent but I started a "sober January" and the benefits to my | life are so striking I don't intend to ever drink again. | boringg wrote: | Is anyone surprised by this? Alcohol being good for the body was | pushed by the Alcohol lobby a long time ago and made its way into | the mainstream consciousness. It has lingered because people | enjoy drinking and because of powerful incentives not to change. | | How large is the alcohol industry and how many people are | directly tied to it? | | Am I saying we shouldn't drink? No the amount of stimulating | conversations I have had with people is somewhat a function of | alcohol and being more comfortable to talk about ideas in a less | formal setting. | LesZedCB wrote: | I guess you could say the alcohol lobby was "cooking with gas" | luispa wrote: | cheers! | anoplus wrote: | Before talking about what amounts are good or bad, the cultural | phenomenon of drinking has always been mysterious to me. Alcohol | feels overrated. It seems like no more than symbolic association | with social life, or celebration. I love socializing and | celebrating, but when I want to seize the moment, I want sharp | senses - not the opposite. Also, I find it not tasty honestly. | | I trust people to like having me as their company even when not | participating in drinking. | helsinkiandrew wrote: | Can anyone find any research in the citations that my glass of | red wine in the evening - although it may increase | atherosclerosis and have other health implications - doesn't have | benefits that offset the drawbacks. | | https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po... | | How much do the social, relaxation, and stress relief benefit my | health. In the same way that taking a walk in a polluted city has | pros and cons or the enjoyment someone might get from sky diving | or taking up motorcycling. | cma wrote: | > although it may increase atherosclerosis and have other | health implications - doesn't have benefits that offset the | drawbacks. | | You can get all the theoretical benefits by eating grapes or | raisins. | criddell wrote: | How often do you get together with friends after work for a | few raisins before heading home? | sharno wrote: | "They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, In both there is | great sin, and some benefits for people. And their sin is greater | than their benefit ..." | | Quran (2:219) | greenyoda wrote: | Big discussion of original source: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30009882 | dang wrote: | Comments moved thither. Thanks! | | Edit: actually, this submission was posted first, plus the | Bloomberg article seems a bit more informative than the press | release, so I think we'll merge hither instead. | flippyhead wrote: | I've heard this more lately and can't square it with what I had | understood about those super long-lived cultures; like in Italy | or Japan, where supposedly they drink moderate amounts of alcohol | approximately daily. | burke wrote: | There's no doubt that alcohol in excess is very bad for a | person. | | There's enough doubt about whether light-moderate alcohol | consumption (i.e. a small glass of red wine with dinner and two | or three once in a while with friends) is harmful or protective | that it seems pretty clear that, whether the net effect is | positive or negative, it's not terribly strong. | | We get really hung up on whether something is "good for you" or | "bad for you", without focusing as much as we should on exactly | _how_ bad it is: we just want to sort things into either the | "good" bucket or the "bad" bucket and feel the corresponding | dose of pride or guilt. | acomjean wrote: | There are so many factors that effect health its really hard to | isolate one. I think moderation is key to preventing one of | these things from having an undue large effect. grandmother | (Irish/English) drank and smoked a lot, she lived to her mid- | nineties. She had a relatively stress free existence though. | But she's one person and without an identical twin control, its | hard to tell how much better she might have been had she | abstained. | flippyhead wrote: | But that's why I thought these studies of long-lived | _cultrures_ were significant. These things, including | moderate alcohol consumption, which are common to multiple | very different large groups that live longer than average. | Swenrekcah wrote: | Generally, doing things in moderation is way better than going | to extremes. Drinking moderately as a culture may be correlated | with eating moderately, exercising moderately, etc. | | In any case it has always seemed clear to me that studies | showing beneficial effects of moderate alcohol consumption are | heavily influenced by some combination of paying interest- | groups and the researchers really wanting to justify a daily | beer/wine glass. | | The clearest evidence for me that a glass a day can not | possibly be healthy is the effect just a single glass has on | athletic performance the next day. | | For the record I do drink and have for a long time, but have no | illusions about the negative effects. | flippyhead wrote: | I definitely see why you'd be suspicious. But on the other | hand, the Okinawa Japanese are definitely one of those groups | that DOES live really long and DOES drink moderately. I've | traveled extremely widely, used to live in Japan, and (sure, | anecdotally) it feels reasonable. | Swenrekcah wrote: | I don't doubt they live long and prosper, but attributing | it to moderate alcohol consumption rather than anything | else seems suspicious. | tsol wrote: | I've heard of having a glass of wine in meals in Italy, but | does Japan really have a culture of daily drinking? Either way, | that brings up use patterns. Here we tend to binge drink, with | the purpose of getting drunk. That's not the same in such | cultures. They have a much more moderate view of alcohol. A | glass of wine and shots are two very different things | devoutsalsa wrote: | "I knew a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex and rich food. | He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself." - Johnny | Carson | guilhas wrote: | Life is so complicated now a days that stress will probably | kill you first | mritchie712 wrote: | One of those things is not like the others. | | I don't think sex is linked to many bad health outcomes. | alar44 wrote: | The point is that they are considered vices. Sex, drugs, rock | and roll etc. It's a joke, lighten up. | jcadam wrote: | > I don't think sex is linked to many bad health outcomes. | | Sure it is. STDs, risk of injury, etc. | stronglikedan wrote: | Bad comparison. Too much of the other stuff will harm you | regardless of how careful you are. No amount of sex will | harm you, if you're careful. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | Weird phrasing to try to make a point; no amount of | alcohol will harm you, if you're careful? | | Too much of anything will harm you. | devoutsalsa wrote: | "Futurama - Death By Snu Snu" => | https://youtu.be/3f8sjzETQ5o | weedontwee wrote: | "You're gonna feel like a damn fool, laying out at that | hospital, dying from nothing!" - Redd Foxx | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grI16niGXA | yalogin wrote: | I think most people know this on some level. Alcohol cannot be | good for the body. However, society encourages and even shames | people that don't drink to an extreme degree that people go with | the herd on this. Its going to be impossible to beat and turn | around that societal pressure and acceptance. | entropicgravity wrote: | A room full of cardiologists will raise a glass to that. | Bud wrote: | Side note: in a related story, the Don't Go Stark Raving Mad | During A Pandemic Foundation issued a statement saying that large | amounts of alcohol are definitely sometimes good for not | completely losing your shit during accursed times such as these. | slackfan wrote: | heyitsguay wrote: | Less "no fun allowed" generic conspiracy stuff, more "hey, | these are the consequences to some of that fun, please keep | them in mind as you establish the risk level you're comfortable | with". | sebow wrote: | The problem is that a general statement like "no alcohol is | good for the heart" is that it is probably factually | wrong.And I base this on the fact that grapes for example is | known to be a very good fruit for all-things blood and | especially red cells.(Most notably iron here).This is not | pseudo-science. | | And while yes, you could say "that's not alcohol itself" and | that's correct, but obviously not all alcohol is equivalent, | and also you cannot exactly separate alcohol and examine it | in a vacuum.Alcohol is not consumed purely in the vast | majority of cases. | | Generally speaking if the institution name starts with | "World" or "Global", it's more likely to say something to be | accepted by virtually everyone, and most often that will | sound dystopian and bullsh1t.The prohibition did not work(and | i say this as someone who drinks maybe <=5 times a year, very | much liking to stay lucid but also acknowledging the benefits | of such an experience when i do).The drug on war did not | work.Institutions want to regulate any substance that | deviates thought from the mainstream hivemind narrative.Your | statement can easily be deconstructed by more than 2000 years | of written history where people battled whether consumed | drugs and especially alcohol is or not beneficial for | health.With the exceptions of exaggeration in certain | cultures(see alcoholism in russia) this is not an issue.The | other exaggeration happened in US with Prohibition and we've | seen that's also not desirable, and it promotes drinking | irresponsibly. | tasha0663 wrote: | The advocacy tips at the end of the brief are shockingly | anti-fun. | heyitsguay wrote: | These ones? | | > Cost-effective interventions to reduce alcohol | consumption include strengthening restrictions on alcohol | availability, enforcing bans on alcohol advertising, and | facilitating access to screening and treatment. | | "Restrictions on alcohol availability" could be anti-fun if | implemented in the extreme (hopefully we've learned | prohibition doesn't work), the other two are pretty | standard. | slackfan wrote: | >hopefully we've learned prohibition doesn't work | | As a world, we absolutely have not. And any insane policy | will be backed up by very reasonable scientific evidence. | the_only_law wrote: | I am kinda curious what they mean by that? Would I no | longer be able to get beer at the gas station or | something? | lkbm wrote: | Which ones? They say to regulate who can sell alcohol, | raise prices/taxes, raise the drinking age, limit | advertising, add prominent warnings...I guess those first | few are arguably "anti-fun", but they don't seem especially | so. | malfist wrote: | Speed limits are also anti-fun. | | Being anti-fun isn't an argument against regulation | slackfan wrote: | Speed limits are primarily environmental regulation and | have little to nothing to do with safety. By extention, | they happen to be anti-fun. | | The Autobahn is still not a 24/7 disaster zone of dead | bodies and scrapped cars last time I checked. | malfist wrote: | Sure, interstate speedlimits are somewhat about gas | mileage. But I'm going to need some citation from you | that a 25mph speedlimit in a residential area is about | environmental impacts and not safety. | | Sure the autobahn isn't a meat grinder, but there's a | difference between safe and unsafe, and unsafe doesn't | mean everyone dies. | | Regardless, doesn't matter if the regulation is for | safety or environmental protection, being "anti-fun" | isn't an argument against them. | slackfan wrote: | https://ww2.motorists.org/issues/speed- | limits/truth/#:~:text.... | | well, you can take it up with the National Motorists' | Association, they have the stats. | malfist wrote: | I'm sorry, but that's an opinion piece written by a very | biased source. This organization was founded to oppose | the 55mph speedlimit back in the 80s and since then have | moved on to things like opposing drunk driving laws. Sure | they claim all kinds of stats in that blog you linked, | but they provide no sources for those stats. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | You know, most (Americans) drink little or no alcohol. The cult | of alcohol is certain they cannot live without it, which is | part of the problem perhaps. But most do live without it. And | are not eating bugs. | fastball wrote: | Source that most Americans drink little or no alcohol? | Apparently in 2019, 54.9% of respondents[1] had alcohol in | the last month. And I would imagine polls like this are | generally under-reported, not over. | | [1] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and- | fact-sh... | lkbm wrote: | I drank alcohol in the past month. I drink about once a | month. I'd assume that that counts as "little or no | alcohol". Thus, if just 1/11 of those 54.9% are like me, | his statement to be true. | mindcrime wrote: | I'm in the same boat. I drink, I just drink very little. | I don't see any reason to think this behavior is | particularly exceptional. | NickBusey wrote: | This sounded wrong to me, so I did a simple search. This | study from the NIAA of the NIH seems to suggest what you said | is incorrect. | https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact- | sh... | | Most Americans do drink. | mindcrime wrote: | _Most Americans do drink._ | | That doesn't contradict what the person you are replying to | said. They said most Americans drink "little or no" | alcohol, not "no alcohol". | | Why is it that on the Internet almost everyone seems to | silently remove/ignore qualifiers like that, and treat | everything as a binary dichotomy??? | happytoexplain wrote: | Yeah, currently there are three people using the same | data to "disprove" the parent, which is baffling to me. | As I said in another reply, 45% of people had no alcohol | in the past month, so "most Americans drink a little or | not at all" seems plausible, or at least not disproved by | this data. I understand disagreeing with that sentiment | (there are plenty of rational arguments that most people | drink more than "a little"), but why harm the image of | one's motivation by purposefully omitting critical | details from the post one is responding to? | streblo wrote: | The NIH itself says different: | | * 85.6 percent of people ages 18 and older reported that they | drank alcohol at some point in their lifetime | | * 69.5 percent reported that they drank in the past year | | * 54.9 percent reported that they drank in the past month | | https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact- | sh... | happytoexplain wrote: | While a little unclear on details, this seems to put the | parent's assertion well within the realm of possibility. | 45% of people had _nothing_ to drink in the past month. It | 's therefore believable, barring additional data, that the | majority of people drink at most a "little", as the parent | put it. Are you interpreting this differently? | mindcrime wrote: | _54.9 percent reported that they drank in the past month_ | | Consider this: I am in the group that can say "they drank | in the last month." It is also simultaneously true that I | "drink little or no alcohol" (by any reasonable standard). | | How can that be? Well, if you took my last 12 months worth | of alcohol consumption and calculated my "average drinks | per month" the number would round to 0. So yes, I do drink, | and by happenstance it happens that I've had a drink in the | last month. But I think that easily qualifies as "little or | no alcohol". | 988747 wrote: | This question shouldn't be asked in January (because of | all those New Years Eve celebrations) :) | FredPret wrote: | I took up regular drinking about 15 years ago based on the | then-prevailing medical advice to have one or two a day for | your heart. | | It's important to give people correct medical information. I'm | now off the wagon completely. | crawsome wrote: | stefan_ wrote: | Alcohol is _fun_ like cigarettes are _cool_. It 's marketing. | beaconstudios wrote: | Alcohol is also fun because it lowers inhibitions and makes | people do stupid things they ordinarily wouldn't. Cigarettes | being cool is definitely a marketing thing though. | hammock wrote: | Depends how much you drink. | | And I mean, cigarettes are cool. There's a reason they still | exist as a trope in movies and it's not all due to marketing. | It lends something to the character. | | That's not to say there isn't or can't be a healthier | replacement, of course. | happytoexplain wrote: | I'm not getting that kind of attitude from this document. It | seems to just be a holistic counterpoint to the "common | knowledge" that "a little bit of alcohol can be good for the | heart". What is this intense negativity you're sarcastically | paraphrasing? | neom wrote: | I used this argument to myself for years so I could ignore my | alcoholism. Well if the French and Italians drink as much | wine as they do, a bottle or 4 a day is probably good for me. | Mystlix wrote: | Could you please explain to me the logical link between the | scientific evidence that alchol is harmful in any quantity and | the concepts of "having fun" and being a "slave to society"? | Let's also overlook your dogwhistle regarding "eating the bugs" | zeku wrote: | It's just medical advice... | lkbm wrote: | It also recommends some social policies to encourage people | to follow said advice, though they seem like pretty tame | recommendations to me. (To be fair I _hate_ the "you can't | buy a beer at 11:45am on a Sunday" rule where I live, but | it's not especially harsh.) | oicu812 wrote: | "No amount of alcohol is safe, however it's the dose that makes | the poison." [1] | | "for every 100,000 people who consume one drink per day, 918 will | have an alcohol-related problem per year. But if the same 100,000 | people drank nothing at all, 914 would still have one of those | same problems. That's only 4 more people per year (per 100,000) | who will have a problem that's attributable to