Weirdly enough, at certain amounts of alcohol, I start to think about memories I haven't had in years. Nothing traumatic nor nostalgic, but just mundane memories from school or childhood. I suppose it's just the mind wandering to thoughts it normally doesn't think about while inebriated, forming unusual connections.
There's even pop culture references for such a phenomenon. As an example, in the movie Beerfest, they get one of the characters drunk so he can recall the way to a secret place that he had only previously experienced drunk before.
Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
121–130 of 135 posts
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#122They explain what a molecular signaling pathway is, but what is a "conserved molecular pathway", i.e., what is "conserved" about it?
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#123One aspect which is often not considered with alcohol is that it’s one of the few drugs where you’re not just taking it to experience its affect – to get drunk. There are so many fantastically variable tastes and mouth feels with drinks that for many the majority of the pleasure is actually in consuming them. Wines & beers are a pleasure to drink and can go extremely well with food, often adding another layer to the…
People say the same about cofffe. Although I suspect 8 out of 10 times people just want the caffeine hit and should ingest via pill instead.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#124Ever since practicing mindfulness and become more aware of my emotional state, drinking alcohol has become a nonstarter for me. It took a while for me to truly connect the dots, but, following a night of imbibing, I crash really hard on not just a physiological level but an emotional, psychological level as well. In fact I find it hard to separate the two reactions. To me they are basically the same thing, overall increased levels of "pain" or "anxiety" or "neurosis" manifesting in my inner being, my soul if you will.
I know that sounds a bit woo woo but it's sort of an ineffable and inarticulable idea. I'm 100% sure I feel it though, every time I drink I sleep poorly, I'm much more irritable once the alcohol wears off the next afternoon, and by the time the evening comes around, assuming I don't re-dose, I'm much more prone to ruminate on negative thoughts or seek mindless stimulation to distract my mind from the general malaise.
I think alcohol really is a mainstream and socially acceptable means of anxiety self-medication. It's a deeply engrained cultural habit that has been around for millenia, and I don't expect or advocate for it to stop, but for me it has palpable deleterious effects on my whole being.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#125I somehow remember most of my good memories when I was drunk and buzzed. On those few occasions that I had passed out completely, I remember the time till I passed out, like the time I just barely reaching my hotel door, opened and collapsed on the floor. On the most strenuous hikes or endurance activities that I have undertaken, I have vivid memories of the struggle, like I can remember feeling so thirsty and walkin…
How do you know you remembered everything? Obviously you don’t remember what you don’t remember.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#126One aspect which is often not considered with alcohol is that it’s one of the few drugs where you’re not just taking it to experience its affect – to get drunk. There are so many fantastically variable tastes and mouth feels with drinks that for many the majority of the pleasure is actually in consuming them. Wines & beers are a pleasure to drink and can go extremely well with food, often adding another layer to the…
I was gonna make a sarcastic remark about how O'Douls and other NA beer must be booming business if alcohol wasn't the main attraction...
https://www.brewbound.com/news/brewers-large-and-small-take-...
Joke's on me eh?
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#127> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad? Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience. Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the ba…
My experience is of course anecdotal, but that’s not how I feel about alcohol. I got drunk twice in my life. Once intentionally to see what it was like, and once by accident (thought I was having a couple beers, turns out they all had double the usual alcohol content so I was having twice what I thought I was having). Both experiences made me feel so bad that they were sort of traumatizing. I’m not talking about the…
Neurological diversity is a thing. I have no scientific evidence, but based on anecdata from friends, I think people can experience ethanol intoxication in very different ways.
One of my friends is a former alcoholic; he says that the sound of an aluminum can popping open feels like a religious moment. The sound is apparently so thoroughly associated with endless drinking and partying from his teenage years, that it triggers a brief rush of euphoria, followed by an immediate craving to drink a beer. He's talked about how the first time he was moderately intoxicated, it was the best feeling he'd ever had, both in an immediately euphoric sense, and in a deeper, comforting sort of way. "I just had this feeling that life was going to be all right," he says.
Scary stuff - and so very different from your experience.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Beer in the medieval period through 19th century was hardly alcoholic, so this is a foolish argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer >At mealtimes in the Middle Ages, everyone could drink small beer, including children, while eating a meal at the table. Table beer was around this time typically less than 1% ABV.
1% isn't that low though. I'm sure you could drink a lot of that, so people did get drunk. "It was common for workers (including sailors) who engaged in heavy physical labor to drink more than 10 imperial pints (5.7 litres) of small beer during a workday to quench their thirst. Small beer was also drunk for its nutrition content; it might even have bits of wheat or bread suspended in it. Erasmus Darwin, in his A Plan…
So even if you drank 10 pints of 1% beer, that's equivalent to 2 pints of 5% beer. Spread over a day, I don't think 2 pints is getting anyone drunk at all, except maybe for children who somehow got their hands on 10 whole pints of 1% beer.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#129One aspect which is often not considered with alcohol is that it’s one of the few drugs where you’re not just taking it to experience its affect – to get drunk. There are so many fantastically variable tastes and mouth feels with drinks that for many the majority of the pleasure is actually in consuming them. Wines & beers are a pleasure to drink and can go extremely well with food, often adding another layer to the…
I was gonna make a sarcastic remark about how O'Douls and other NA beer must be booming business if alcohol wasn't the main attraction... https://www.brewbound.com/news/brewers-large-and-small-take-... Joke's on me eh?
There is now quite a range of low/zero alcohol beers and they are getting more drinkable. Some of them can be fairly nice is small quantities but they all lack the depth of a good beer. I had an interesting one brewed with Kombucha recently, that was quite an interesting drink but still not as good as a real beer can be. Erdinger Alkoholfrei wheat beer is pretty good. https://wisebartender.co.uk/ has a really good range.
All the non alcoholic wines I’ve tried have been pretty bad, more like a sweet vermouth. Can be made drinkable with some tonic water.
There is also a boom in distilled non alcoholic 'spirits' which can be OK. Again they don't have the depths of a spirit and tend to be quite light with wither floral or spicy notes. They are also expensive, Seedlip is one of the better ones but at £26 a bottle it's comparable to a decent quality spirit.
It's great that there has been so much development but they're still quite different drinks.
Re: Just a few drinks can change how memories are formed
#130Weirdly enough, at certain amounts of alcohol, I start to think about memories I haven't had in years. Nothing traumatic nor nostalgic, but just mundane memories from school or childhood. I suppose it's just the mind wandering to thoughts it normally doesn't think about while inebriated, forming unusual connections.
There's even pop culture references for such a phenomenon. As an example, in the movie Beerfest, they get one of the characters drunk so he can recall the way to a secret place that he had only previously experienced drunk before.
I actually once had a situation like this- in the village in NYC there is a secret club/lounge my friend took me to one night. That area is just filled with bars that these days are overrun with tourists and the post-college crowd. I went out to dinner with a friend one night about two years later, we had a few, and were looking for a night cap, and I was like ugh, lets just leave the neighborhood to avoid these loud places you have to fight for space in.
But... then I walked by this almost suspectly non-descript steel door at the bottom of a few stairs, and some part of my brain said "there is a secret club/lounge behind this door." It was kind of surreal. I hesitantly opened it, and what do you know... there we were.