While we are at it, can we list some other addictions that we use to cope with life. Me personally, it's gambling, pornography, sulking alone, facebooking acquaintances to see how they're doing better than me or worse, checking sports score and living vicariously through the lives of professional athletes on and off the field, checking TechCrunch/Hack News and doing the same with tech billionaires, making up lists an…
I don't mean to shoot down the one thing that gets you through the day, but if you aren't happy now do you think hitting it out of the ballpark will help? I mean, money is great for the basics, but if you're having problems forming romantic connections I think money would make that problem a lot worse.
Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
121–130 of 144 posts
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#122A woman who drinks a glass of wine a night and two on Friday is a "heavy drinker?" Having two mixed drinks within a three hour period is a binge? I don't know if the science supports these numbers, but they certainly do not agree with common definitions.
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#123While we are at it, can we list some other addictions that we use to cope with life. Me personally, it's gambling, pornography, sulking alone, facebooking acquaintances to see how they're doing better than me or worse, checking sports score and living vicariously through the lives of professional athletes on and off the field, checking TechCrunch/Hack News and doing the same with tech billionaires, making up lists an…
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#124I drink way too much. I've accepted this. What stops me from drinking way too much? Not much, because I'm able to rationalize my drinking with the many beneficial effects touted. There's a lot of information about how drinking a bit is helpful for heart disease and how it basically reduces mortality across the board. More information is needed about how drinking is HARMFUL beyond cirrhosis and the short term effects…
Because if you sit up front and listen hard, all the speakers' stories of decline and fall and surrender are basically alike, and like your own: fun with the Substance, then very gradually less fun, then significantly less fun because of the blackouts you suddenly come out of on the highway going 145 kph with companions you do not know, nights you awake from in unfamiliar bedding next to somebody who doesn't even resemble any known sort of mammal, three-day blackouts you come out of and have to buy a newspaper to even know what town you're in; yes gradually less and less actual fun but with some physical need for the Substance, now, instead of the former voluntary fun; then at some point just very little fun at all, combined with terribly daily hand-trembling need, then dread, anxiety, irrational phobias, dim siren-like memories of fun, trouble with assorted authorities, knee-buckling headaches, mild seizures, and the litany of what Boston AA calls Losses - ... (here DFW interpolates part of a monologue from an AA speaker) -then less mild seizures, D.T.s during attempts to taper off too fast, introduction to subjective bugs and rodents, then one more binge and more formicative bugs; then eventually a terrible acknowledgment that some line has been undeniably crossed, and fist-at-the-sky, as-God-is-my-witness vows to buckle down and lick this thing for good, to quit for all time, then maybe a few white-knuckled days of initial success, then a slip, then more pledges, clock-watching, baroque self-regulations, repeated slips back into the Substance's relief after like two days' abstinence, ghastly hangovers, head-flattening guilt and self-disgust, superstructures of additional self-regulations (e.g. not before 0900h, not on a worknight, only when the moon is waxing, only in the company of Swedes) which also fail - ... -then unbelievable psychic pain, a kind of peritonitis of the soul, psychic agony, fear of impending insanity (why can't I quit if I so want to quit, unless I'm insane?), appearances at hospital detoxes and rehabs, domestic strife, financial free-fall, eventual domestic Losses - ... -then vocational ultimatums, unemployability, financial ruin, pancreatitis, overwhelming guilt, bloody vomiting, cirrhotic neuralgia, incontinence, neuropathy, nephritis, black depressions, searing pain, with the Substance affording increasingly brief periods of relief; then finally no relief available anywhere at all; finally it's impossible to freeze what you feel like, being this way; and now you hate the Substance, hate it, but you still find yourself unable to stop doing it, the Substance, you find you really want to stop more than anything on earth and it's no fun doing it anymore and you can't believe you ever liked doing it and but you still can't stop, it's like you're totally fucking bats, it's like there's two yous; and when you'd sell your own dear Mum to stop and still, you find, can't stop, then the last layer of jolly friendly mask comes off your old friend the Substance, it's midnight now and all the masks come off, and you all of a sudden see the Substance as it really is, for the first time you see the Disease as it really is, really has been all this time, you look in the mirror at midnight and see what owns you, what's become what you are - ... -and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool-, and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in.
[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/f8me0/favourite_sente...
