Or is the drinking caused by a deeper problem?
America has a drinking problem
101–110 of 938 posts
Re: America has a drinking problem
#102What are we trying to escape?
Emptiness, in some cases. Imagine living a life of poverty, or being trapped in a situation you realize you don't have the tools or privilege to escape (having to care for many dependents, no time to go to school, or can't afford to pay for it because you're trying to scrape enough for rent).
Having no direction or hope for a better future (perceived or real) has driven people I've known to alcoholism.
Not an excuse. Just a perspective.
Re: America has a drinking problem
#103When we are no longer restricted by resource limits as a society, everything quickly becomes an addiction. Food, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sex, drugs, gambling, shopping, TV, video games, social media. I'm sure people a lot more qualified than me will be able to talk about it in scientific terms, but I feel like a certain category of species (maybe all of them?) simply never ran into limiting excesses as part of…
I have some similar thoughts about this. Take Internet media streaming: am I happier being able to watch any of 10,000 things with no effort, rather than having maybe a couple dozen at hand and the ability, with some time and effort, to acquire one or two more if I really want them enough? Or is the ability to select exactly a certain thing to watch with low effort just scratching an itch that only exists because I c…
I like your comment because it pretty much answers itself in the edit.
Re: America has a drinking problem
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, as someone who has 2-3 drinks per day, I've always been more surprised by the amount of people who basically don't drink at all. In that chart it's over half of Americans. Travel a bit, any you'll quickly discover that a couple drinks in the evening is basically normal in much of the world. I'm not arguing that it's healthy (it's not), but the median American really doesn't drink much - our Puritan values r…
I just grew up hating alcohol by looking at grown ups acting stupid and mistreating their wives and children. That's why I never developed a taste for alcohol. I sometimes drink socially but that is very rare: 3-4 times a year, 1 or 2 drinks each time. That's about it.
Basically why my Mom's side of the family barely drinks, myself included. My great grandfather was a drunken gambler who managed to drive the family into poverty to the point the only things the family owned were two chairs.
Re: America has a drinking problem
#105When we are no longer restricted by resource limits as a society, everything quickly becomes an addiction. Food, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sex, drugs, gambling, shopping, TV, video games, social media. I'm sure people a lot more qualified than me will be able to talk about it in scientific terms, but I feel like a certain category of species (maybe all of them?) simply never ran into limiting excesses as part of…
Alcohol withdrawals are serious enough that they can be fatal. This isn't true for cigarettes, opiates, or cocaine. Breaking habits is hard, but usually doesn't risk hospitalization or death.
Nitpicking, but though rare, people can die from opiate withdrawal [1].
The point of your comment still stands however.
[1] https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/yes-people-can-die-opiate...
Re: America has a drinking problem
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who doesn't drink more than 2-3 per week and have in the past been in the 2-3 per day category, perhaps it's related to age and/or kids. When kids were tots, I couldn't afford the time to socialize, and now I'm older, consumption has dietary/sleep impacts and I can't afford that too much. Also weirdly I simply don't enjoy the buzz as much.
I also drink about this much per week. I like a beer or wine or whiskey every now and again, but I've never really seen the point in getting buzzed or drunk (or high for that matter). When I do drink, I only have 1 or 2 at a time, not out of an express desire to stay sober, but because I'm usually pretty naturally satisfied by that amount. For whatever reason, I like sobriety. It's strange to me that people should th…
Take it to the extreme of an LSD trip, you can get something out of it that you can't get any other way. You take a day to mentally dig into your psyche and cut through so many of your mental ruts, while having some crazy hallucinations.
Sobriety is great and preferable 99% of the time to me, but your framing of "escaping or distorting reality" is founded on a trust that your senses and current mental processes are objective reality and that reality is desirable.
Going away from the psychedelics, if I want to have an afternoon where I'm more giggly and enjoying of food, chemical enhancement for that experience seems like way to go, same way someone would listen to music to get in a work mood.
Re: America has a drinking problem
#107What are we trying to escape?
The Wikipedia pages for most major religions provide a decent set of candidates for further investigation. Ditto a huge percentage of fiction that's considered "literature", if you're into that kind of thing.
Re: America has a drinking problem
#108Why not let everyone do what they want? I hate these moralizing articles, if we have a drunk driving problem then write an article about that. But if people want to drink in their own homes let them be.
Are you saying there aren't downsides inherent with drinking itself? I'm onboard with letting people do what they want, but if what they want to do has negative effects the least we should do is make them aware of that.
Re: America has a drinking problem
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question: what do you drink instead? Do you stick to water or do you order any kind of soda/lemonade (or something I’m not thinking about)
Club soda (or flavored seltzer) + bitters. There's alcohol there still but less than half a percent ABV. Not enough that it tastes boozy or impairs my judgement. Drinking one relatively low ABV beer impairs my judgement enough that a second drink sounds like a good idea, the soda and bitters never does that for me.
This (or similar) is my go-to. In a rocks glass, it also looks enough like a cocktail that no one makes a point of asking (if that matters to you).
Re: America has a drinking problem
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our deeply unnatural existence staring into glowing rectangles 8+ hours per day.
We wake up and look at the small rectangle. Go to work and stare at the medium rectangle. Come home and watch the big rectangle.
> Come home and watch the big rectangle.
Come home and watch Black Mirror on our largest black mirror.