New gel breaks down alcohol in the body

Even a single sip of wine, and I'll start to feel pressure in temples. One full glass and my head movement -> visual perception latency will be noticeable, and my words will start a bit getting in the order wrong. That one glass will also hit me like a sleeping pill within an hour. And if it's beer or red wine, I'll enjoy itchy arms, chest, and legs for a couple of hours.

So partially a reaction to alcohol (the sleepiness for sure) and partially an allergic reaction to tannins/hops/etc.

I love a riesling or a mint mojito, but I keep to probably one drink every few months... and then regret it all over again.

On the other hand, there's so many alcoholics in my extended family and my best friends growing up, that I consider my body's rejection of alcohol to be a strong contributor to me being successful in life and work.

Mocktail mixers are a small but readily available product, e.g. Seedlip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro15-4513

I think writing this advice off as unhelpful is actually more harmful than offering it in the first place. I think this is very real and very helpful advice. Is it hard to follow? Speaking from experience: absolutely.

Self-control is like a muscle: exercise it frequently, and it gets stronger. It also gets tired and needs rest, and it atrophies with disuse.

And like exercise, it's almost always beneficial. Even folks with physical disabilities see very real benefits from exercise, even when it's hard and painful! I used to live next door to a man who walked with a cane and very obviously struggled to go up and down stairs... And yet any time I would offer him help, he would refuse, because he knew the effort would keep him as mobile and active as he could be, given his circumstances--and do accept that help would actually harm him in the long run by accelerating the decline in his abilities. I doubt I would have his level of discipline were I in his situation, and to this day I envy that of him.

I think going so far as to say "telling someone to exercise self-control is unhelpful/unsympathetic" is exactly analogous to telling someone exercise is harmful. Not "too much exercise is harmful", but "any exercise is harmful", which is obviously untrue.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that humans are innately lazy, and that exercise is hard/boring/inconvenient/whatever. However, we do no one justice by giving them reasons to excuse that laziness. Justifying a lack of internal effort/ability should be and explanation of last resort, not the baseline.

Put differently: very few people are physically incapable of doing a pushup (or whatever other basic exercise you want to reference) due to actual physical limitations. Most who cannot simply haven't put in the work to reach the point where they can.

[E] This turned out longer than I anticipated. It turns out I feel strongly about this, and feel like this is one of the most toxic aspects of the society I feel like I inhabit. People should be encouraged to push their abilities, not given excuses not to. It's all too easy to accept those excuses as truth, and this prevents us all from reaching our highest potential. This feels like a net harm to society and a driver of very real inequality

This is for those people. Enjoy yourself and keep switching between white claws and water.