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is essentially correct as far as I understand things. There is epidemiological evidence that As a physician I tell my patients that there may be a benefit from such very carefully controlled, modest drinking, but there is almost certainly a benefit from abstaining rather than over-drinking. Alcohol overuse makes you look old (yes I will appeal to vanity); it suppresses your bone marrow and makes you anemic; it c…
What do you think of the study mentioned in this article that indicates that heavy drinkers outlive abstainers? http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200... Here is the study itself: http://courses.ttu.edu/jkoch/ETOH/Readings/Late_life_alcohol...
http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/pubs/pop/pop2012-0006.pdf
"Mortality risk is low for light drinkers and many individua ls who abstain from drinking—including those who abstain for religious and moral reasons, have a responsibility to family, were brought up not to drink, and are not social; it is higher among former, infrequent, and moderate drinkers, and individuals who abstain because they do not like the taste of alcohol, are concerned that they will lose control, or are concerned about adverse consequences. Unsurprisingly, mortality risk is by far the highest for heavy drinkers. We reveal that reasons for abstention capture heterogeneity in the risk of death among lifetime abstainers. "
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are not the same person while drunk. If you think that the person you are while sober is a better person, you have a perfectly valid reason for not drinking. I’ll just leave you with this: http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-youtube-videos-that-prove-anyo... Not so much to prove that you can do it, but more for the change that anyone can see. You could hardly tell that it’s the same person in the first videos as the la…
> You are not the same person while drunk. If you think that the person you are while sober is a better person, you have a perfectly valid reason for not drinking. What if I think the tipsy me is a better person? He's much more outgoing, interesting, and far less socially awkward.
Beside doing things you regret when drunk - like making an ass out of yourself when talking to more sober people in bars or feeling shitty the next day... it does not make you experience yourself as a better person when sober. You have to be drunk to be that better person. So you drink. It does not help - at least that's my experience. Getting drunk can be fun but...where to stop?
Being outgoing for me is strongly connected to my self-esteem and feeling of self-worth. If it's down the drain I hardly leave the house and run away from social interactions without alcohol. If I accumulated some self-worth and feeling fine with myself I enjoy going out and being social in a sober state even more.
I doubt that you are more socially awkward for other people when sober but your anxiety makes you so uncomfortable that you have this urge to grab a drink and have a feeling of relaxation. After a few beers you feel better...
Be careful it's a vicious circle and it's worth to spend some energy into forcing yourself into social situation in a sober state. It can be fun to sit sober in a bar and watch all the people getting more and more drunk.
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#127While we are at it, can we list some other addictions that we use to cope with life. Me personally, it's gambling, pornography, sulking alone, facebooking acquaintances to see how they're doing better than me or worse, checking sports score and living vicariously through the lives of professional athletes on and off the field, checking TechCrunch/Hack News and doing the same with tech billionaires, making up lists an…
Yesh, I recognize some of the thinking in this post, and trust me, you're going about it all wrong. Until you figure yourself out, you're not going to make meaningful relationships or be happy in them. You need to find what defines you, what you are about. Then, you'll need to make your peace with it. Own it. I'm not sure the people you have mentioned feel any better about themselves than you do. Normal people reach…
OK, let me try; I really like computers back in the day when you typed in a terminal screen 1:Print "Hello World" or the first HTML page with the CSS or figuring out for the first time how object-oriented programming class inheritance working, or referencing and dereferencing C pointers or DirectX buffer-swap or socket multicasting, or reading a really profound novel for English class for that matter or catching a late night movie with sexy scenes and heavy themes that you can't put your finger when you're young but the excitement of lust and wanderlust lingers on ("Eyes Wide Shut"),
When real life happened was told by parents directly and peers implicitly to "pursue" passion and "be serious" at the same time lest you be judged, so I got a job feeling independent, hell even making six-figures for the first time, feeling a million bucks but initial euphoria eventually gave away to daily grind, fixing tickets after tickets to the tyranny of "agile," "daily standup," and "JIRA burndown chart/project tracker"; more importantly, I want to learn and dig further and further down into stack, get into Linux kernel, hardware circuit design, cryptography, Bioinformatics not to have some BS on my LinkedIn and collect trinkets, but have that rush of hacking at it, like a shot of cocaine straight into the brain blood-barrier; instead, I'm here cranking out tickets for an A/B test on how to make a button to have a single round bevel or double round bevel and seeing which one will boost 0.01% on the user conversion rate to add a product to a shopping cart or to keep user "as engaged" when I could hardly care less about social media, e-commerce and iOS apps about a product or infographics that I don't need but is shoved to my face; I feel cheated and robbed at the lies that the startup industry pumps out for "meaningful work," more importantly, I sacrificed my love for learning academic-oriented computing for a meaningless momentary compensation and the trendiness of startupdom because I watched some stupid video on Steve Jobs or Peter Thiel on some late lonely night and it filled up my emptiness in college,