alcohol--that's | tiny. But it's also not zero." [2] | | [1] https://peterattiamd.com/qualy-1-what-are-peters-thoughts- | on... | | [2] https://www.popsci.com/moderate-drinking-benefits- | risks/#pag... | Damogran6 wrote: | Can we have the heart people and the liver people duke it out, | because the liver people seem to think a little low grade abuse | was good for the liver. | Cupertino95014 wrote: | I agree with solox3 about the need to cite the evidence, not just | say "studies show." | | That said, my doctor asked how much I drank, and I said about | four drinks a week. She said "that's too much." So now I have a | pretty strict limit of two per week, and "a glass of wine with | dinner" does count towards that. I think she was more in tune | with ALL the evidence, not just the articles that tell everyone | what they want to hear. | | People really don't like to hear that two-per-week thing. The | beer or glass of wine with friends is a pretty important part of | society. In fact, I really think you only live once, and what's | the point if you never have the things you really love? But don't | delude yourself that it's healthy; it's not. | | That said: I lost a brother to alcohol & cigarettes, so it's a | little more personal with me. | asow92 wrote: | But the tannins in red wine (consumed in moderation) are good for | your heart? | coldtea wrote: | jppope wrote: | > The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can | lead to loss of healthy life. | | No it isn't. The studies change on this constantly. Literally, it | is why they are making their policy- because its confusing to | people. | | They also need to conduct a longitudinal study (or more than 1) | to prove this... and guess what? They won't do it. | BurningFrog wrote: | Note the weasel word: "can". | f38zf5vdt wrote: | They've been consistent on the positive cardiovascular effects | from mild consumption of red wine forever. | | > 48 animal and 37 human studies were included in data | extraction following screening. Significant improvements in | measures of blood pressure and vascular function following RWP | were seen in 84% and 100% of animal studies, respectively. | Human studies indicated significant improvements in systolic | blood pressure overall (- 2.6 mmHg, 95% CI: [- 4.8, - 0.4]), | with a greater improvement in pure-resveratrol studies alone (- | 3.7 mmHg, 95% CI: [- 7.3, - 0.0]). No significant effects of | RWP were seen in diastolic blood pressure or flow-mediated | dilation (FMD) of the brachial artery. | | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-020-02247-8 | [deleted] | [deleted] | aerojoe23 wrote: | kevinmchugh wrote: | If you see a study that purports to show health benefits of | drinking check to see if it distinguishes lifelong teetotalers | vs recovering alcoholics. Lifelong teetotalers are much | healthier than an alcoholic who's quit drinking, on average. | The studies, at least in the US, should also control for | wealth. | starwind wrote: | Bingo. A lot of studies that purport health benefits from | drinking are comparing "sick quitters" who drank themselves | into health problems to normal people who have the occasional | drink and don't bother to control for socioeconomic status | kevinmchugh wrote: | Ah, thank you, I knew the phenomenon had a name and | couldn't remember "sick quitters" | rkk3 wrote: | It's pretty hard to build a study... You have to get a group of | participants who are willing to drink alcohol everyday or never | drink it again depending on which group they are assigned to. | Ensorceled wrote: | I drink in moderation. I eat good, dark chocolate in moderation. | I have a dessert occasionally. I over indulge in rich foods | sometimes. | | MANY things are in the category of "No Amount is Good for ...". | | This is NOT a useful categorization. | nitwit005 wrote: | I doubt advice about moderate drinking influences behavior, | outside perhaps where pregnancy is concerned. | | Pretty much everyone at least occasionally eats food they know | isn't good for them. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/0vqdW | siva7 wrote: | Who thought that Alcohol is actually good for the heart? Here is | the good news: It won't either kill your healthy heart if you | don't abuse it | revax wrote: | The high consumption of red wine in France is thought by some | people to be the explanation of the French paradox. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox | starwind wrote: | > Who thought that Alcohol is actually good for the heart? | | I remember studies in the 90s (the ones I can find specifically | were done by Eric Rimm) that touted health benefits from a | glass of red wine. These weren't randomized control studies, | they rarely controlled for anything that might impact someone's | drinking or what they drink, and they've been torn apart in the | years since. | drapermache wrote: | I feel like alcohol consumption isn't taken as seriously since | its been legalized, but its incredibly destructive. The only | thing I've really seen get talked about is driving while | drinking. | | This hits very close to home to me because I am currently taking | care of our kids while my wife had to fly across the USA to help | with her Uncle's funeral. He was a high functioning alcoholic for | many years until he joined AA and cleaned up. He was a very | active member of AA and lead his local chapter. He had just come | to visit for the holidays and passed a week and half later from a | heart attack. | | My mother's side of the family came from a long line of abusive | alcoholics, and she was the first to break the cycle. So I made | the personal choice to not even try it to keep it going. Sometime | I do wonder if I'm missing out, but I don't want to take the risk | of getting addicted. | penjelly wrote: | > I feel like alcohol consumption isn't taken as seriously | since its been legalized | | alcohol was being consumed before first evidence of laws in | human society. Ancient mesopotamians drank a lot of beer | because it was more resistant to bacteria then other beverages. | | Unless you meant legalized after prohibition? | N1H1L wrote: | We have been consuming alcohol long before we even became | _Homo_ - even 10 million years back we were seeking out | rotting fruits on the forest floor. | globular-toast wrote: | Some birds and many insects specifically seek out fermented | fruits and ears of corn etc. Not sure if it's known why. | freedom2099 wrote: | I think the problem is the culture of alcohol in some | countries... in Southern Europe has a culture of wine as part | of a dining experience rather then as a recreational drugs and | the effects are that has a lower alcoholism rates than | countries where it is more seen as recreational (like Northern | Europe or the US). | | I live in France, we have wine served at the company's | cantine... no one is ever drunk! | | https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholis... | oversocialized wrote: | reminds me of when the WHO said fertile aged women should not | drink any alcohol and the wine aunts had a meltdown while also | citing WHO as a source for anything covid related. hypocrisy at | its finest. | easton wrote: | I was unfamiliar with the term, so from the Urban Dictionary: | | > wine aunt: An aunt with little to no interest in having | children. Has much more interest in having a free and carefree | life than the responsibilities of a family. | kwhitefoot wrote: | > The Eurasian Economic Union's technical regulation mandates | provision of an ingredients list, health information, and an | additional message of "recommendatory nature" to be put on all | types of alcoholic beverages intended for human use. | | Eurasian Economic Union? | | Have I slipped down the wrong trousers of time? | friendlydog wrote: | azth wrote: | > They ask you about wine (khamr) and gambling. Say, "In them is | great sin and [yet, some] benefit for people. But their sin is | greater than their benefit." | | https://quran.com/2/219 | | > O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants (khamr), gambling, | [sacrificing on] stone altars [to other than God], and divining | arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it | that you may be successful. | | https://quran.com/5/90 | redisman wrote: | I guess I need to try that sacrificing at a stone altar thing | next | selimthegrim wrote: | This might lead one to the reading that intoxication rather | than alcohol is prohibited. | iooi wrote: | Anyone else interested by the wording here? | | "No amount of alcohol is good for the heart" is not exactly the | same as saying "Any amount of alcohol is bad for the heart". | | The former statement is hardly a surprise, but I think it will be | harder to prove the latter statement. | tomtheelder wrote: | They mostly do make the stronger version of the claim: | | > The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can | lead to loss of healthy life. Studies have shown that even | small amounts of alcohol can increase a person's risk of | cardiovascular disease, including coronary disease, stroke, | heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, | atrial fibrillation, and aneurysm. | | It's honestly pretty clear that this is true if you dig into | the research a bit. I say this as a regular drinker, by the | way. I don't think the takeaway should be to drink zero, just | that we (and doctors particularly!) should not be fooled into | believing that there is a quantity of alcohol consumption that | is entirely risk free, or even beneficial. | solox3 wrote: | I am fine with abstinence as a general recommendation, but | critical thinking pointed out two issues with the WHF Policy | Brief, which I suppose I have read in sufficient depth: | | 1. There is no citation on the sentence, "Recent evidence has | found that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for health." | This is really the only line we are interested in. | | 2. There is no comparison on the effects of alcohol on the body | by dosage (and frequency), which is, again, what is required from | the brief to make that claim. | | Again, while I don't necessarily disagree with what's in the | report, and that it is already established that drinking too much | is not good for the heart, considering many otherwise toxic | substances have a hormetic zone, it is critical that a study like | this rules out the its existence for ethanol. | some_random wrote: | I've noticed that most health recommendations like these do not | have any evidence associated with them, or a description of the | actual risks. It seems that the doctors and health officials | who write them have the evidence, but don't believe that the | public needs to see it and rather should just go with whatever | they say. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Would any non-trivial substance be deemed "safe" under these | criteria? | jcadam wrote: | There's a very small chance you'll choke to death every time | you eat something. | [deleted] | avgcorrection wrote: | Another score for fasting! | queuebert wrote: | BRB, gonna fast the rest of my life. | BurningFrog wrote: | A _lot_ is riding on the unspecific usage of "safe" here. | dionidium wrote: | If you want to feel some dissonance about this, you might note | that this is the _exact_ language the CDC uses for things like | secondhand smoke -- "There is no risk-free level of exposure | to secondhand smoke" -- which everybody nods along to and | accepts without much scrutiny. | | Source: | https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco... | | Meanwhile, when it's something like, say, cosmic radiation | exposure from commercial air travel, suddenly the CDC is very | interested in levels of exposure and has language that provides | context intended to downplay the risks. | | Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html | | Why these statements bother us when they're about one thing and | not another -- or, indeed, why our health agencies would choose | language like this for some kinds of risks and not others -- is | left as an exercise for the reader. | mattmaroon wrote: | The CDC has been unfortunately hopelessly politicized. It | happened long before the pandemic. | | OTOH, I would make the differentiating point that air travel | has positive benefits to society and costs and one has to | weigh those against each other. You can't make the blanket | statement "earth would be better off if air travel went away | completely." | | It's hard to find any benefit to smoking, first hand or | second, so it's easy enough to just shit on it. The ROI on | whatever ills aviation may have is a topic of discussion, | there's 0 ROI on smoking. | artificialLimbs wrote: | >> It's hard to find any benefit to smoking... | | Ritualistically, as an exercise in getting out of one's | 'normal' consciousness, it can present useful information | for self study. In habitual form, it is of course very | destructive. | TameAntelope wrote: | This isn't politics, it's safety. I accept the argument | that the CDC has become overly innumerate in how to live a | healthy life, but it's not a liberal or conservative idea | to be cautious. | tomp wrote: | As we've seen in the past 2 years, there's no real positive | benefit to society to frequent business flying (at pre- | pandemic levels). | | Like smoking, we don't need to completely _ban_ air travel. | The equivalent would be severely limiting it (for example, | prohibiting business flying). | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | While I somewhat agree with your overall point, level of | control is important here. I can choose whether to get on a | plane or take a drink. I can't control if someone farts | standing next to me, or if they exhale smoke in my face. | ABeeSea wrote: | Did you look at any of the references at the bottom of the | page? There are many, many dozens of studies in the report by | the surgeon general. On page 421 when they analyze lung | cancer risk, they have studies with volume and frequency of | second hand smoke based on the volume and frequency of the | smoking habits of the one spouse being a smoker and the other | being a non smoker. | slothtrop wrote: | As I recall, for this particular bit of research that I read a | couple of months ago, more precisely it states there is no | _clear_ discernible level of consumption that could be deemed | "safe". That's not really a surprise if you look at the data | because it's such a mess. You also can't pin a point at which | consumption is a high risk. What does that tell us? | | You can however surmise that low / moderate consumption is not | associated with high risk of mortality. There is "risk" insofar | as it is non-null, anything above zero is unsafe. So what? That | doesn't mean it's significant. | | edit: this appears to criticize the paper - | https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl... | allturtles wrote: | Exactly. I find the claim "no level of alcohol consumption is | safe" hyperbolic. You could claim with far more justification | that "no amount of driving is safe" since you could be killed | pulling out of your driveway but I think most people who | drive on a daily basis would find this claim odd. "safety" is | a relative, not an absolute condition, since in some sense | being alive is unsafe. | Taylor_OD wrote: | This is a pretty odd comparison. | | Some amount of food/caloric intake is healthy or required. | Too much is bad. Some amount of water intake is healthy or | required. Too much is bad. | | No amount of arsenic intake is healthy or required. Any is | bad. No amount of alcohol intake is healthy or required. | Any is bad. | | Too much of many things is bad. Any amount of some things | is bad. | | Safe may be an odd term for it but alcohols impact on ones | health is always a negative. If we define bad as a negative | effect on ones health it may be a better term than safe | here. | ericd wrote: | I'm guessing I'm not alone in saying that some of the | most enjoyable, memorable, and positively impactful | nights of my life were because of alcohol. | | To call ingesting it in any amount "bad" is way too | reductive. | Taylor_OD wrote: | Which is why I defined bad. Meth addicts experience utter | bliss and euphoria while high. I've had lots of great | experiences drunk or while drinking. I've also thoroughly | enjoyed utterly gorging myself on unhealthy or excessive | amounts of food. I've driven too fast, stayed up too | late, and generally done lots of things that are bad for | me because they felt good or lead to some type of, at | least in that moment, good experience. | | It doenst mean those things were not bad for me. It's | about being able to admit that those things were bad for | my health regardless of if I decided the benefit | outweighed the cost. Many people thing the cost of | consuming alcohol is lower than it is and that the | benefits are far greater than they are. I've had plenty | of incredible experiences without booze too. In hindsight | there were plenty of things I would have enjoyed just as | much, if not more, if I didnt think I needed alcohol to | make the experiences better in some way. | allturtles wrote: | Arsenic is in all kinds of foods, if you made the claim | "no amount of arsenic consumption is safe", you would be | arguing that basically everyone's diet is unsafe. What | does that even mean? | | To take the claim "no amount of alcohol consumption is | safe" seriously would mean you shouldn't eat bread, which | contains a small amount of alcohol. | tomtheelder wrote: | > To take the claim "no amount of alcohol consumption is | safe" seriously would mean you shouldn't eat bread, which | contains a small amount of alcohol. | | No, it doesn't mean this. What they mean is that any | amount of alcohol consumption causes some amount of harm. | From the research I have seen it seems to be more or less | linear. Minuscule consumption means minimal harm. | | The implication isn't that you or anyone else should | necessarily reduce your consumption to zero. It's that it | should not be assumed that there some level of | consumption that causes no harm