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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#121

Post by [deleted] »

leifg wrote: post #56
trts wrote: post #29

I decided to give up alcohol for a year. That was three years ago and doubt I will ever go back. Aside from having better sleep than at any other point as an adult, I truly enjoy the activities I partake in just as much, if not more, than when I still paired them with alcohol. It took about 6 months to stop feeling like I was missing out, and now I feel like everyone else is. Anxiety in general is noticeably lower (t…

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)

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#122

Post by ska »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The statistics about alcohol consumption are so stunning that I often wonder how accurate they are. If these numbers are correct, the top 10% of alcohol drinkers consume the equivalent of 10 drinks per day : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think... The unit for a single drink is a fixed measurement, so someone pouring a tall glass of wine or a very stiff drink could be consuming 2-5 “drinks” in…

> but regardless the consumption is extremely high.

It's high, but not even close to some of the historic records. In early 1800s the per capita consumption was roughly equivalent 90 bottles of whisky per year. And that counts a lot of non drinkers in the denominator.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#123

Post by olivermarks »

The title is wrong imo because drinking is an intensely personal thing.

I don't drink for one year every four years and have been through this cycle multiple times. I have one year where I drink quite a bit and my current year is the weekends only drinking cycle.

Some observations: I don't miss alcohol at all when I don't drink, but in dry years I can get quite depressed.

As soon as I do have one drink my mind immediately goes to having more, plans change - I grew up in a binge drinking culture (UK) and that never seems to go away.

I body check myself socially to see if I've drunk too much even when I'm not drinking. I think a lot of social drinking is actually psychological.

Hangovers suck but are a great safeguard. If you don't have them be alarmed. The year when I drink a lot I get overtired, generally puffy skinned feeling and lacklustre.

Most important tip: don't drink pints of mineral water instead of beer: I got terrible kidney stones

Re: America has a drinking problem

#124

Post by aeternum »

meristohm wrote: post #2

What are we trying to escape?

Some of the more recent research on alcohol suggests that it isn't so much of an escape. Instead it creates a type of myopia for the mind, shifting focus from the long-term to the short-term.

For some people, it can really help live more in the moment, enjoy time with friends, and temporarily put aside all the stress and worries about the future.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#125

Post by pie420 »

finiteseries wrote: post #90
coherentpony wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our Puritan values run deep. Not at all. It's expensive and very harmful. Why would I drink alcohol when I can enjoy a meal out with friends without drinking at all?

One could easily see this as deeply Puritan reasoning in comparison to e.g. a stereotypical Southern European culture where the question is rather something like “It’s cheap, and we all live to be 80 anyways. Why wouldn’t I casually drink alcohol while I enjoy a meal out with friends?”

1. The lucky ones make it to 80, lots die to unimaginably painful cancers, let's not increase our odds by drinking volatile solvents

2. If you have a drink every night out with friends you build a tolerance to it, and you put stress on your body for no gain.

3. Dehydration, sleepiness, and worse sleep and cost are big downsides

4. You can have better, cheaper effects with edible weed.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#126

Post by flatline »

namdnay wrote: post #92
r00fus wrote: post #18

Earlier 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 think having children limits serious partying, but what do you drink when you’re eating your evening meals? Only water? Maybe it’s a southern European thing, but I can’t imagine eating a heavy meal without the acidity of a red wine, for example.

I often drink flavored fizzy water - they are a great alternative to soda: no caffeine, no sugar, but some flavor and carbonation. Other times I drink water, or juice because it's there for the kids. Sometimes alcohol too, it really depends on the circumstances.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#127

Post by svachalek »

handrous wrote: post #75
paxys wrote: post #31

When 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…

There was a book about this called the Paradox of Choice. Basically, that we want choices but they make us less happy.

There's a related phenomenon, I don't know a name for it, where given a choice between convenience and happiness people will almost always choose convenience, generally without even realizing they've made a choice. Our genes have a deep, deep preference for minimizing energy expenditure.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#128

Post by ryantgtg »

altcognito wrote: post #98
agumonkey wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anxiety in general is noticeably lower you were more anxious when you were drinking ? that's a first not to look naive, but there was a period of my life having a beer [0] was really the only way for me to exist outside my bedroom walls, i wasn't even tipsy.. I was just able to sit in a room without crippling dread. [0] I didn't drink, but the few times I did at parties I realized how drinking a bit was lifting me…

Conditions like GERD where stomach acids come up into the esophagus can be mistaken for anxiety or panic attacks. Alcohol can make GERD type symptoms a lot worse.

Interesting. If I get drunk two nights in a row, there are high chances that I’ll wake up the night with a panic attack.

I grew up with panic attacks, and they were random and I had no clue what was happening to me until college when I first learned of the phrase (prior to that I just referred to it as “the chaos”).

I can control and fight them off them now. But if I drink too much, then my mind and body are weakened and I can’t fight them off (while sleeping!).

Anyway, I’ll look up this GERD thing.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#129

Post by [deleted] »

Someone wrote: post #72
awrence wrote: post #33

“ In his 1979 history, The Alcoholic Republic, the historian W. J. Rorabaugh painstakingly calculated the stunning amount of alcohol early Americans drank on a daily basis. In 1830, when American liquor consumption hit its all-time high, the average adult was going through more than nine gallons of spirits each year.” I think I remember hearing a similar stat on the ken burns prohibition doc. I didn’t quite understan…

Wine isn’t a spirit (nor is beer). That number is about distilled alcohol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquor : “Liquor or spirit (also distilled alcohol) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, or vegetables that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. […] Liquor generally has an alcohol concentration higher than 30%” ⇒ For a 10% alcohol wine, multiply that by a factor of (at le…

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