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Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

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Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#221

Post by OJFord »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #199
Turskarama wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say even in the last 3 years there's been big strides.

I tried one a few weeks ago, in my son's end of schoolyear party. I found it so bad that I couldn't even make myself go beyond the second gulp... I had to stealthily leave it somewhere and pick a bottle of water. It could be that my local beer brand uses old tech, though. I'll keep trying from time to time, but at the moment nothing comes even remotely close to the real thing for my taste.

Try one from a brand with multiple 0/ish% beers, not just the 0/lite/whatever version of the 'normal' product. Then it's actually designed to be a good drink, with a distinct profile to another one.

Similar to my advice on vegetarian food - you don't want it to be 'the vegetarian version', de-meated from the normal one. You want the vegetables to become the star, so you want an XYZ (what are the vegetables) lasagne, not a 'vegetarian lasagne'.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#222

Post by Aeolun »

yung_steezy wrote: post #187
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one important reason, but there's another one that is even more neglected: it just... tastes good (for those of us who like it, of course). For example, as a 90 kg man, for me drinking a single 33cl bottle of beer has pretty much the same effect as drinking water, i.e., I don't feel anything at all (note that I don't drive, in that context it would probably still be relevant). So when I have a single beer with…

Alcohol-free beers have got a lot better in the past 10 years

They’re a lot better, but they’re still nowhere close to the real thing.

It’s absolutely beneficial there’s no chance of hangovers though.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#223

Post by Aeolun »

retsibsi wrote: post #205
Scarblac wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol by itself is tasteless though. And alcohol-free beer is getting better at very high speed. Keep trying it every now and then, you'll be surprised.

> Alcohol by itself is tasteless though. There seems to be disagreement over this. To me, alcoholic beverages have a distinctive taste in common (stronger in spirits and weaker in beer or wine), which I always assumed was the taste of the alcohol itself. Some sources describe pure ethanol as 'tasteless', albeit strongly odoured; if this is true, then I guess what I interpret as a taste is really the combination of th…

I think if something has a strong smell it by definition has a strong taste? Most of what you taste is the smell. If you close your nose a lot of food becomes quite tasteless.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#224

Post by Aeolun »

moffkalast wrote: post #185
jiggywiggy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live isnt very painful for me. Still enjoy a beer a bit too much. When I'm super happy and then have a beer it just adds to it. It also can help me relax if I'm working to much. One can argue it's not needed, but at times nice.

I'm pretty sure Tolstoy isn't talking about a weekly beer, but the Russian type of alcoholism of downing an entire bottle of vodka every five minutes. See the wiki: > According to a 2011 report by the World Health Organization, annual per capita consumption of alcohol in Russia was about 15.76 litres of pure alcohol, the fourth-highest volume in Europe. > Alcoholism has been a problem throughout the country's history…

Only the fourth highest!

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#225

Post by amon22 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #163
ajuc wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peasants in Russia (and in Poland-Lithuania before it got conquered) were effectively slaves. They had to do free work, couldn't leave without permission of the landlord. Landlords were also acting as judges. Landlords had monopoly on producing and selling alcohol, and they extracted as much additional income from that as they could. Which meant each of them had an inn which he rented out to someone. The inn was buyi…

What you're describing is serfdom, and it was in some aspects similar to slavery, but still distinct. Serfs could not be sold to another landlord, they had obligations towards the landlord, but were not a simple commodity. Serfdom was also widely present in Europe, not unique to Slavic countries at all.

There were great differences between the legal status of serf in western europe versus eastern, at least after the black death. This is due to the fact that western europe experienced a serious labor shortage after the black death wiped out a good part of society. This paradoxically put serfs in position where their labor was desperately needed and they could leverage this to gain legal recognition This difference is said to be one of the reasons why the industrial revolution started in western europe and why it took much longer for eastern europe and russia to industrialize.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#226

Post by bambax »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #208
bambax wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drinking drowns creativity. I can do many many things almost properly while drunk, but one thing I can't do is write anything good. It's possible that's what we're after when we drink: stop the flow of ideas. That's one meaning of "stupefy".

Are you sure? >Alcohol has played a central role in the creative lives of some of the most famous authors of the last few centuries. Lewis Hyde notes in his essay Alcohol and Poetry that four of the six Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature were alcoholics, namely William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/booze-as-muse-write...

No, I'm not sure, but it could go either way. It could very well be that those authors had no other choice than drown their overflowing creativity in alcohol in order to survive / tolerate themselves.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#227

Post by ProllyInfamous »

jahsome wrote: post #212
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #2

People ~~do~~ abuse drugs to escape seemingly-insurmountable problem(s) in their life. "The opposite of addiction is connection" ——Gabriel Maté I have been "clean" from a past life for 14 years. Every day is a challenge.

I can't fathom why I had to scroll so far down to find a response like this. Congratulations on your success. The amount of posters in this thread who seem to mistake a superficial physical co-existence in a social setting for genuine connection is staggering. The Mate quote you've shared seems to address it directly, and better than I could have hoped (and tried) to articulate myself.

Maté's book "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" helped me better understand my changed life — definitely fit more with my own struggles than Hari's also-good "Chasing the Scream" [which deals more with societal legalities].

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#228

Post by TecoAndJix »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #199
Turskarama wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say even in the last 3 years there's been big strides.

I tried one a few weeks ago, in my son's end of schoolyear party. I found it so bad that I couldn't even make myself go beyond the second gulp... I had to stealthily leave it somewhere and pick a bottle of water. It could be that my local beer brand uses old tech, though. I'll keep trying from time to time, but at the moment nothing comes even remotely close to the real thing for my taste.

Sam Adams "Just the Haze" is my favorite 0% beer right now. Personally, I prefer a tonic & (lots) of lime or iced tea if I'm abstaining.

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#229

Post by [deleted] »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #114

Let's consider this quote "All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before." Note that he has defined all of life as two points about "one" and "oneself". This is why I and I assume many others roll their eyes. Because Tolstoy, and…

[deleted]

Re: Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

#230

Post by tharkun__ »

Aeolun wrote: post #223
retsibsi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alcohol by itself is tasteless though. There seems to be disagreement over this. To me, alcoholic beverages have a distinctive taste in common (stronger in spirits and weaker in beer or wine), which I always assumed was the taste of the alcohol itself. Some sources describe pure ethanol as 'tasteless', albeit strongly odoured; if this is true, then I guess what I interpret as a taste is really the combination of th…

I think if something has a strong smell it by definition has a strong taste? Most of what you taste is the smell. If you close your nose a lot of food becomes quite tasteless.

And yet coffee smells awesome but the taste is nothing like it. Not that it's tasteless but it's definitely very different.
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