or is beneficial (as | previously believed). That is what the phrase "no amount | is safe" commonly means in medicine. It is a purely | medical recommendation. | | This is totally separate from a dietary guideline, which | would weigh the risks of alcohol against the social | reality of it's consumption. That is the way that you | seem to be interpreting it. | | Also I'm not the person you responded to originally, but | interestingly it seems like arsenic, in tiny quantities, | is actually essential to our biology. | allturtles wrote: | > any amount of alcohol consumption causes some amount of | harm | | There is no guarantee that you will suffer harm from a | single drink. What it really means is that any amount of | alcohol consumption carries some (possibly minute) risk | of harm. This is not, IMO, equivalent to "unsafe", which | generally means something well outside the bounds of | normal risks that most people already take on in their | everyday lives. | | If we accepted that "some risk of harm" = unsafe, we | would have to describe using the stairs as unsafe, taking | a shower as unsafe, putting up Christmas lights as | unsafe, etc. | tomtheelder wrote: | And medically those are unsafe. The crucial part, though, | is that that's not at all to say you shouldn't do them. | You are simply using a different understanding of the | word safe than they are. This is a medical brief aimed at | experts who should have no trouble understanding what | claims are and are not being made. | | This is not a lifestyle or dietary recommendation. This | is not a cost benefit analysis. This is a medical brief | that states that no amount of consumption is safe. The | takeaway categorically should not be that we should all | reduce our intake to zero, which seems to be how folks | are interpreting this. | | For what it's worth, I say all this as a regular drinker | who has no intention of ceasing drinking. | dabbledash wrote: | If time word "unsafe" means "carries more than zero risk" | then it isn't very useful to me to know whether a doctor | considers something unsafe. | allturtles wrote: | I would argue that if those things are unsafe, the term | unsafe has no useful meaning, i.e. life is unsafe. | | It's a policy brief, not a medical brief, it is pro- | abstinence and recommends a variety of alcohol control | policies, short of actual prohibition: | | "- Call for strict regulation of alcohol products | | - Advocate for minimum pricing of alcohol products | | - Build capacity internally and among peers to promote | cessation of alcohol use and abstinence from alcohol | | ... | | - Prioritise alcohol control in national agendas for | health and support policy coherence between health and | other sectors" | | etc. | babyshake wrote: | At least death is safe. As in, dying will not increase | your risk of death. | pasabagi wrote: | What about: 'No amount of smoke inhalation is safe for | the lungs'? | | Obviously, if you live in a city, you're going to find | yourself inhaling smoke from time to time, but it's still | the case that it should be avoided. It's not extreme to | think of alcohol as 'always negative' but also to accept | it's a common and basically unavoidable toxin. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | That's a hard argument to make. "2nd hand smoke" is (for | now) unavoidable (though has decreased dramatically over | the last decade or two). "2nd hand alcohol" is not really | a thing at all. We choose to drink it, or we choose not | to (ignoring heinous acts of coerced drinking). | djur wrote: | Having a fireplace, barbecue, outdoor fire pit, or going | camping with a campfire, are all situations where people | intentionally choose to engage in activities that cause | them to inhale smoke. Those activities might contribute | to a healthy lifestyle in the whole. Similarly, social | activities that include alcohol consumption can be | analyzed as a whole, without the pretense that they can | always be made 'dry'. There is no 'dry' wine tasting. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Tobacco smoke and fire smoke are generally entirely | unrelated from a health perspective. | | Going to a wine tasting is a decision to drink wine | (though if it occured at someone's house rather than a | public or commercial facility, I could imagine that the | hosts might accomodate a non-drinking partner or | something like that). | pcrh wrote: | >Tobacco smoke and fire smoke are generally entirely | unrelated from a health perspective. | | But not from a scientific perspective. | slothtrop wrote: | Indeed, and cyanide as well for instance. Neither are | "necessary" either. I don't think necessity has any | bearing on the discussion. Ultimately the question is | whether moderate alcohol consumption poses a significant | health risk, and "no safe amount" avoids answering this. | avgcorrection wrote: | That's a rubbish comparison. | | Of course no amount of driving is safe--that's | commonsensical. You always have a chance of getting harmed | when you decide to drive a car. But driving a car has a | clear utility which is non-optional in a lot of cases. The | utility of recreational alcohol use is, on the other hand, | more akin to joyriding--so similar to a completely optional | subset of car driving. | pcrh wrote: | It's impossible to eat many foods without ingesting | ethanol, including bread. The advice that "no amount" of | ethanol is safe is ludicrous, including from a biological | perspective, as the human body is well equipped to safely | handle ingestion of ethanol in moderate amounts. | avgcorrection wrote: | That's an illuminating argument and not at all just a | technicality that disproves nothing. Consider me | enlightened. | jghn wrote: | It's because for years there was a claim that low levels of | consumption was beneficial, not just safe. They're working | to undo that conventional wisdom. | | I don't recall there ever being a time when people espoused | short drives as being beneficial for one's health. | slothtrop wrote: | To quibble, something can be "unsafe" i.e. harm you in | certain ways, and also carry health benefits, since | "health benefits" does not merely translate to "life | expectancy". In fact for the study in question, compare | impact on different organs; for some there is a harm, for | others a marginal benefit (if I remember correctly). | | This is the problem with pop sci headlines, they don't | give you context. If one study finds that some compound | has potential benefits in one specific physiological | region, the news will read "x is good for your health", | and vise versa. | | Looking at just mortality, we can more accurately say, | for those touting this study, "there is no evidence | alcohol consumption improves mortality", and also "low | alcohol consumption _may_ weakly worsen mortality rates | ". | wing-_-nuts wrote: | A lot of studies on alcohol and mortality show a J curve | where mortality actually drops, and then starts rising | until it's back at baseline at 4 drinks / day. Now, I am | _not_ saying that it 's safe to drink 4 drinks per day. | That's a _lot_. What I am saying is that is the point | where cardiovascular benefits seem to be outweighed by | the increased cancer risks. Many studies have called the | J curve into question due to the 'sick quitter' effect, | but you have to realize that by trying to correct for | that effect they are often just adding a fudge factor to | the numbers. Alcohol is a very hard subject to study | because it's always self reported, and thus almost always | under reported. | zelphirkalt wrote: | That is a weird comparison. No one is forcing you to drink | alcohol, but you might be forced to drive to the office. | One is avoidable, the other one is not. Or if you want to | be even more precise: One is easily avoidable and the other | might cost you your job. | chucksta wrote: | No one is forcing you to drive to work either. Many | people in don't even have a license, yet make it to work | each day. You even said it, "might be forced" meaning | there are possibilities in which you aren't. | avgcorrection wrote: | Cue we get into the weeds bickering over the analogy for | the rest of the thread. | pnt12 wrote: | If you live outside the city, you basically are. In my | home town, transportation is limited, eg a bus in the | morning and one in the afternoon, both which can be late, | and the stops are kilometers apart and the sidewalks are | shitty. So when I'm there, I take my car everywhere, as | does everyone else. | | But when I lived in a big city, the opposite happened: | parking was expensive and the traffic sucked, so I always | took the bus and subway. | | Let's not make blank statements about transportation, as | it differs so much from one place from another. | soperj wrote: | Still aren't forced to drive. Walk, bike, catch an | earlier bus etc. | chucksta wrote: | No one is forcing you to work either | thebean11 wrote: | How is that relevant? If you want change it to "no amount | of driving to the bowling alley is safe". | zelphirkalt wrote: | I have seen many people use such comparisions, which do | not match up, to justify unhealthy behavior for | themselves, shutting themselves out from proper | reasoning. That is how it is relevant. I am saying: Do | not fool yourself using such arguments. | | Also the comparison you now brought up is again not a | good argument: It doesn't matter, whether there are | unnecessary rides. The argument is, that there are | mandatory ones for people, while there is no mandatory | thing that forces you to drink alcohol. Or at least there | should not be and in reality there are probably very few. | thebean11 wrote: | Sure there are mandatory rides, but the argument doesn't | hinge on those..you can consider only nonessential rides, | and drinking. Both are totally optional, what is your | issue with that comparison? | zelphirkalt wrote: | I have no issue with the comparison of nonessential | rides. I want to note though, that the original argument | was plainly about "pulling out of your driveway". | | So if one does nonessential rides only, then yes, the | comparison might work. I think that is quite a special | case of a situation though, which I cannot simply | interpret into what the original argument said. I mean, I | am not here to interpret a working version into | something, that in its generality does not work as a | comparison. I rather read things as they are written and | try not to add things. | | We could speculate about how many people use a car mostly | to be able to get to the location of work or how many | people use a car for essential reasons. We are getting | further away from the actual matter of discussion though, | which is drinking alcohol and that not being requried at | all. | thebean11 wrote: | > So if one does nonessential rides only, then yes, the | comparison might work. | | I disagree. Just like alcohol can be eliminated from your | diet, nonessential rides can be eliminated without | eliminated essential ones. It doesn't matter what you | mostly use a car for, it's totally irrelevant. | deltaonefour wrote: | It's not exaggerated. Your claim of "no amount of driving | is safe" is also not hyperbolic, it's real. You drive, | you're at risk. | | What's going on here is that the previous conclusion was | not "no level of alcohol consumption is safe." The previous | conclusion was "some alcohol is good for your heart." All | this new conclusion says is that this is no longer the | case. | | Nobody lives their life off the mantra "no amount of | driving is safe"... That would be crazy but it would be | entirely wrong to say that, "some amount of driving | improves your life expectancy" when this is clearly not the | case. | | Hence the need for the WHF to take an official stance on | this. It's a data driven conclusion, but you of course need | to be the judge about what you need to do with that | conclusion. | mrfusion wrote: | Plus driving to buy food definitely makes you live longer. | zelphirkalt wrote: | > [...] So what? That doesn't mean it's significant. | | It is the question, how significant it is. Then there is the | question, what level of significance will make a person | reconsider their consumption. | | However, the statement that no amount is truly safe, if it is | correct, means, that in general alcohol is an unnecessary | risk. There is no need to drink it and no good for ones heart | comes of it in terms of biology. What society does with this | info is up to all of us. | tarboreus wrote: | This is only true if you assume or demonstrate that alcohol | has no benefits to individuals that outweigh the downside | risk to health. As the downside appears to be relatively | small, this seems like a fairly difficult bar to clear. | tomtheelder wrote: | No, their statement is correct regardless of the | benefits. This brief isn't a cost benefit analysis. It's | not a dietary guideline. It's a statement of medical fact | (based on current research, anyway): that no amount of | alcohol is safe for cardiovascular health. | | There may well be benefits to alcohol consumption, but | those are entirely irrelevant here. | nuclearnice1 wrote: | To point 1. In the brief I find at the red download link [1] | contains the line " Based on recent evidence, it has been | concluded that there is "no safe level of alcohol | consumption"(5)." | | The reference points to an article from The Lancet [2] | | [1] https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF- | Po... | | [2] | https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... | f38zf5vdt wrote: | Another article from The Lancet from around the same time | reported a whopping... 6 months of life expectancy reduction | when consuming 100-200g of alcohol a week versus 0-100g of | alcohol a week. [1, Figure 4] A drink is 14 grams of alcohol, | so that means that your risk from consuming 150 grams, or | over 10 drinks a week, is still relatively low in terms of | all-cause mortality. Figure 1 also shows that consumption of | 0-100g per week has virtually no consequence on all-cause | mortality. | | [1] https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6 | 736... | Zababa wrote: | For comparaison, smoking is ~10 years of life expectancy | reduction https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_ | sheets/heal.... | | Surprisingly obesity seems to only replace some of your | last years with years with diabetes, without decreasing | your longevity | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4951120/. | I think I didn't read that study correctly, or didn't find | a good one. | | Air pollution might be around 1 to 3 years: | https://dynomight.net/air/ | | A reduction of 6 months is also more than what you can | expect to gain by taking statins: | https://dynomight.net/statins/. | queuebert wrote: | > Surprisingly obesity seems to only replace some of your | last years with years with diabetes | | That can't possibly be right. Obesity is a negative | prognostic factor in almost every disease. | nradov wrote: | Severe obesity significantly decreases longevity. | | https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195748 | | That effect has been magnified by the current COVID-19 | pandemic. Obesity directly causes more severe symptoms in | infected patients. | | https://www.wfae.org/health/2021-09-30/novant- | says-9-of-10-c... | | https://cardiologyres.org/index.php/Cardiologyres/article | /vi... | | https://reason.com/2022/01/03/cdc-covid-19-children- | hospital... | Zababa wrote: | So severe obesity would be indeed "almost as bad as | smoking" according to your article, which is more in line | with what I've heard before. Thanks for the sources. | throwawayboise wrote: | > obesity seems to only replace some of your last years | with years with diabetes, without decreasing your | longevity | | That's probably only because we can generally manage | diabetes pretty well, though it does impose a lot of cost | on society to do so. | AlbertCory wrote: | > we can generally manage diabetes pretty well | | We _can_ but it requires the patient to manage their | blood sugar very, very carefully and a lot of them can 't | do it 100% of the time. Whenever they don't, the damage | happens and it accrues. I see a guy in the 'hood who's | had much of his foot amputated as a result of diabetes. | | Or so I've heard. I'm not diabetic myself. | nouveaux wrote: | "Nevertheless, men with obesity aged 55 y and older lived | 2.8 (95% CI -6.1 to -0.1) fewer y without diabetes than | normal weight individuals, whereas, for women, the | difference between obese and normal weight counterparts | was 4.7 (95% CI -9.0 to -0.6) y. Men and women with | obesity lived 2.8 (95% CI 0.6 to 6.2) and 5.3 (95% CI 1.6 | to 9.3) y longer with diabetes, respectively, compared to | their normal weight counterparts." | | Is this study suggesting that obese people with diabetes | lived longer than obese people without diabetes? I | suppose that diabetes as a condition is not harmful in | and of itself and perhaps leads to a healthier lifestyle? | DarylZero wrote: | Diabetes is extremely harmful unless perfectly controlled | which it almost never is. The damage accumulates very | slowly. | Zababa wrote: | My (uninformed) guess would be that people with diabetes | are followed more closely than people without. Your point | about healthier lifestyle is a good one too. | frereubu wrote: | When I read stats like that I also think about quality of | life. These results don't rule out people living pretty | much the same length of time, but with an assortment of | ailments caused by the alcohol that make life pretty | miserable, as another comment in this thread says about | obesity and diabetes. | loceng wrote: | I wish we'd stop using shallow metrics life longevity over | quality - it causes the layperson (who hasn't developed | their critical thinking enough yet, or perhaps not capable | to) to skim over that "lifespan" doesn't take into account | all kinds of qualitative variables - including alcohol | being a depressant, literally you're depressing how sharp | your nervous system can be; yes, which people often