Earlier quoted context omitted.
A => B ≠> A' => B'
A => B ≠> A' => B' ≠> A' ≠> B'
Yes that too ... in general of course. ∀ does the heavy lifting.
Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
71–80 of 87 posts
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#72Social internet use well worn path to social media abuse... Social swimming has higher risk of drowning... Social cycling has higher risk of traffic accidents...
I have heard of using drinking socially as a justification for drinking excessively. I've never heard someone justify excessive swimming. One is a more common problem.
Both are pointless truisms.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alcohol is one of the few intoxicants that you can legally buy almost anywhere in the world that is well regulated, has consistent dosages, and can engage in publicly. Being able to consistently source an unadulterated supply is one of its major appeals. Prohibition decreased consumption by as much as 70%.
Yes. None of these are a feature of the intoxicant itself.
It's fairly simple chemistry to get a certain percentage of alcohol into a liquid.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#74I drink socially. Maybe once a month. And usually it is just one beer. And have never craved it. I think if I drank more often, my desire for it would not change. My brain is not wired to crave it I guess. If yours is, then it doesn't matter if you are drinking, socially or not, you have put yourself on a slippery slope.
>I think if I drank more often, my desire for it would not change. I highly doubt this would be the case (as in, alcohol doesn't work like that). Let's say that for every 10kg of your bodyweight you drink 2 beers per night (330ml), then by the time you get to day four you might be more worried about not getting a drink.
I would imagine by the time you get to day 4 of drinking 4-5 litres of beer per night, you’d be disgusted by the idea of another beer. You have to build up to numbers like that.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#75I drink socially. Maybe once a month. And usually it is just one beer. And have never craved it. I think if I drank more often, my desire for it would not change. My brain is not wired to crave it I guess. If yours is, then it doesn't matter if you are drinking, socially or not, you have put yourself on a slippery slope.
> I think if I drank more often, my desire for it would not change.
I think that's a dangerous assumption, when you first start using any drug (or any other addictive activity), you can absolutely quit any time you want. But if you keep doing it with that mindset then you'll almost certainly get addicted eventually. The worst part is that you don't even realize that it's happening, it really sneaks up on you.
But the only serious addiction I've ever had (and quit) was nicotine so YMMV with alcohol.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#76Alcohol has exeptionally bad ergonomics when it comes to intoxicants. Its strong effects on behavior and experience are wildly unpredictable, it has severe undesirable effects, it's stongly toxic, it causes morbid dependence and has particularly bad physiological and psychological after effects. We can do better than alcohol.
> We can do better than alcohol. I think we won't get past the cultural issues in our lifetime. Many cultures have 0 tolerance for anything outside of alcohol (and I totally get it when it comes to China for instance), and prohibition of drugs like marihuana was long used to target specific communities. I'm not even sure if western cultures are still on the path to open to low harm drugs, do we have any research on s…
There are very few cultures with 0 tolerance for e.g. nicotine or especially caffeine.
I'm not sure new drugs are even needed. There are plenty of existing drugs, and the vast majority are less harmful than alcohol. They would of course need legal and cultural regulation. There are also some ideas for new recreational substances like David Nutt's "synthetic alcohol".
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
He really does not, you should take a second look at the countless rules you have to follow to stay in His good graces.
Those rules actually do contribute to a happy life. Hedonistic indulgence does not, in the long term anyway
"Hedonistic indulgence" is not the only alternative to Christian guilt.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#78Alcohol has exeptionally bad ergonomics when it comes to intoxicants. Its strong effects on behavior and experience are wildly unpredictable, it has severe undesirable effects, it's stongly toxic, it causes morbid dependence and has particularly bad physiological and psychological after effects. We can do better than alcohol.
Alcohol is also very easy, which is a huge part of the problem. It's extremely easy to make, and to refine. Anything with sugars in it will easily ferment with simple exposure to the atmosphere and the ever-present yeast in it -- fruit that fall off trees when ripe will very quickly ferment, and our bodies themselves produce some amounts of it as part of metabolism. Once you have some alcohol it's also very easy to refine it to something stronger, you don't need distillation, just some method of removing the non-alcohol components of the mix, such as simply freezing the mixture to a temperature where the water is frozen but the alcohol isn't; You can take a bucket of low-% fermented fruit juice, leave it to freeze overnight, and take out the ice in the morning. Presto, you have a basic braga that's going to be much more potent. Alcohol is also very useful for a lot of chemical processes we rely on for many of our industries, so it will always be in demand industrially.
A lot of humans (and other mammals and birds even) also like the effects that it has, despite the unpredictability and side effects. It's just too good at smoothing out many social interactions in ways that we humans are fans of. It's also a very good source of easy calories that are very shelf stable and for the most part safe to consume even if the storage conditions were poor. Small beer was a thing for a reason - even a low concentration renders most pathogens inactive enough that it's mostly safe to consume.
Until we figure out some way to simulate the positive effects without the negatives, a Synthahol if you will, I don't think we'll be able to do better. And the Synthahol will need to be cheaper and easier to obtain than literally just leaving some fruit juice to ferment in a jar.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean… you wouldn’t necessarily know about the people who drink alone. If you were someone who binged alone why would you talk about it?
At a certain point that’s all the overindulger has to converse about.
There are plenty of counter-examples to that. Many heavy drinkers get to the point where they're only feeling 'normal' due to drinking a lot, and can only go about their day by heavily indulging.
One of the Monty Python guys was an alcoholic, at the 'bottle of vodka per day' level. You've probably also known some heavy alcoholics at some point in your life if you've been around long enough, but you wouldn't really know it unless you knew the subtle clues to look for; They tend to become very good at hiding it. They're not chugging vodka out of a bottle, they're putting a bit of a pick-me-up in every cup of coffee they're drinking.
Re: Social drinking also a well-worn path to alcohol use disorder
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The great thing about calling it "alcohol use disorder" is that it lets you diagnose more people. If you're a nonprofit or advocacy group, "alcoholics" are only going to get you so far in terms of funding, also dealing with them is messy and incredibly difficult. If you can shift the overton window on whats considered "problematic" drinking you get to "educate" people and get funding for things which have fewer hard…
If it's a disorder, then it's "not your fault", it's something that's "happened to you". It removes personal liability from the choices we make.
Would you also argue that type 2 diabetes is not a disorder? Or that anorexia/bulimia are not disorders? Or that COPD is not a disorder?
It might be worth re-examining your understanding of the word disorder, because the world has moved on a bit.