Socially, was an awkward computer nerd and on the bottom of the sexual and social totem-pole in college. But had a few friends whom I can have late night conversations with, who listened to me, whom understood when I say something in Chinglish (English-Cinese combined) and understand instantly what it's like to grow up Chinese in suburban Maryland and going to a Chinese evangelical christian church in the late 90's, and debating what porn clip we saw on porn sites back then, whether it's sanitary or gay for the guys involved for the porn girl in a blowbang to suck one cock and then go off to suck on another cock and also discuss different movies, The Smashing Pumpkins, "Catcher in the Rye," "On the Road," the alienation and the exhilaration of being on the road or constantly searching and wandering and the explicit sexual yearnings,
So in my mid-twenties, got finally frustrated due to hormones and that fear of missing out and that parental pressure to "settle down". So I got an downtown apartment and stocked it up with IKEA furniture like Edward Norton did in "Fight Club," shopped at H&M and Brooks Brothers for "snug-fit" jeans, befriended and went out with a carefully curated group of "young professionals but yet boheme" and eventually went on dates that led to a steady girlfriend. At first I felt like a million bucks, felt like I finally made it with "meaningful such yuppie weekend activities" as rock-climbing, hiking and carousing with friends and SO but eventually gave to the daily grind of the socializations, to the pettiness of who's who in office politics, whose next great startup idea to apply to what accelerator and what band to see in which cool fresh new venue that's just opened in the city but that's just the same as the one that we just sat at discussing it, the decor, names and hair are different but the characters all the same, that obligatory feeling that I don't want to but I should,
I want to have a feeling of mastery, follow through with something tangible and tactile with my hands, like building a nice outdoors deck with a nice varnish finish, learn how to take a Eric-Clapton-esque solo with all of the chromatic tones and sixteenth notes at a blues jam, to pull off a cross-over and a spin-move to evade the first and second defender in a rec-league basketball and finish at the hoop. Instead I trivialized my personal goals as unrealistic and impractical and instead gave into the social pressure of "practical nest-building and social networking". Learned only later that all my "friends" in trendy yuppie network were more in love with the idea of themselves being involved in a trendy yuppie network than the other people (especially moi). I don't feel like a man, or specifically a human being with any agency, but was re-assured by everyone else that "[I was]. Because [I] had my own apartment and had a great job, a great social network." I rushed to relationships and friends to fill a void of personal inadequacy but found associating or possessing other people that I liked the idea of did not change me and if anything else made me more insecure and co-dependent on them.
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#128While we are at it, can we list some other addictions that we use to cope with life. Me personally, it's gambling, pornography, sulking alone, facebooking acquaintances to see how they're doing better than me or worse, checking sports score and living vicariously through the lives of professional athletes on and off the field, checking TechCrunch/Hack News and doing the same with tech billionaires, making up lists an…
I believe and hope that this is not a description of the authors life but rather a stereotypical generalization of the common problems a lot of people face every day. However to a lot of people from 2nd and 3rd world countries just owning a house with some small amount of land is an American Dream came true.
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#129I suspect, the salient fact that the CDC is leaving out is that many, if not most, of these are from car accidents. Also, by qualifying it as "working-age" it skews the results heavily. What about all the people that did all that drinking and managed to make it past working age? Lucky for us, automated cars are going to solve most of this problem in a decade or two. So a more honest assessment would answer how many a…
There's a lot of denial going on in this discussion.
Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults
#130I suspect, the salient fact that the CDC is leaving out is that many, if not most, of these are from car accidents. Also, by qualifying it as "working-age" it skews the results heavily. What about all the people that did all that drinking and managed to make it past working age? Lucky for us, automated cars are going to solve most of this problem in a decade or two. So a more honest assessment would answer how many a…
So, try to regulate drinking until automatic cars save us?