self- | medicate with because they have energies they haven't yet | figured out how to regulate and are too intense, so the | alcohol becomes an escape. I'm not against alcohol, I'm | just for informed consent - understanding the full scope of | what you're doing. | volkl48 wrote: | Maybe you have a different point in mind, but I am | skeptical that there are any consumers of alcohol that | are not aware that it is partially a depressant. This is | both obvious to any consumer of it, and taught in every | school that does any sort of substance (ab)use education. | importantbrian wrote: | This is an interesting study, and I'm not 100% sure it | supports their conclusion. For example on Figure 1 the | hazard ratio for all cause morality isn't much higher than | 1 until you get into the 200g+ groups, and the hazard ratio | for cardiovascular disease is less than 1 until you get | over 200g. This would seem to support studies that find a | benefit for moderate drinking on heart health. Most of this | benefit seems to come from lowering the incidence of MI | based on Figure 2. | | This also seems to support my initial hypothesis from | reading your comment which is I wonder how much of the | difference in all cause mortality is due to the effects of | binge drinking or drunk driving. The fact that the hazard | ratio on all cause mortality isn't really above one until | you get over 200g would seem to support the idea that that | is where most of the increased mortality comes from. | asiachick wrote: | so Japanese people would live even longer than everyone | else than they already do if they didn't drink so much | dmurray wrote: | Japanese people don't drink a lot. They're 17th out of | the 17 "high income countries" shown by default here: | | https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption | kunai wrote: | They do smoke like chimneys though, which makes for some | pretty surprising stats vis-a-vis lung cancer (lower | rates than the US) and life expectancy (significantly | higher). | clpm4j wrote: | Queue the Winston Churchill quote "I've taken more out of | alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me". I believe he | died at age 91. Although it seems crazy that we could have | ever believed alcohol is healthy in any way. | deltaonefour wrote: | Anecdotal accounts could be one offs. We need data for a | full picture and even than the data could be biased. | | It may very well be Churchill could have survived longer | were it not for alcohol. | | This recent post seems to imply that they now have more | accurate and more unbiased data leading them to this new | conclusion. I think a lot of people at the WHF drink some | amount of alcohol as do most people in the world. | However, despite this, their conclusions and | announcements must be based off data which is exactly the | right thing to do and exactly what they are doing here. | [deleted] | kekebo wrote: | There's some data on scholar, for instance a suggested | health difference between wine vs beers or spirits, based | on ~28k participants monitored over 2-19 years[0]. | | From my understanding the narrative of moderate alcohol | consumption (specifically wine, via resveritrol) being | beneficial comes from epidemiological studies of people | living in the Mediterranean, an area with relatively long | median life spans[1] | | [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC31093/ | | [1] https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/emiddt/201 | 4/00000... | floatingatoll wrote: | It is absolutely acceptable to knowingly exchange damage to | body for healing to mind, and vice versa as well. But I | still appreciate that science is gradually making clear | that alcohol is not _perfectly_ harmless, and that a large- | scale health foundation is finally admitting that. | netizen-936824 wrote: | The mind _is part of_ the body | | Also contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not heal or | help the mind unless perhaps you have methanol poisoning | or are in the middle of a panic attack | [deleted] | robobro wrote: | > The mind is part of the body | | is it...? | brnt wrote: | How could it possibly not be? | netizen-936824 wrote: | Yes, the mind is an emergent property of the networks of | the brain. | tapas73 wrote: | Or maybe you have a soul. | wombatmobile wrote: | The soul is an emergent property of the mind and body | interacting with the world. | munk-a wrote: | Absolutely, and not only in a strictly physical sense | (i.e. it's contained within it). Mental acuity into old | age is strengthened by continued exercise and fitness - | damaging the body so that it is less able to physically | operate damages the potential of the mind. | | Even if you want to step into the realm of the philosophy | of mind[1] - there still are rather clear portions of the | mind that are physically linked and a pretty wide | consensus on the feedback of bodily strength to a healthy | mind. Modern dualism accepts that a lot of mental | functions are either enabled or assisted by our physical | brain goop and classical dualism still assumed the | definition of some crossover point where the metaphysical | abstract expression of thought was translated into | physical signals that triggered actions in the body - the | existence of pain reactions necessitates a fair amount of | our mental processing having the direct involvement of | physical systems. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind | lkfjasdlkjfsad wrote: | if the mind is a state of consciousness, and damage to | the brain damages said consciousness, the mind must be | part of the body. | | going further, alcohol is interesting in that, in | appropriate amounts, it can improve the state of | consciousness through a better quality of social | interactions, and at the same time, can damage the state | of consciousness through poisoning | cecilpl2 wrote: | > alcohol does not heal or help the mind | | Is it not possible that some people find alcohol in | reasonable doses to be a net positive mentally and mood- | wise? | brnt wrote: | What people experience as positive does not need to be | that. Using alcohol to not/postpone/avoid solving an | underlying problem for unhappiness would be an example. | jjulius wrote: | Preface: I say this as someone who has been sober from | alcohol for almost 5 years. | | Something can be a "net positive mentally and mood-wise" | without also being something that is | "not/[postponing]/[avoiding] solving an underlying | problem for unhappiness". | mlyle wrote: | It's been basically 2 years since I've had a drink. | | Before then, I drank socially-- a couple times per year | I'd get buzzed with friends. Not all my social outings | were buzzed. | | But those hazy memories of being buzzed withe friends are | little treasures that bring me smiles even long removed | from them. My life is richer, and my mental health | better, by virtue of hanging out with people this way and | I miss it (this is a casualty of COVID). | | Many memories of sober moments with friends bring joy, | too. But they're qualitatively different things. I want | both. | AlbertCory wrote: | The sibling posts make the right point: lots of things | are objectively bad for your body, but your emotions are | part of it, too. If alcohol or whatever makes you | happier, then it's "good for you." Until you have so much | that it's not good for you anymore. | | It's the same for sweet desserts: why TF should you | deprive yourself of _all_ of them? Just keep it in | moderation. | SomewhatLikely wrote: | We could imagine a very different society with much less | consumption of alcohol but people still being equally | happy. If someone is made to feel unhappy when they don't | drink because everyone around them is doing so, the fact | that then consuming alcohol makes them happier shouldn't | be pointed to as evidence the person is making a good | trade off between bodily harm and happiness. | RHSeeger wrote: | Alcohol can be part of having a fun time, and having a | fun time occasionally is good for your mental health (as | opposed to the physical health of your brain, which | appears to be what you're talking about). | munk-a wrote: | This is certainly an opinion, but I think there are | plenty of alternatives out there that can do a better job | at enabling fun having without causing nearly as much | bodily damage or functional impairment. We have a variety | of choices in both the natural and pharmaceutical realms. | mam4 wrote: | Yes but "The Lancet" | tombert wrote: | I've completely cut my drinking down to "only on holidays where | I'm expected to", and even then I don't get "drunk". | | While I never got to a point of drinking where anyone would call | it a "problem", I realized that any amount of alcohol probably | isn't great for my depression, and I also realized that I | actually didn't enjoy being drunk all that much. | | I don't really miss it much, though it was a little difficult to | quit cold turkey a few years ago when I did it. | globular-toast wrote: | You're expected to drink? For religious reasons? I've found it | incredibly easy to stop drinking entirely. Nobody has ever | questioned why I don't drink alcohol let alone expect me to | drink. I figure there are enough people who don't do for | religious/cultural reasons that it would be silly to ask and | offensive to expect. Even though I probably don't look like | someone who abstains for religious/cultural reasons and only do | so for personal reasons. | tombert wrote: | > You're expected to drink? For religious reasons? | | Nah, I won't even say "peer pressure" either, but more of a | "fuck it it's New Years" attitude. Not uncommon (at least | amongst my friend group) to have a shot of whisky or | something at midnight on NYE. | | Again though, it's on the order of 1-2 shots, and I'm a | pretty tall guy, so it's certainly not enough to get me | intoxicated or anything like that. | chasebank wrote: | You know what's worse than drinking alcohol? Sitting in a chair | all day staring at a screen. | | Why do we need studies for things we've known for centuries? | Drink, eat, exercise, all in moderation. Get outside and move | often as possible. It's not rocket science. | Elizer0x0309 wrote: | Alcohol changes your state of mind which leads to car | accidents, abuse and so much more. | | To compare that to sitting is stupid. | chasebank wrote: | Why? | | The article in question is about what's good for the heart | and ultimately, living. Prolonged sitting kills far, far more | people than alcohol. Anecdotally speaking, alcohol happens to | be a lot more fun than sitting. Pick your poison, I suppose. | forgotmyoldacc wrote: | > Why do we need studies for things we've known for centuries? | | Because folk wisdom is not science. For example, many people | enjoy a cozy fireplace, but increases chances of heart/lung | disease a significant amount due to small (PM10) particles: | https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/how-smoke-fires-can-affect-... | https://www.lung.org/clean-air/at-home/indoor-air-pollutants... | nozzlegear wrote: | I think we need studies because there are people who believe | the opposite. Growing up, a close friend of mine had a die-hard | belief that everyone should have a glass of wine with every | meal because it was good for your heart. | bena wrote: | I love studies like this. Because it shows exactly where our | lines are. | | If this is true, we should stop drinking. That's what the data | says. | | But if you won't, I really don't want to hear you opining on | anyone else's choice of unhealthy vice. | tsol wrote: | It's interesting how much opposition these articles get. I | notice a lot of people are annoyed just at the declaration that | alcohol is bad for you. People almost seem to take it | personally. I know people like their alcohol, but I'm surprised | how defensive people get just at the idea it's unhealthy. | pharmakom wrote: | So "any amount of alcohol is bad for the heart"? | not_good_coder wrote: | They want to keep all the alcohol to themselves. | jdlyga wrote: | Interesting how there's a major shift in the knowledge about | risks of things like sugar, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. And it | usually turns out there was an industry group involved in sort of | a coverup. The lesson here is to take any health claims or | dismissal or risks with a grain of salt when there's a big | industry behind it. | cies wrote: | > The lesson here is | | Do not allow victimless crime to exist. And big biz lobby | efforts should be illegal. | newaccount74 wrote: | One of my favorite examples of this is how coconut oil is | advertised all over youtube by thousands of influencers as a | superfood that must be a part of a healthy diet. | | (Especially since it's hardly an oil in my opinion -- it's | partially solid at room temperature) | | There's absolutely no reliable evidence that coconut oil has | any beneficial effects on the human body, and I really don't | see why anybody would believe that an oil high in saturated | fats is good for you. | parasubvert wrote: | Because there is ample evidence that saturated fats are not | bad for you, or at least no where near as bad as previous | science led us to believe. | tryptophan wrote: | It would be more accurate to say that there is no strong | evidence that saturated fats are bad for you. | | Lots of the previous science was bad science that did not | account for confounding factors, such as not taking into | account that lots of fast food has lots of saturated | fats(and made up for a large portion of saturated fat | consumption) and adjusting for that. ie the difference | between "do sat fats make people unhealthy" and "does | eating fast food(which happens to have sat fats) make | people unhealthy" | | If you want to go down the rabbit hole, there is also no | strong evidence showing cholesterol/eggs are bad, and | neither is there any evidence showing salt is bad(if you | are healthy). Lots of nutrition studies have such laughably | silly methodology. Not sure why they were ever taken | seriously. | kritiko wrote: | You raise several nutritional theories here. | | Dietary Cholesterol / Blood Cholesterol - cholesterol | restriction has been removed from dietary guidelines in | the US, so people have taken that seriously. | | Increased saturated fat is pretty well associated with | LDL levels, which is associated with cardiovascular | disease risk. Not sure that I've ever seen any contrary | studies recently - I would be interested if you could | link any you are aware of... I guess the questions I have | seen are around carb intake and fat intake, but that's | kind of a separate issue | | Salt is definitely more questionable, but seems like if | you are avoiding hyperprocessed foods, you are going to | intake less salt, so maybe a non-issue... | tryptophan wrote: | Well for fats we have this: | | https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858 | .CD... | | There seems to be a moderate reduction in cardiovascular | events, BUT - there is NO CHANGE in mortality or even | cardiac mortality. Also note, these studies may be victim | to the saturated-fats-are-fast-food issue. | | If saturated fats were actually bad, like smoking is, I | think we would see more significant results than "10-15% | decrease in events that doesn't even change peoples' | overall outcomes". | newaccount74 wrote: | I'm not saying you should avoid coconut oil, I just think | it's a very questionable claim that cooking with coconut | oil instead of other plant based oils like canola oil is | going to improve your health in any way. | SubiculumCode wrote: | I suspect that high fats are fine and high carbs are fine, | but having both high fats + high carbs leads to health | problems. Fat heavy leads to keto metabolic state, heavy | carbs lead to the other metabolic state. Having both at the | same time is the issue, my opinion. | gniv wrote: | > I really don't see why anybody would believe that an oil | high in saturated fats is good for you. | | A lot of people do if you look around. Serious people I mean. | They usually sing the praises of butter (and ghee), but the | same reasoning is applied now to coconut oil. | halflings wrote: | Same goes for agave syrup and other health fads. | api wrote: | There's a ton of alternative kinds of sugar that are | marketed as healthier than sugar but are in fact just sugar | extracted from a different plant or other source. Sugar is | sugar. | blfr wrote: | Sugar is sugar but fructose does seem to be particularly | hard on humans. | yuuu wrote: | Just more horseshit from Big Coconut, that's what I think. