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Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

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Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#131

Post by noname123 »

taway wrote: post #105
andruby wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing the honest evaluation of your life. The only advice I can give you after having lived in the, from my point of view, shallow American tech world: move to Europe. The people in most European countries will be less welcoming at first, but I can tell you, if you stick through you will find them to be more profound. It helps that we don't have an American Dream which focusses on financial prosperity…

I was born in Portugal and lived there for most of my life. Virtually everything the OP said could describe some portuguese person just as well. Hell, I could have written it at some point and it would be a surprisingly accurate summary of my life back then. These are symptoms of problems that live in you, that consume you from the inside, they will follow you wherever you go, you can't just run away and escape them…

You makes perfect sense, taway. I appreciate your sentiment regarding traveling somewhere will not solve one's problem. I want to travel to Macau or Goa and eat the fusion of traditional Indian or Cantonese-Portuguese cuisine and maybe plays Gaopai at the casino's there but pretty sure that'll only obliterate my anxieties for a few days.

I also appreciate your empathy and stating that you also felt the same once. At least for me, there's more to a person who is willing to make fun of themselves or admit freely to their shortcomings than someone who offers eager advice.

Re: Western society criticism; as someone who grew up partially in Eastern society (China), I believe that traditional Buddhist practice is in practice and effect more similar to the Catholic Church than different. And people in China and South Korea see the same alternative appeal in Christianity as people in the West seek Yoga or Zen Buddhism. So perhaps it's not the religion/philosophy content but the person doing the seeking.

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#132

Post by noname123 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #84
noname123 wrote: post #59

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…

Thanks for sharing. I'm already doing like half of the things from that list, and I'll be probably doing the other half soon. It's good to remind ourselves that you, and me, are not alone in this, and maybe to reflect on those "choices" "we" make and see if we can learn to live more of our own lives, and less of someone elses.

No problem, I guess if you're gonna eventually give into vices, I guess there's no point to hold back and just go all in one go and go from there, ; )

I believe you're also right that you're not alone. For me personally, I've found that it isn't that adults who are older than me have eventually gotten their act together but more so that people retreat to their families and smaller intimate social clique and not reveal their inner lives as much, compared to when they were melodramatic teenagers or college kids on Facebook or YouTube vlogs.

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#133

Post by noname123 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #121
dasil003 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course it will help. If tomorrow I became independently rich, I could quit my job and suddenly the most productive 40hrs of my week are free to work on my own problems whatever they may be. Plus your stress levels will probably drop too.

At a startup interview years ago, the hiring manager told me a story,

"Once, there was a fisherman with his single fishing boat toiling and netting and gutting his daily haul at sea; then one day, a Silicon Valley VC came on his boat and made a business proposition, 'I can make you a rich man; I can give you a funding to scale your operation so you can hire 40 people with 40 fishing boats to catch more fishes and make more money!' The fisherman laughed, the VC trying to push him with the startup enthusiasm immediately said, "think of all of the money you can make and you can then retire, and think of what you'd be able to do afterwards with that freedom!

The fisherman said 'Well, I'd retire to some place close to the coast, buy a fishing boat there and go out to the sea and go fishing.'"

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#134

Post by carbocation »

conroe64 wrote: post #101
carbocation wrote: post #75

Earlier 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...

The covariates for which one is able to control are necessarily limited, so we're left to speculate. I will speculate that if you could add a covariate such as "Used to drink lightly but stopped entirely because of a health problem" you will find the answer.

This study did create a variable which is the number of health problems and symptoms a person has. However, people can have one bad health problem/symptom (e.g., COPD on 3L home O2) which affects them more than 10 minor health problems might affect someone else.

As an aside, it is curious that this study did not replicate the repeatedly-observed finding of an association between obesity and mortality (OR = 1.00 in this study).

I will also add that this study is looking at older adults (aged 55-65 at the outset of a 20-year study, so they ended up dead or 75-85), which is different from the people discussed in the original thread (working age adults).

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#135

Post by chrisdevereux »

Zigurd wrote: post #106
chrisdevereux wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Habit forming and toxic, so no. But yes, they were banned.

More, or less, than alcohol?

Comparable, I think. Definitely addictive. Less liver toxicity, but easier to overdose fatally (respiratory depression).

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#136

Post by jorisw »

tangue wrote: post #108
throwawaywayway wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: How much is too much? I drink about 2-4 fairly strong beers a night (5-7% ABV), almost every night, and while I certainly feel it, I've only been "shitfaced" (or whatever you call "drinking to the point that you lose control") maybe half a dozen times in my life. The fact that I'm not doing the (apparently) normal thing for young folk and getting trashed every Friday night (or ever, really) gives me…

The toxic effects of alcohol are cumulative over time, so in the long run you might be at greater risk than binge drinkers. And if you're drinking 4 beers you 're not far from the threshold for liver disease [1] ( 1 liter of beer at 7% = 56 g of alcohol; the threshold is 50g). Alcohol is also linked to high blood pressure; you should check yours. Besides all that alcohol is also high in calories and you'll have to de…

  And if you're drinking 4 beers you 're not far
  from the threshold for liver disease [1]
  ( 1 liter of beer at 7% = 56 g of alcohol;
  the threshold is 50g).
It is exactly this type of information that the public needs to be made aware of. Not "drinking is bad", but factual information that a person can measure their behavior against.

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#137

Post by dragonwriter »

gress wrote: post #104
dragonwriter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not all issues boil down to "economic impact". Arguably, they really do , but you have to remember that economics is about the distribution of scarce things (both material goods and services) connected to experienced utility (money is just a -- rather poor in many respects, but also very convenient -- proxy for utility.)

Some kind of platonic ideal of economics may be about experienced utility, but in practice it's just more politics.

I think you are confusing the study of economics with the talking heads discussing economics in the mainstream media.

But even if you were right, and "economic" was just a code word for "political", it would be even more true (though for a different reason) that all issues of government policy boil down to economic impact.

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#138

Post by seannaM »

noname123 wrote: post #127
mrj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You seem to dislike the shallowness you feel around you, so don't be shallow. Nothing you wrote says anything about you, 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 Direct…

The subtext I read from your life-decision making is "I'm lonely, and money = women, so I'm going to get money."

Money doesn't really equal women as much as A) If you're destitute, dating can be more difficult (but not impossible, lots of homeless people get married.) and B) If you have a lot of money you can pay other people a lot of money to have sex with you.

If this sounds like you, I would start descalating your career, your yuppie lifestyle and start escalating your pursuit of things that really interest you and finding connection with other people.

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#139

Post by DanBC »

ryanmim wrote: post #12

I 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…

The beneficial effects are from drinking small amounts of alcohol. Something like 125 ml of wine at 8% ABV per day would be enough.

I'm not sure why you think we need more research about the harmful effects. There are a long list of known harmful effects, and they kick in at much lower levels than the triggur-levels for English drug and alcohol services. (40 units per day or 20 units per day if you also have severe MH problems (one unit is 125 ml at 8% ABV etc)) - harmful effects can be seen if people regularly drink more than 25 units per week.

Re: Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults

#140

Post by gress »

dragonwriter wrote: post #137
gress wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some kind of platonic ideal of economics may be about experienced utility, but in practice it's just more politics.

I think you are confusing the study of economics with the talking heads discussing economics in the mainstream media. But even if you were right, and "economic" was just a code word for "political", it would be even more true (though for a different reason) that all issues of government policy boil down to economic impact.

The academic study of economics is no different. There is not a science of economics.
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