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | Those coconuts have definitely got blood on their hands: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_coconut | yuuu wrote: | I always scoffed at people who believed "a glass of wine every | night is good for you." It seems pretty obvious that ingesting | literal poison every day is not good for you. | qwytw wrote: | Protein is a literal poison as well if you consume excessive | amounts (above 35-40% of all caloric intake). | yuuu wrote: | Here's an experiment: take two bugs. Pour alcohol on one | and a protein shake on another. Which one do you think will | be more biologically destructive? | tryptophan wrote: | It can also be infectious, in the case of prions. | | Ban all protein! | kreeben wrote: | Calming your nerves lowers your heart rate. Lower heart rate | leads to less heart problems. Less heart problems leads to | longer life. | | A glass of wine calms your nerves. | yuuu wrote: | Alcohol increases your heart rate. | nkurz wrote: | Interesting, I hadn't known that: | https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press-Office/Press- | releases... | | Separately, consider that your assertion would likely be | more persuasive to doubters if you'd included a link | defending it. | CSSer wrote: | Of course you'd say that. You clearly work for the salt lobby! | In all seriousness though, who stands to benefit from this? In | the case of sugar, doctors wanted to suggest limiting it, but | lobbyists pushed for the advocation of limiting fat intake | instead (which was thought to be just as unhealthy at the | time). Sugar was a clear substitute because removing fat makes | things taste like, well, cardboard. Off the top of my head, I'm | not aware of any substitutes for tobacco products or alcohol. | Recreational services, maybe? Even Bowling alleys typically | have bars. | lonecom wrote: | > major shift in the knowledge about risks of things like | sugar, cigarettes, alcohol... | | In each of these case, the medical and scientific community | didn't have a vested interests in these entities. I mean, the | medical community didn't come up with smoking or alcohol | consumption... | | Now imagine some entity or procedure that the | medical/scientific community came up with and the big business | found way to make huge money off of, such that there is a | natural alignment of incentives for the scientific community | and big business to keep this thing propped up. Such a thing, | even if doing great harm, is sure to go on for a vastly longer | period of time, if not perpetually.... | sollewitt wrote: | Indeed, an NIH funded longitudinal study on alcohol kicked off | in 2014 and it was shut down for being tainted by industry | money: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/health/alcohol-nih- | drinki... - you can't necessarily even trust publicly funded | science when it impacts large industries. | CSSer wrote: | It's at least encouraging that it was caught and shut down. | garaetjjte wrote: | Related: https://dynomight.net/alcohol-trial/ | ct0 wrote: | Funny that they're saying this now because fermented drinks used | to protect people from health issues when the water supply was | not clean enough to drink. | qwytw wrote: | This is myth which was debunked countless times already, people | always drank water (even in the middle ages). | tsol wrote: | Yes. There's a reason every early human civilization was | located near a body of water. Water is necessary for humans. | Clean water. Alcohol also doesn't have a significant | disinfecting property until at least 30% ABV. And it wasn't | until the middle ages that distilled alcohols became common | mywittyname wrote: | With beer, this was because the brewer needed to boil the water | used in order to kill off any microbes which would compete with | the yeast, or it would go "off". It's a _very_ important step | for brewing beer. Then the beer would be stored in barrels | /casks to help reduce the chance of introducing further | microbes, plus the use of preservatives like hops to help keep | it longer. | | With wine, people generally mashed the grapes immediately after | picking to ensure that the yeast took hold before any harmful | bacteria did. Then followed the same process of barrelling it | to prevent other microbes from getting in. People also learned | that added sugar served to further preserve wines that would be | stored for longer periods of time. | | If people would have boiled their drinking water, it would have | been safe to drink. | Mikeb85 wrote: | > If people would have boiled their drinking water, it would | have been safe to drink. | | For a limited time. The live cultures and then alcohol in | fermented drinks keep the bad bacteria at bay. | | Keep in mind in the past, not everyone had a convenient | source of heat in their homes. | zabzonk wrote: | > With beer, this was because the brewer needed to boil the | water | | No, they didn't - you do not need (or should) boil the water. | If you did boil it, you would then need to let it cool down | before adding the yeast. Home-brew kits suggest using a | fairly small amount of hot water to disolve the malt extract, | and to get it up to fermentation temperature. | | Beer is safer to drink because the yeast out-competes | pathogens, and because it causes a pH change that inhibits | and/or kills them. | | Speaking as an ex microbiologist. | emtel wrote: | This is false - boiling the wort is used in probably 99% of | commercial and home brewing. | zabzonk wrote: | Yes, but not all of the water - you would be talking | about many gallons. | emtel wrote: | Please consult literally any intro guide to home brewing. | They all call for boiling all of the water. I have brewed | dozens of batches of beer at home and always boil all of | it. I don't know as much about commercial brewing but | I've never heard or read of partial boiling as a common | technique in commercial brewing. (There is such a thing | as "raw ale", but the fact that it has a special name to | indicate the lack of boiling tells you it is the | exception to the rule). | | Boiling is also not only about sterilization. It is also | fundamental to the character of the beer. It causes | isomerization of the alpha acids in hops which is | responsible for the bitter flavors in beer. It also | denatures proteins in the wort resulting in clearer beer. | See: https://www.love2brew.com/Articles.asp?ID=573 | cheese_goddess wrote: | Is it possible that boiling the water and then adding the | yeast is a modern practice? People in older times didn't | know about yeasts (they didn't know anything about | microorganisms). So they couldn't go and buy brewer's | yeast from the shop to make beer, they'd have to culture | it by natural fermentation. So they couldn't boil the | beer before it fermented. Although they could perhaps | keep a culture from an early batch and then boil the | water of subsequent batches, until they needed to | replenish their culture? | | That's how traditional yogurt making works. If you ask | most people who know how to make yogurt they'll tell you: | 1) you boil the milk, 2) you let it cool, and 3) you add | yogurt. The yogurt is the fermentation culture (lactic | acid bacteria rather than yeasts) and while making yogurt | propagates it, at some point someone needs to make yogurt | without already having yogurt. The only way to do that is | to start with milk that wasn't boiled because boiling | kills the culture (the bacteria in yogurt are | thermophiles but they won't survive being boiled!). | Perhaps something like that happened with brewing also? | | Or maybe it's more like modern cheesemaking? Nowadays | most cheese is made with pasteurised milk. To make | cheese, the milk has to be cultured with lactic acid | bacteria, but pasteurisation kills those off. So modern | cheesemakers add lyophilised culture to their milk after | they pasteurise it. Traditionally though the only way to | obtain culture was to leave the milk alone, use it raw. | Back in the day people didn't even know about the | existence of bacteria so they had no reason to pasteurise | their cheesemaking milk in the first place. | | So how old is the practice of boiling the water for beer? | Is it possible it's something that's only done today | thanks to the knowledge of microorganisms? | dbsmith83 wrote: | > No, they didn't - you do not need (or should) boil the | water. If you did boil it, you would then need to let it | cool down before adding the yeast. Home-brew kits suggest | using a fairly small amount of hot water to disolve the | malt extract, and to get it up to fermentation temperature. | | Boiling is a pretty important step in brewing, both in the | home and in the commercial brewery. Yes you could | technically make beer without boiling it, but that is not | the norm. Boiling is used not only for sanitation, but also | to allow the hop oils to isomerize and become soluble in | the wort, as well as reduce the wort volume to make the | wort more concentrated, since the sparging step produces a | lot of diluted wort (when using grains rather than | extract). Wort in a can (malt extract) means you may not be | concerned with concentrating the wort since you could | control that, but you still generally want to isomerize the | hop oils. | | Your point about needing to wait for the wort to cool is | correct, but that's precisely what brewers do.. they cool | the wort until it gets to yeast 'pitching' temperature | mywittyname wrote: | I once toured a microbrewery which produces beers the same | way they did in colonial times. This involved pumping the | water up ~20 feet into a copper kettle situated above an | elevated brick furnace. The water was boiled, then gravity | fed down canals via ladles to other kettles for mashing and | lautering. | | Now, this brewery was replicating 19th century American | brewing, but these ideas probably came from Europe. | | How else are they going to get water to a specific | temperature before the invention of thermometers? | asow92 wrote: | No amount of walking outside can guarantee not being hit by a | car. | alex_young wrote: | Seems like 0 could? Not at all recommended of course. | asow92 wrote: | What if the car goes through your window? :) | coding123 wrote: | I've been waiting for something like this. Now we need to get the | AMA to reverse its stance too. I've seen too many people start | with the one drink excuse, and multiply by the number of days | they HAVEN'T had a drink. It's totally irresponsible messaging. | tyronehed wrote: | This should have been obvious to anyone who has ever gotten | drunk. | | Alcohol is a poison. To think otherwise is wishful thinking. | Elizer0x0309 wrote: | Islam is always right about everything Hamdou'Allah | hbarka wrote: | What do the French have to say about that? France is one of the | countries in the world with the highest life expectancy. | WithinReason wrote: | It's not good for the heart, but is it good for the soul? | maskil wrote: | I know of a man who had a shot of 96 percent alcohol (192 proof) | every single day and died at the age of 96. | jeromegv wrote: | From Wikipedia: Survivorship bias or survival bias is the | logical error of concentrating on the people or things that | made it past some selection process and overlooking those that | did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This | can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. | It is a form of selection bias. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias | HNDen21 wrote: | should have gone for 98 percent alcohol, would have lived till | 98 :-) | mellavora wrote: | Damn! Good thing he wasn't drinking 40 proof spirits, otherwise | he would have died much sooner. | maskil wrote: | He was known to have said that it's the 4 percent water that's | going to kill him. | scrapcode wrote: | My great grandfather sat in a chair and drank from his handle | of whiskey every day until his death also at 96. I had heard | stories of workers on his farm not realize he was drinking | during the work day until the tractor plowed through a | neighboring fence causing them to look up in concern to see him | passed out on the seat. | | I unfortunately saw many in my family use his fortunate long | life span, regardless of drink consumption, as an enabler to | drink like that. Including myself, up until about 90 days ago. | selimthegrim wrote: | What happened 90 days ago? | dontlistentome wrote: | gatorvh wrote: | The statement is only interesting when you consider a sizeable | population who regularly drank the % alcohol and lived to 96. | It's a classic case of selection bias | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | Yes that is an anecdote. We get better info by looking at large | groups of people and that is what the recommendation is based | on. | notch656a wrote: | Agreed, although a single shot of moonshine is a equivalent | to a little over a pint of beer. You can drink that and be | well within alcohol consumption guidelines in US. Even most | alcohol-naive people would only be minimally intoxicated from | a single shot of moonshine. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | The guidelines are probably wrong. All recent scientific | data I see shows that, like most poisons, the best amount | to intake is zero. | | Here's one for brain health. | | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.10.21256931 | v... | notch656a wrote: | "The dose makes the poison" - Paracelsus | | I'm sure drinking has some effect on you, but I'm not | sure one non-peer reviewed which by their own papers | shows <18 drinks / week shows baseline within the | uncertainty band is evidence of any noticeable mental | decline. In fact several of the graphs, it shows an | increase in matter volume for low non-zero amounts vs | zero. | tasha0663 wrote: | These studies have clearly run into some local maximum... the | trick is to blow past it! | RankingMember wrote: | Yep, and there's always that one person who trots out that | their grandmother smoked 2 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day | and lived to be 100. Anecdata is not data. | gojomo wrote: | Lots of scholarship disagrees, but: before this press release, | I'd never heard of the "World Heart Federation". Now I have. | | That was the real purpose of it issuing this provocative, but not | quite scientifically-settled, statement. | colechristensen wrote: | Question one: what is the world heart federation? I have never | heard of it before today. | | Two: | | > The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can | lead to loss of healthy life. | | The evidence is not clear. There are plenty of studies showing | benefits. "Any level" "can" makes the statement technically true | but meaningless, you could replace alcohol with anything and that | would also be true. If you want to back up the statement, do a | meta analysis study and publish that instead of pretending you're | the authority and giving vague statements. | | This reads like somebody with a prejudged conclusion announcing | that instead of actual scientific openmindedness. Plenty of | people in the comments who already agreed are eating it up. | | How could anybody who didn't already agree with this be | convinced, their argument boils down to "we say the studies | conclude this" which is trivial to refute. | nabla9 wrote: | > There are plenty of studies showing benefits. | | Yes. And these studies are being exposed as the product of | alcohol lobby. | | https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/21/17139036/he... | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055701/ | colechristensen wrote: | I am perfectly aware of p-hackng. I still don't believe it | without actual evidence, I get strong vibes of people wanting | this to be true which would take more than a little evidence | to overcome. | tdeck wrote: | Many of these studies purporting to show a benefit from | drinking included a sizable sample of people in the non- | drinking group who had stopped for health reasons. In other | words, they were probably told at some time in the past | that they'd destroy their liver if they kept it up, | indicating some level of damage to the body. In a society | where some level of drinking alcohol is the norm, the non- | drinking group has an overrepresentation of these people | which skews the results. | nabla9 wrote: | The alcohol industry gave the government money to prove | moderate drinking is safe https://www.vox.com/science-and- | health/2018/3/21/17139036/he... | | Alcohol industry involvement in science: A systematic | review of the perspectives of the alcohol research | community | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055701/ | jeromegv wrote: | And what are the studies that show that moderate drinking | is not safe? | nabla9 wrote: | Lazy skepticism and contrarian attitude is not helpful. | dionidium wrote: | It's funny hearing this, because it's so clear to me that | the opposite is the case. If you were an alien and you | observed alcohol use on Earth for a few years you'd have no | trouble concluding that it's almost certainly harmful even | in small doses. | | But humans _like_ alcohol, so they _do not_ want this to be | true. | tomtheelder wrote: | I think you've got the politics of this backwards. There is | overwhelming cultural pressure to support some level of alcohol | consumption. A host of shoddy (and largely alcohol industry | funded) studies tried to demonstrate that it was beneficial. | | It's not. It's harmful no matter the quantity. Study after | study demonstrates this now. I say this as someone who drinks | regularly, by the way. I have no desire for it to be | demonstrated that alcohol is harmful; it's a part of my life | and has been for decades. | | If you want evidence, go open the actual brief and check out | the dozens of references, including multiple meta analyses. | Swenrekcah wrote: | Let me offer some food for thought: | | How many athletes report drinking a bit before competing? | | The answer is none because it negatively affects all physical | ability. | | So would you say it's likely that in aggregate drinking would | be healthy? | | Edit: Wow, I guess people really don't like to think about | this. To respond to both comments below, yes sure, sometimes it | helps to relax just a bit and alcohol can help with that, but | obviously you could also just drink some tea or actually train | yourself to command better control over your state of | relaxation. Alcohol is a shortcut that comes with some | penalties, but personal ability might overcome those penalties. | That doesn't mean that person couldn't have performed even | better without drinking. | | And regarding lists of athletes that have been known to drink, | well of course a counterexample to any absolute statement can | be found, I'll grant that. But in the overwhelming majority you | won't find top level athletes at the bar the night before the | big event and there's a reason for that. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Depends on the type of athlete. I know many ultraendurance | and endurance athletes who are quite happy to drink the night | before an event. This includes nationally and internationally | ranked people, not just back-of-the-pack participants. | dionidium wrote: | "Mickey Mantle knew two things: 1. Drinking 2. Playing drunk | baseball" -- Norm MacDonald (RIP) | pknight wrote: | Alcohol consumption was pretty common in the NBA, with some | even drinking during halftime. Some of the biggest stars of | the league in the past decades drank a lot of alcohol, though | much less now with more stringent policies in place. There | are players that led the league in scoring despite drinking | well into the night all the time. Lebron James is a famous | wine drinker. He drinks every day and his longetivity and | conditioning is unmatched, but he may be from a different | planet. | | These were some random facts from an NBA fan who doesn't | drink. | colechristensen wrote: | Refuting your "none" | | https://whyy.org/segments/when-a-bit-of-booze-is-just-the- | bo... | stronglikedan wrote: | I used to have a beer before the gym, so I could get my heart | rate up faster (thinner blood), and lift more (less pain | response). If I were competing with an otherwise equally | matched opponent at the gym, a beer would give me an edge. | GuB-42 wrote: | At some point, alcohol was listed as a performance enhancing | drug in archery because a moderate amount is supposed to | steady the aim. It is still banned in many competitions for | that reason, and not just because drunk shooting is a bad | idea. | yakshaving_jgt wrote: | I used to work with one of the best athletes in the world | (double Ultraman world champion), and I think he would | disagree with you. | | https://www.slowtwitch.com/Features/Island_To_Island_- | _The_t... | penjelly wrote: | > The answer is none because it negatively affects all | physical ability. | | Wrong. I can think of a few off the top of my mind who still | have alcohol in their system while competing/training. | | - Arnold Schwartzenegger - Jon Jones and various other ufc | fighters - olympic athletes in the olympic village according | to news sources | | more here.. https://firstwefeast.com/drink/2015/08/athletes- | drinking-hab... | | Also note, physical ability isnt the only thing involved in | high level performance. Ive had a couple beers before doing | gymnastics before, and while it made me more disoriented i | was less inhibited and actually performed better that day. | nradov wrote: | The problem with articles like this is that they lack context on | the relative risks of various activities. Is drinking a daily | glass of wine more or less bad for your heart than skipping your | daily aerobic exercise? Surely we can put some numbers on that. | bequanna wrote: | Straight up comparisons like that are pry too simplistic when | dealing with a complicated system like our bodies. | | People seem to really want this kind of +1/-1 point system for | health related behavior tho. Like: "I just spent 30mins at the | gym so I racked up enough 'health points' to eat an apple pie | at McDonalds". | | I think the reality is that you need to generally do a good job | of following all advice all the time if you want to remain | healthy. Keep very active and remember that indulgences are OK, | but should be infrequent. | lenzm wrote: | I think a good measuring stick would be the distance you'd need | to drive in a car to generate the same level of risk to your | life. Driving is seemingly mundane but I think one of the | riskiest things we do on a daily basis in the US. | nradov wrote: | Driving risk statistics are sort of artificially inflated by | deaths and injuries of motorcyclists and DUI/ DWI drivers | involved in single-vehicle crashes. If you avoid putting | yourself in those categories then driving is much safer than | the raw statistics suggest. | | There's also a huge variance in risk based on what vehicle | you drive. Some larger vehicles have a statistical driver | death rate close to zero. | | https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make- | and-... | downrightmike wrote: | daily, whoa there armstrong | P_I_Staker wrote: | Why aren't we looking into the merits of a daily or weekly | cigarette? At a certain point it really looks like it's just | poison and wet should knock it off. | nradov wrote: | While smoking is harmful overall and I certainly wouldn't | advise anyone to smoke, the nicotine it delivers does have | some merits. So there is some nuance to the issue. | | https://peterattiamd.com/ama23/ | | The dose makes the poison. For some poisons there is a | minimum threshold dose below which there is no detectible | harm. For others that threshold is zero. | tharne wrote: | > The dose makes the poison | | Exactly. | | The concept of dose-dependency is one of those things that | earlier generations had an intuitive understanding of, but | something we have an increasingly fragile grip on in the | modern era. | P_I_Staker wrote: | I don't think anyone is having trouble understanding | dose-dependency. There's just a separate question | regarding whether some substances should have no | acceptable dose, and when we should make that | distinction. | | Things like nicotine are thought to be pretty much not | worth consuming in any situation. Things like lead have | no "allowable dose". Maybe alcohol should be treated | similarly to cigs. This is a totally defensible position, | that's worth discussing. | P_I_Staker wrote: | Probably not going to get a chance to RTFA, but yeah, I | know there's some stuff. I think it was looking like | nicotine could be helpful in regulating some mood problems | and similar stuff. Kinda like ADHD meds or anti- | depressants. There may be some stress relieving effects, | although I wouldn't be surprised if there's more stress in | the long term (from constantly managing withdrawl) | | Anyway, we're at the point with nicotine where virtually no | one is willing to entertain the idea of recommending people | consume "just a little". Maybe we should be that way with | alcohol, too. | thomaspaine wrote: | For everyone complaining about evidence citation, this is just a | press release. The actual brief which includes 41 citations is | here: https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF- | Po... | dang wrote: | (the parent comment was originally in reply to | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30009882, which we merged | hither) | aww_dang wrote: | The psychological benefits of drinking may not be quantifiable, | and may impact long term heart health. | | "Who can't stop drinking may get drunken three times a month. If | he does it more often, he is guilty. To get drunken twice a month | is better; once, still more praiseworthy. But not to drink at all | - what could be better than this? But where could such a being be | found? But if one would find it, it would be worthy of all | honour." | | -- Genghis Khan | xyzzy21 wrote: | There's generally "No Safe Level of Living in the World" either. | omgJustTest wrote: | it_does_follow wrote: | I don't drink to live a long time, I drink to make the time I'm | hear a bit more bearable. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | I wish this info was more well known. My family still labors | under the old info of thinking a little of that poison is | healthy. And I have watched that be incorrect. | helloworld11 wrote: | Aside from the still dubious "certainty" of this clinical | conclusion, there are far too man y puritans on this comment | threat hoping to optimize every last possible, squeezable ounce | of supposed health from life by railing against alcohol as well. | Quite simply, some things have social, personal and emotional | benefits that might just be worth a bit more in the long run than | being an absolutist who weighs the most minimal uncertainties of | pleasurable acts at all times. To each their own, but what a | terrible way to live a life, and especially with the full | knowledge that many previous health studies by many large | organizations have frequently fucked up in their claims that X or | Y is bad or good, only to later change their tunes with new | evidence. | helloworld11 wrote: | Instead of downvoting, why not someone justify with a decent | counterargument that goes beyond simply "alcohol is unsafe!"? | Life comes with risk, many pleasurable activities come with | risk. It's possible to balance between enjoying oneself and | moderating one's behavior without sinking into a morass of | absolutist, puritanical and medically ambiguous health | "optimization". | softwarebeware wrote: | Many of the comments focus on the individual. There should also | be consideration for societal concerns and overall public health. | Leary wrote: | When they say the evidence is clear, you have to ask, where's the | evidence? Did they have a randomized control trial I don't know | of? | actually_a_dog wrote: | Click through to the download and chase the citations, if you | want to see what they're referring to as "evidence." | tasha0663 wrote: | Evidence? Didn't you see those dirty MGD bottles next to the | broken window on page 2? | IvanK_net wrote: | That is strange. But I am sure a small amount of cigarettes is | good for lungs. | colechristensen wrote: | Smoking cigarettes actually has a protective effect for | contracting covid. You're less likely to get it but if you do | the outcome is worse. | Taylor_OD wrote: | Everyone knows this. Some choose to believe the 1 or 2 debunked | and unrepeatable studies that show small amounts of alcohol is | good for you rather than the mountain of evidence that says it | isnt. | | If you want to drink alcohol, that is fine. But pretending its | healthy in some way is lying to yourself. | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | as someone who grew up i a community that has for many reasons, | religious, social, economic that no one really does alcohol. when | there is nobody who is drunk, we have 0 drunk driving cases, 0 | cases of people ending up in wrong places, 0 cases of alcoholism, | 0 cases of "well we will just mix a drink with something more | recreational", no need for AA among a host of other things | including not having to budget alcohol in your daily budget | because people are generally still poor. | | why is that not more prevalent? | jdhn wrote: | Because alcohol has been purposely drunk by people for | literally thousands of years, and the vast, vast majority of | people are able to drink without having a problem? | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | people have purposely been doing a lot of slavery for | thousands of years as well. took us some time but we got over | the whole "its been fine for millions of years so it must be | good or at least fine" to get to the root of the issue. once | we found that, slavery was abolished pretty much everywhere. | | my point is, why bring "societal pressure of 500 years" into | an argument for an inherently bad thing. just thinking out | loud | JodieBenitez wrote: | I don't know what the slavery has to do here... but as for | psychoactive drugs, it's not _only_ a bad thing, it also | has its upsides that are well-known, hence why humans have | been consuming drugs since forever. The downsides /upsides | ratio varies greatly depending on the dose and the | frequency. | | I think there's better education around alcohol now than | there was 30 years ago (at least where I live). Still, a | lot could be done, particularly for the youth, like banning | pre-mixed cans and other sugary ready-to-binge beverages. | Habits start early. | N1H1L wrote: | Slavery is not alcohol, and equating the two is a very | obvious strawman argument | netizen-936824 wrote: | The point was the "doing something for a long time is not | a good reason to view it as okay" | amirbehzad wrote: | antoniuschan99 wrote: | Could it be that it's the result of prohibition? Because the | Temperance Movement advocated a few of the things you | mentioned. Ken Burns has a great doc on Prohibition! | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | from my small understanding of "prohibition" it was like thry | tried to enforce it by way of brute muscle and people found | ingenious ways to fool the system. what would the result have | been if they had worked on educating people and building a | society wide consensus about its ill effects. | hydrok9 wrote: | Well, they did educate people, alcoholism was a huge | problem in the US at the time and men who became alcoholics | often abused their families and could not provide for them, | leaving them destitute. AFAIK, these issues did change for | the better as alcoholism rates were lower after Prohibition | than before, and less hard spirits were consumed. But | building a society-wide consensus in the US confirming | teetotalism? Outside of the highly religious communities, | it's just impossible. | tatrajim wrote: | Alcohol use around the world over the centuries is a vast | topic, but coming from a US religious community that prohibited | all alcohol, I was duly impressed while serving in the peace | corps in rural South Korea with the social utility of drinking | to moderate the rigid hierarchies of local culture there and to | provide a place for blunt truth telling otherwise impossible. | | The costs of alcoholism were readily visible as well, but I do | believe drinking culture in South Korea is a hidden partner to | its vaulting economic and cultural success from the ruins of | the Korean War. | hydrok9 wrote: | The answer to your question is in your statement. Most | communities don't have "many reasons" to favour prohibition, in | fact most communities don't even have one. Yes there's the idea | that no alcohol = no alcohol-caused problems, but people don't | assume they will have a problem when they start to drink. | | In my area, the only dry communities are small towns with | strong Mennonite backgrounds. And in every one of those towns, | there's a bar right outside city limits, or in the next town | over, where people in the dry community go to drink. | BunsanSpace wrote: | Alcohol is a carcinogen, it's bad for the liver, and while I | didn't know, I'm not surprised it's bad for the heart. | | Keep drinking to a minimum, and if possible keep it social. | Life's short, enjoy a beer or glass of whiskey, but try to | minimize it's harms, or just take mushrooms. | | Also keep an eye out if you're a binge drinker, it's the second | type of alcoholic, you don't drink everyday, but when you do | drink you drink until you pass out. | nabla9 wrote: | Heineken and Carlsberg paid NIH $100 million to "to show that | moderate alcohol consumption is safe and lowers risk of common | diseases". This and other ethical research violations created the | whole "moderate amount of alcohol may be healthy" meme. | | The alcohol industry gave the government money to prove moderate | drinking is safe https://www.vox.com/science-and- | health/2018/3/21/17139036/he... | | Alcohol industry involvement in science: A systematic review of | the perspectives of the alcohol research community | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055701/ | dmz73 wrote: | The article seems to cherry pick official statements to support | the title. "Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol | can increase a person's risk of cardiovascular disease, including | coronary disease, stroke, heart failure, hypertensive heart | disease, cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease), atrial | fibrillation (irregular heartbeat), and aneurysm. "To date, no | reliable correlation has been found between moderate alcohol | consumption and a lower risk of heart disease." "Studies that | claim otherwise are based on purely observational research, which | fails to account for other factors, such as pre-existing | conditions and a history of alcoholism in those considered to be | 'abstinent'. | | So they claim their research shows increased risk, not stating by | how much - there is difference between 0.5% and 15% and 50%, | across a broad range of conditions. The only counterpoint | mentioned is that there is no reliable correlation between | moderate (no mention of what that is) consumption and lower risk | of heart disease - what about all the other conditions? Finally | there is a quote dismissing other research because it fails to | account for other factor but there is hardly any mention on what | factors have been accounted for in the current research. | | The whole thing seems poorly written and seems to preach instead | of document and explain. | | Consumption of any substance in sufficient quantities will cause | harm - you can drown by drinking too much water in too short of a | period of time but no one is going to suggest that because of | that there isn't any quantity of water is safe to consume. | IshKebab wrote: | Yeah, maybe there's no evidence that a small amount of alcohol | helps in any way, but "any level of alcohol consumption can | lead to loss of healthy life" is pure alarmism. Along the same | lines as "any level of fat consumption can make you fatter". | Technically true but also irrelevant. | | > It is important not to exaggerate the risk of moderate | drinking and unduly alarm responsible consumers | | Ha, yeah maybe you should have thought about more before | talking to the press. | darthrupert wrote: | I don't consume alcohol because I think it's healthy, I consume | it because it tastes sometimes good and because it feels good. | | So the real question is: is some amount of alcohol neutral or not | health-wise? | jjice wrote: | It's a good question. Without any research, I'm going to | continue to have a few drinks every week since it's been done | for centuries just fine. | endisneigh wrote: | Of course it isn't. Drink water. Unfortunately some people | believe they can't enjoy themselves without alcohol. | | It's curious: | | - babies have fun without drinking | | - kids have fun without drinking | | - some teens have fun without drinking | | Then at some point _some_ people, as adults, feel like they have | to drink to enjoy themselves? I wonder what happened. | | Edit: explicitly clarifying that I'm only talking about some | people here | dfinninger wrote: | I have tremendous enjoyment in my life without drinking. | Running, hiking, biking, cooking, movies, road trips, museums, | concerts, new restaurants, etc... | | There are also enjoyable things that involve drinking too, but | _needing_ a drink to enjoy oneself seems a bit hyperbolic for | the average adult, no? | kstrauser wrote: | I hike and camp a lot with my kid's Scout troop, and agree: | there's so much fun you can have without alcohol. That said, | there's also a time factor. When we're up in the mountains, | we have a couple of days dedicated to the activity, and we | can all relax into it. When a bunch of coworkers go out after | work, they've got a couple of hours to go from work-mode to | play-mode before going home for the night, and alcohol can | greatly facilitate how quickly a person can switch from one | to the other. | | I enjoy the same things you're talking about sober (except | maybe concerts -- is that even legal?), but understand why a | group of friends would start their evening together with a | round of drinks. | peanut_worm wrote: | Sure but if you are stuck at home because its 8pm on a | tuesday because you work all day you can't exactly go hiking. | If you have money and time its easy to entertain yourself. | haroldp wrote: | "People with as yet undeveloped pre-frontal cortexes to limit | their inhibitions, and analyze, second-guess and evaluate their | actions before they take them, don't need a drug that | specifically suppresses the executive functions of their PFC, | so why do you?" | srg0 wrote: | - babies have fun without money | | - kids have fun without money | | - some teens have fun without money | | Then at some point /some/ people, as adults, feel like they | need money to enjoy themselves? | hiptobecubic wrote: | As we age, we feel more pressure to conform socially, I think. | Alcohol lets people feel uninhibited like kids temporarily. | asdf_snar wrote: | > Then at some point people, as adults, feel like they have to | drink to enjoy themselves? I wonder what happened. | | It feels like this question is disingenuous. You don't need | fire starter to start a fire either, but wouldn't it be silly | to conclude fire starter doesn't make starting a fire easier? | Moderate alcohol consumption in an intimate environment is a | lot of fun. | | Put differently, if alcohol didn't present such serious health | risks, I wouldn't be making an effort to cut it out of my | social circles. As it stands, though, my friends, family and I | have started referring to it as "poison", just to be totally | transparent about what we're doing when we meet for drinks. | mint2 wrote: | More apt analogy than one would think. lighter fluid and any | product specifically labeled a fire starter do not really | help if one has a basic understanding of fire except in | extreme cases like for some reason the wood is soaking wet. | And they have significant downsides in cost. lighter fluid is | just gross. With even a modest understanding of how fire | works all one needs is wood. Newspaper is good for charcoal. | | "Fire starter" products are mostly only useful to people who | don't know what they're doing or aren't actually using it to | start the fire but want to squirt in lighter fluid just to | see big flames. | MAGZine wrote: | we're missing the point here, but newspaper isn't good for | charcoal. You need sustained heat to activate charcoal-- | paper burns too quickly. The one time I tried to do this, I | ended up slathering it in olive oil which would retard the | flames a bit and drag the burn out. | | It's fine if you don't like to drink, nobody is saying you | have to, but saying that it doesn't lubricate social | situations is just naive. Is it a crutch? In some cases, | sure. In other cases--an enhancer. | mint2 wrote: | With a chimney you use olive oil on newspaper?! Anyway | enough about fire starting. To be honest if you're having | fun with campfires like once in a blue moon and don't | really know what you're doing, a fire starter can be an | okay crutch, but if you want to go camping often to have | fun it's much easier and cheaper to just use the wood and | maybe a bit of paper. But that's enough hijacking this | thread to fire starting. | | People come reliant on alcohol and can't do it without | it. It becomes a prerequisite not an enhancer. That | sounds more parasitic than anything else. | endisneigh wrote: | I don't understand your comparison with a fire. | | Your claim that moderate alcohol consumption makes things | more fun is part of the point of my post. Is this actually | true, or just a rationalization of people who already drink? | | No judgement for those who do drink, by the way. | penjelly wrote: | It is true. It allows some people open up in ways they | wouldnt before. Your point could apply to psychedelics, are | they necessary for personal growth and changing | perspectives? No. Can they help & accelerate the process? | Yes. | | - anecdote from someone who doesnt like drinking much | kaesar14 wrote: | It's true. | xenocratus wrote: | I used to hate drinking and only drank very small | quantities of alcohol at parties/gatherings. That's changed | somewhat in the past few years. I've only been drunk 3-4 | times in my life (I'm 29, male, living in a Western | country), and even then it was mild (no blackouts, | hangovers, feeling sick, etc.). However, I believe that | when I do drink for social lubrication purposes, it does | help. I'm quite introverted/withdrawn usually, and a few | drinks definitely help with altering that balance a bit. | | Of course, I've not done control trials on myself, with | placebos and so on. It's just anecdata. | asdf_snar wrote: | Before I continue, I think it's also important to note | different people metabolize alcohol differently and feel | its effects differently. Many Russians can take care of | 0,5L of vodka in one sitting and still function. (Russian | men aged roughly 20-45 also die from alcohol at absurdly | high rates.) So as with all things, our discussion is | purely a subjective one -- I find it useful, though, as it | helps me analyze my own drinking habits. | | > Your claim that moderate alcohol consumption makes things | more fun is part of the point of my post. Is this actually | true, or just a rationalization of people who already | drink? | | Right. It's a good question, and I don't know the answer, | and I've tried hard to introspect and distinguish between | rationalizing and it being true. | | As someone pointed out above, the fire starter analogy is | better than one might think -- if you are enlightened | enough, you don't need alcohol to start a fire. In my | experience, though, few things open up a conversation with | a stranger as quickly as a little alcohol. I'm not saying | I've never had an intimate conversation with a stranger in | which we both showed vulnerability without alcohol. But the | psychoactive aspect of intoxication makes those | conversations with alcohol more memorable, stranger or | closest friend. I've tried hard to determine whether I'm | just fooling myself, or if alcohol is actually making | something "funner". My conclusion is that if I am fooling | myself, the trick is good enough that I'll probably never | figure it out. | tshaddox wrote: | I mean come one, are we really going to argue that huge | numbers of people are just fooling themselves into thinking | that alcohol is fun? Yes. It is actually true that alcohol | consumption makes many social situations more fun for many | people. | gambiting wrote: | >>I wonder what happened. | | I think you start working and the only "fun" situations you are | in are meetings at a pub after work with drink involved. After | few years you naturally start to associate fun off-work time | with drinking. | WithinReason wrote: | We run out of fun | jedimastert wrote: | You forgot many to most adults that can have fun can do so | without alcohol | endisneigh wrote: | Not at all, I'm referring mainly to those who feel like they | have to drink to enjoy themselves. Of course there are adults | who don't have to drink to enjoy themselves (there are many | who have never had a drink) | [deleted] | kubb wrote: | > I wonder what happened. | | What's the difference between the life of a child and that of | an adult? You seem to be very close to figuring it out. (Tip: | adults have little to no leisure time). | marcodiego wrote: | I saw some drunken adults. Looks like they are having more fun | than babies, kids and teenagers. And they get some form of | "support" by other adults, unlike babies, kids and teenagers | would get if they behaved the same. Until it starts ruining | your life, being a drunken adult seems fun and acceptable. | eljimmy wrote: | My take on it is that as adults you mature and begin to abide | by all the rules of society. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions | and "allows" you to act like you were as a child. | tsol wrote: | I believe it's really just cultural. If you spend time with | people who don't drink, they often have just as fun a time as | drinkers. Humans have been around for a while and if we | couldn't have fun once in a while we'd be long extinct. I think | people overestimate the necessity of social lubricants. This | probably goes hand in hand with the greater culture as well-- | at least in America I think it's seen as more necessary because | socially its seen as weird to behave really friendly with | strangers unless you're imbibed. | lazyjones wrote: | Babies and kids have a lot of fun with sugar, does that mean | it's OK to consume it recklessly? | roughly wrote: | > I wonder what happened. | | Among other things, alcohol became legal to drink. Adults take | more road trips than babies and teenagers too, I wonder why | they can't have fun at home anymore. | tshaddox wrote: | I don't really get this jump from "I enjoy drinking alcohol | with friends" to someone accusing me of "being unable to enjoy | myself without alcohol." You could throw the same accusations | at anyone for literally everything they enjoy doing. You can't | enjoy yourself without going out to see a movie! You can't | enjoy yourself without camping! You can't enjoy yourself | without listening to music! | shane_b wrote: | Ignorance is bliss | TrackerFF wrote: | A bit of alcohol makes you feel good, there's no two ways about | it. And, for many, it soothes their anxieties - or just loosens | them up. | | I can have fun without alcohol, no problem. But I can't deny | that I like the taste of alcoholic drinks / beverages, and I | enjoy the effect. | | Same with sugar - I can enjoy a life without candy, but once in | a while, I enjoy eating candy. | | It's all about moderation. | misiti3780 wrote: | Yes, but wine makes food taste infinitely better. I don't want | to eat my rare filet with a glass of water, I want to eat it | with and chilled bottle of natural Syrah from the North Rhone | (preferably Dard et Ribo) | WithinReason wrote: | You chill red vine? Savage. | misiti3780 wrote: | Not all -- but some. Syrah tastes better at cellar temp or | below (IMO), Gamay usually tastes great chilled also. | rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: | Most reds are meant to be served a good notch below room | temperature, but not quite as cool as whites. | selimthegrim wrote: | Why yes, I freeze all my candy. | [deleted] | DamnYuppie wrote: | Yes but a moderate amount with good friends is great for my soul. | asdf_snar wrote: | My friend and family groups have been making a consistent | effort to stop romanticizing alcohol and have gatherings | without it. There's no denying alcohol is a social lubricant | that can be very enjoyable. | jsonne wrote: | Agreed. I'm not against alcohol but I find I can get 80%-90% | of the benefits by following the "ritual" of it with a | mocktail and simply setting aside time where I give myself | permission to relax and socialize. Alcohol is fine in | moderation but its not as necessary as folks think to having | those enjoyable experiences. | slfnflctd wrote: | I think it's important to normalize having alcohol-free | excursions, especially when younger people are around. | Demonstrate that self control is valued. And I say that as | someone with a drinking problem who sweats about going more | than half a day without one. | Ensorceled wrote: | My father, an alcoholic (25 years sober), gave the best | description ... he was always worried about if there was | going to be alcohol at the event and how much. | | If you are turning down attending events because they are | dry ... you have a problem. | pydry wrote: | What's a good alternative, though? | | It's delicious and it lets you collectively guard down in a | way that creates a bond of trust. It's a difficult thing to | substitute. | | When one of my friends went to China on business and came | back with "stories" I realized that KTV visits | (prostitutes) performed a similar function, but honestly a | glass of wine seems a bit more wholesome. | robbick wrote: | Indeed, it is always good to know the science but we should | balance that against the benefits. I like this quote from David | Spiegelhalter[0] | | "Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate | drinking, claiming there is no 'safe' level does not seem an | argument for abstention," he said. | | "There is no safe level of driving, but the government does not | recommend that people avoid driving. | | "Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but | nobody would recommend abstention." | | [0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45283401 | politelemon wrote: | I don't see it as a good quote and was puzzled as to its | inclusion. It is simply a play on the words 'safe level' and | equating it to other things. My best guess is that it's meant | to appeal to the "I hear you but wish to continue drinking | anyway" thought process, which is fair. This kind of equation | is not. | greatquux wrote: | I do see it as a good quote and wasn't puzzled. Perhaps we | simply disagree? | bodge5000 wrote: | Not necessarily. Driving for example is dangerous, a fatal | crash can occur even if all parties involved are driving | safely and are in complete control, and for that matter | anything has a risk carried with it, but you balance out | the risks and the rewards, just as you would with alcohol | tcskeptic wrote: | I was thinking about this recently watching a conversation | between Lex Fridman and Bryan Johnson and it struck me that | there is a huge difference in optimizing lifestyle choices for | human physical and mental performance, and optimizing lifestyle | choices for human flourishing, or even say joy and wonder. I | feel like there is this growing misunderstanding that the | "optimal" human is one that can be the most productive at work. | [deleted] | [deleted] | beepbooptheory wrote: | I think saying its a misunderstanding is not giving people | enough credit: we are constantly incentivized if not required | to eschew joy and wonder in order to be productive and | optimal. I don't think most people even have the chance to | reflect on what they _really_ want, they just need to make | money to pay their rent. | N1H1L wrote: | Isn't it more of an American phenomenon though - because of | the country's puritan roots? | tcskeptic wrote: | But it seems to me that the people that are most focused on | being productive and optimal in this weirdly obsessive way | are pretty high income -- they are not just scraping by to | pay rent. I work with a company that does manufacturing | here in the US -- it is pretty clear to me that the group | of folks in our company that are skilled labor, hourly | employees that are pretty well compensated, have more fun | and make more time to experience joy and wonder than folks | (like myself) that are more highly compensated and in the | white collar world. This does not hold true for the lower | end unskilled labor folks who have almost unavoidable | material financial concerns due to income level. Now, I | acknowledge this is very small sample size, but it makes me | think. | api wrote: | I've wondered for a long time if the studies showing health | benefits from alcohol are being confounded by the health | benefits of socialization, which often involves alcohol in many | societies. People who drink less might (statistically) | socialize less. | LeonM wrote: | This reminds me of something a friend once told me. This was | about 10 years ago, he was a commander for the navy at the | time. | | In the navy, while at sea, you are expected to drink during | social events. Alcohol is considered the 'social engine' of the | ship. | | Now I must disclaim that obviously the crew wasn't forced to | drink. Those on guard, or who had any medical, religious or | other objections were dismissed. And naturally they have very | strict limits, as getting intoxicated on board of a operational | warship would be very dangerous. | | But, with moderate use, alcohol was (at least back then) viewed | as an efficient method to prevent stress and mutiny among the | crew. It probably is still today. | tootie wrote: | I usually spend time with friends over coffee which has very | much been rehabilitated in the medical world over the past ten | years. | throwaway889900 wrote: | One more of these huh? | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7l2hUp0CkQ | univalent wrote: | Meh, we are going to keep drinking anyway | charcircuit wrote: | >Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol can | increase a person's risk of cardiovascular disease | | I've never drunk alcohol before. Is it worth never having it? | Does one drink really ruin your body that much. | the_only_law wrote: | If you mean literally having one drink once in your life I | highly doubt there is any meaningful impact. | | If I had to guess, the air I breathe and other environmental | factors would be more harmful over a long term period than | having a single drink. | malfist wrote: | Disclaimer, not a scientist, just a (3 year) sober alcoholic | | One drink once in your life is not going to harm you. I think | this is talking more about the "moderate" drinking of 1-2 | servings per week. | | That said, I've been down the whole alcohol path before and it | ain't good for me. I don't know of any time since I've gotten | sober that I thought back and said "Man, I wish I had been | drunk for that" | | It's an unnecessary risk. Maybe you'll do fine trying alcohol, | maybe you'll become an addict and ruin your life. I don't think | you're going to enhance your life by trying alcohol. | runnerup wrote: | It's fine to never drink alcohol. One drink won't change | anything measurable. Even this press release doesn't claim that | one drink per day is harmful -- it merely claims that one drink | per day has never been definitively shown to cause benefit. | mywittyname wrote: | A fitbit helped me discover how terrible alcohol is for your | heart. I could clearly see which days I would have a drink | because my average resting heart rate would go from 63-65 to | 77-80! | tasha0663 wrote: | You easily could have done that just worrying about it. | mywittyname wrote: | Unlikely. A) I never worried about it, B) The effects last | into my sleep. | | The effect is also most pronounced in my sleep since my heart | rate is usually quite consistent, it varies like 2 bpm most | nights. But if I look at the last night I drank, my average | heart rate is +10 from baseline and varied by 20 bpm during | my sleep. | | The data is crystal clear. | tsol wrote: | That high an effect? I don't think so. I also monitor my | heart rate and anxiety doesn't cause nearly as big a heart | rate increase as alcohol. | dghughes wrote: | This is as bad as the disastrous Wakefield Autism "study". People | will deny alcohol is bad for them for the next 100 years even | with multiple studies showing the results. | muongold wrote: | I saved this article from a similar discussion a few years ago, | which argues that moderate drinking (but not binge drinking) is | healthy in various ways. Does anyone know if it, or the | underlying data it refers to, has been refuted? | | https://psmag.com/social-justice/truth-wont-admit-drinking-h... | bena wrote: | This is a correlation fallacy. | | The group of moderate drinkers is also the group of the most | healthy. That doesn't necessarily mean that moderate drinking | is healthy. | | Because guess what else correlates with moderate drinking? | Affluence. | | Guess where poor people fall more in either the "never or | hardly" category or the "binge drinking" category. Either you | feel like you're too poor to afford to drink and thus do so | only rarely. Or you've just completely given up and all your | money goes to drinking. | | What else correlates with affluence? Overall health outcomes. | If you're poor, you also can't really afford to go to the | doctor regularly. | | So what the study really tells us is what we already know: | having a reasonable amount of money is good for you. | starwind wrote: | Don't forget that studies looking at drinking often fail to | seperate out former alcoholics who usually have long-term | health problems from drinking from teetotalers | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Counter-point: Alcohol was key in the creation of the United | States. | | "In the drink, a dream; and in the dream, a spark."[1] | | "...the Founding Fathers despised each other. Like, these bros | couldn't stand the sight of one another and it's a goddamn | miracle our country ever came to be, that's how much they hated | one another."[2] | | In 1787, two days before they signed off on the Constitution, the | 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention partied at a | tavern. According to the bill preserved from the evening, they | drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of | whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer and seven | bowls of alcoholic punch.[2] | | [1] | https://books.google.com/books?id=s3SqDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT9&ots=R... | | [2] https://brobible.com/life/article/america-founding- | fathers-b... | selimthegrim wrote: | Sit down, John. | Clubber wrote: | >Counter-point: Alcohol was key in the creation of the United | States. | | Some people theorize it was one of the main driving forces for | agriculture and civilization itself. | | https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2018/09/12/crafting... | iKlsR wrote: | A bit related, I can't remember the exact details but I read | or watched somewhere recently that it was key in taking over | some regions. They would gift village chiefs alcohol and have | them sign away rights to their land under the influence. | tsol wrote: | How is that a counter to to claims about its health effects? | They're not saying alcohol has no positives and it's for | terrible people, just that it has negative effects on health. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | I've taken liberty on the word "heart" to mean the overall | character of a person. I.e. alcohol is beneficial in many | other ways, and it must not be dismissed as "just a bad drug" | in discussions. | deltaonefour wrote: | It's a liberty you exploited because clearly the intent of | that word refers to a physical heart. Nobody dismisses it | as a bad drug, alcohol is too ingrained in human culture to | ever be dismissed. | | What's going on in this thread is scientific reconciliation | and justification of ones own behavior. Lots of people live | their lives off of scientific facts and conclusions to | improve their own health and productivity. This new | conclusion from the WHF flies in the face of an old | conclusion and habitual drinkers of alcohol. Thus people | need to twist and reconstruct the logic in such a way that | their own behavior is justified. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | >Nobody dismisses it as a bad drug | | There's an instance right here: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30010131 | deltaonefour wrote: | Well, it's a small minority. A technicality basically. | Alcohol is too ingrained in every culture to be anything | other than that. | temp12913231 wrote: | tharne wrote: | Don't worry, in 5-10 years it will be good for you again. | | I still remember being lectured in school on the food pyramid and | the importance of getting your 8-10 servings of grains a day. | ravenstine wrote: | The first time I started to wake up to government one-size- | fits-all health policies was back in my 8th grade health class | when we were being taught about the food pyramid, and this one | kid asked the teacher why hamburgers are considered junk food | when they pretty much fit into the model food pyramid. I | remember the teacher being stumped and uttered out a barely | comprehensible response after an awkward moment. | | At first I thought that kid was a smartass, but the more I | thought about it, the more I realized that he wasn't wrong. | I've you've got an American hamburger with all the fixin's, | although its proportions aren't exactly like the food pyramid, | it's close enough that it's hard to classify it as being | unhealthy unless it's laced with extra cheese and barbecue | sauce and whatnot. Yeah, there's fat in the patty, but the | whole fat being bad thing is pretty much one of the biggest | forms of bullshit ever invented by health policy. | | This isn't to say that I actually think hamburgers are health | food, but that the food pyramid is kind of a farce, especially | in the sense that it implies that grains are some sort of | nutritional necessity that should be consumed in greater | quantities than everything else. | 8bitsrule wrote: | > the whole fat being bad thing ... bullshit | | I bet it played a big part in the growth of the $71B US diet | industry. | | Five top wine consumers [0] vs. (coronary disease per 100k | [1]): US (79.2), France (31), Italy (51), UK (47), China | (114), Russia (225), Spain (38.9) | | [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/858743/global-wine- | consu... | | [1] https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of- | death/coronary-... | irthomasthomas wrote: | That's because the food pyramid is owned by the USDA, which | represents American farming. | moralestapia wrote: | Wait, so grains are bad now? | BobbyJo wrote: | They shouldn't be most of what you eat, since they have a lot | of digestible carbohydrates compared to the amount of fiber, | fat, and vitamins, but they are certainly not _bad_ for you. | | Your calories (unless you're a genetic outlier) should be | relatively evenly split between carbs and fat. If whole | grains are where most of the carbs are coming from, that's | fine. Science says so. | JKCalhoun wrote: | This clip from Woody Allen's "Sleeper": | | https://youtu.be/D2fYguIX17Q | N1H1L wrote: | Yep. You don't have to go that far. A decade back it was | thought that red meat causes cancer, specifically intestinal | cancer. Lots of health guidelines reflected that. It has all | fallen apart in the last 2-3 years. | ChrisLomont wrote: | Have some place to read this? Everywhere credible I look | seems to still say it. For example, | | https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/red_meat | N1H1L wrote: | https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/sep/30/research-red- | me... | | https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/health/red-meat-heart- | can... | | Good overview of the controversy. | netizen-936824 wrote: | Media reporting is the literal _worst_ way to learn about | scientific reporting and studies | ubercow13 wrote: | What's a good way? Certainly not reading individual | scientific papers yourself. | melissalobos wrote: | > Don't worry, in 5-10 years it will be good for you again. | | I don't know about that, it it looking more like Alcohol is | heading down the path of cigarettes where the more unbiased | funding and studies that are done, the worse it appears. There | have been several convincing reviews[1] recently that showed an | increased risk of cancer at any dosage. | | [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32584303/ (First one I | could find easily again) | P_I_Staker wrote: | Yeah, it's really a myth that science is changing so much. | | You can look at dietary recommendations from the 70s, and | they're fine. Eat your plants and don't eat garbage. The food | pyramid was more a product of lobbying than science. The | doctors advice wasn't that bad, although there would be less | knowledge of the dangers of refined carbs. | | People want it to be true that the doctors don't know what | they're doing, but it's not (or these are bad examples of). | ravenstine wrote: | Honestly, I find it baffling when people think that doctors | know what they're talking about when it comes to nutrition. | Maybe things have changed in recent years, and that would | be great, but in my experience and from the anecdotes of | others, my conception of what doctors understand is the | opposite of what you describe. | | Granted, I do agree that the science actually hasn't | changed _that much_ , and that doctors who do _research_ | know ath they 're talking about, but your average MD is | pretty clueless about nutrition and fitness because that's | really not a subject that gets priority in med school. | There are even doctors today who still give advice along | the lines of the Food Pyramid and My Plate. I've heard more | than one account in my social circles of doctors telling | people the myth that dietary fat flows freely through your | blood vessels and clogs them exactly the same way that | bacon grease can clog drain pipes. | | > People want it to be true that the doctors don't know | what they're doing | | Also, the root of this statement is something I am | surprised by. People want their doctors to _not_ know what | they 're doing? In what universe is that true? Maybe that | fits your experience, but this is a phenomenon I've never | encountered in the slightest. | b3morales wrote: | > People want their doctors to not know what they're | doing? | | No, you're right, people _who go to a doctor_ certainly | don 't want _their individual physician_ to be | incompetent. I believe parent was talking about a less | specific, somewhat "anti-establishment" point of view. | Folks who feel that they've been failed by medical | doctors, for example -- a chronic condition that they | can't get help with. Or people who have other reasons to | believe that the medical profession is ossified, or | beholden to interests that don't serve patients -- | critiques of that sort. | ravenstine wrote: | Ah ok, then I misinterpreted. | P_I_Staker wrote: | Yeah, OP is spot on. It's not really EVERYONE either, but | I'd say the majority of people I know really like some | version of the "doctors don't know what they're talking | about" argument. Things are weird now with COVID and the | politics around this stuff. | | You'll probably see more of these attitudes on the right, | but the idea that doctors don't know what they're talking | about, and change their recommendations all the time is | incredibly popular. So it's not like 100% of people, or | probably not even 95%, but I think it's more than eg. | 30-40%. | b3morales wrote: | I've found this is one area where (far) left and (far) | right overlap, actually. Maybe not in the exact | specifics, but in a general mistrust of professional | medicine. | P_I_Staker wrote: | Doctors often don't have to know that much about | nutrition, beyond telling you to eat your plants, and | some stuff targeted at people who need specific diets. | | You say they're clueless on fitness and nutrition, but I | don't know what information they should be expected to | know. Your talking about topics riddled with bullshit, | when you look at public discourse. | | Honestly, there's not much to know other than to eat food | that's pretty famously healthy (plants), and avoid | sugars. Now they definitely want you to limit meat, | excessive fats, and refined carbs, too; but the basics | are really simple. | | There's lots of studies out there, but there seems to be | very little that's clear other than those basic | guidelines. You can really run around in circles with how | complex this subject is, yet ignore the basics. | P_I_Staker wrote: | While the grains thing was particularly stupid advice, | recommendations haven't changed as much as you'd think. The | guidelines from reputable sources as far back as the 60s and | 70s were fine. They didn't understand how deadly refined carbs | were, but recommended eating fruits, vegetables while limiting | desserts and too much fatty meat; now you might be eating a bit | too much carbs without understanding the risks, but you should | be perfectly fine with that diet. | | People have been making noise about this issue for a very long | time. Doctors know this stuff is poison and causes cancer. It's | always seemed silly that just the right amount of poison is | good somehow. Of course, you don't know without study, but | experienced people can see areas where the data doesn't seem to | make sense. | | I remember hearing about this stuff a few years ago and it was | nothing new, even then. We know that early studies looked good | because many "sick quitters" stop drinking due to their failing | health. This makes non-drinkers look less healthy. Now this | stuff is still actively studied and many of the pro-alcohol | people insist it's still healthy, but the writing has been on | the wall for at least 5-10 years; no amount of alcohol is | "healthy". | tharne wrote: | > It's always seemed silly that just the right amount of | poison is good somehow | | Why is it silly? A lot of things are dose dependent. A small | amount of tylenol makes you head feel better. A lot of | tylenol kills you. Lifting weights is very good for your | health, but if you overdo it, you can get seriously hurt. A | stressful day here and there is harmless, but if you're under | constant, chronic, stress, your health will deteriorate. Four | hours of sleep will leave you feeling terrible, 7-8 hours | will leave you feeling rested, and 14 hours will likely leave | you feeling terrible. I could go on, but I'd argue that dose- | dependency is the rule rather than the exception. | P_I_Staker wrote: | It's not dose dependent though, it's a dangerous poison | that causes cancer. Your other examples are completely | different. Tylenol is closest, but you're really talking | about overdose. Drinking a couple of glasses of wine a day | isn't an overdose. | | Yes, there may be some nasty chronic effects of tylenol | too, but I think you're trying really hard to fit a square | peg in a round hole. | steelstraw wrote: | Everything is a balance though, isn't it? | | If a little alcohol reduces one's stress and increases | socialization, then they may be better off with the alcohol on | net. | azth wrote: | Increases socialization only because the culture is required to | socialize over alcohol. In other societies, we socialize over | tea and coffee. | jrs235 wrote: | Does alcohol reduce stress or just delay it? | kevinmchugh wrote: | It's not obvious that alcohol reduces stress. | txsoftwaredev wrote: | Alcohol removes my anxiety/stress nearly every time I consume | some. Depending on how much I consume the next day my anxiety | could be worse though. | bt1a wrote: | Alcohol consumption increases cortisol production, so I'd say | the opposite is true. | kritiko wrote: | I had a doctor tell me it was probably preferable to have a | beer after work to unwind than try to quit. I dunno, I | think it's very dose and situation dependent. There are | social aspects to drinking in our culture and being social | has health benefits. | [deleted] | recursive wrote: | It's obvious to _me_ that it reduces _my stress_. No study | could convince me otherwise. | gjs278 wrote: | tomtheelder wrote: | Yes, and the takeaway from this brief should not be "reduce | your alcohol consumption to zero." It is instead, "know when | you consume alcohol that there is no quantity that will produce | no harm." That's a big departure from the previously accepted, | and now thoroughly debunked, conventional wisdom that a small | quantity is harmless or even beneficial. | ziggus wrote: | "No Amount of Alcohol Is Good for the Heart, Says World We Hate | Fun Federation" | jedimastert wrote: | Why is there so much of this sentiment around here? It's an | article on the internet, not a cop. | | But alcohol has risks and if you actually want to balance those | risks with the rewards, you should have an accurate account of | what those risks are ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-20 23:00 UTC)