I stopped drinking over 20 years ago. One of the best decisions I've ever made.
On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
161–170 of 170 posts
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alcohol and heroin are not even close in terms of danger and having had a friend who I lost to heroin it sounds odd that someone makes that comparison.
Sorry to hear that. But I actually see this comparison a lot in the literature. Both heroin and alcohol are dangerous, but as alcohol is socially acceptable and widely available in a different forms, the perception of the danger differs. It's not a question for which drug we lose more people per year (alcohol is by far the clear winner here). It's a perception of these losses are different, and makes us believe that…
Alcohol is only worse than heroin on an absolute scale. A lot of people drink. A small minority damage their lives and the lives of others through poor decision making (e.g. drunk driving) or addiction. The size of this minority is larger than the entire population of heroin users. If as many people did heroin as drink alcohol, the damage to society would be catastrophic.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have 1 - 3 glasses of wine a night to relax after putting my child to bed. I'm sorry but I have to acknowledge that 1-3 glasses a night by yourself is a lot of drinking. I was the same way with weed. It didn't have any major affects on my life until I quit smoking and I realized my life was way better without it. I'm some random idiot on the internet so feel free to ignore my take, but finding ways to relax witho…
We are going slightly off topic here, but may I ask how your life turned better without weed? When Corona made availability a bit harder I quit last year for several months. But to my surprise I wasn't more productive, wasn't more focused all I got was getting more moody and easier to distact. I came to accept that weed is self medication against my ADD and depression that works better than I actually expected.
No worries, this really depends on the person and their smoking habits. I know for me I was smoking almost daily, using it to cope with founder stress in unhealthy ways, using it to run away from problems. For me personally, weed has the effect that it makes me super lazy, and that effect lingers for a couple of days, which made me more stressed.
Cutting weed definitely made me a ton more anxious for the first month, but after that I felt more motivated, more linguistically fluid.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#164I haven't had a drink in forty years. From the age of about 18-20, I fell rapidly into getting blackout drunk several times a week. I don't miss it. I did AA to get away from it but I ended up leaving that. I don't mind if people like having AA in their life, or even making it their life. It wasn't the answer for me though.
One thing I've eventually realized is that I am not comfortable around a lot of ordinary people. I was using alcohol to try and force myself to be around people. Now I would say there's no reason to do that, it's a sign that you're in the wrong place.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to hear that. But I actually see this comparison a lot in the literature. Both heroin and alcohol are dangerous, but as alcohol is socially acceptable and widely available in a different forms, the perception of the danger differs. It's not a question for which drug we lose more people per year (alcohol is by far the clear winner here). It's a perception of these losses are different, and makes us believe that…
Is the literature comparing alcohol and heroine with actual data? Along what metric(s) is alcohol worse than heroine? If this is actually true, the real takeway is that heroine is not nearly as bad as we've been led to believe and we should all go experiment this weekend.
There are some drug harm rankings, yes, but I haven't studied it so can't say what's the actual consensus of the field experts. I think I just saw this "alcohol is more harmful from alcohol" a few times in the articles.
Here is one of the cited articles from 2010: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's in vogue because people are realizing they are actively consuming cancer juice... Much like cigarette users had to realize they are actively inhaling cancer smoke... You kind of act like people that don't drink can't go out, have non-alcoholic drinks, and still focus on eachother...
Not to defend alcohol, but by that logic, we should also be giving up on BBQ, cured meats, and stir fries, and yet I don't see very many people merrily throwing those away.
What is carcenogenic about stir fries?
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#167I'm a drinker in principle, as in not being a teetotaller, but am just not attracted to drink very often. I probably have less than a bottle of wine and half a dozen beers a year. Same with drugs. I've tried most of the common ones, including those considered very addictive, but was never tempted to make a habit of any of them. Likewise food - I'm not an over eater and am in my late '50s the same weight I was 3 decad…
[flagged]
Hey, can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've done this repeatedly and we eventually have to ban such accounts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we've warned you about this quite a few times already:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042980 (Jan 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30035598 (Jan 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410796 (June 2021)
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#168Tracking my sleep (via Apple Watch + AutoSleep app) has helped me drink a lot less. It's very noticeable if I have more than one drink.
Does the AutoSleep add to your sleep tracking experience, compared to Apple's built-in Sleep app?
Are you talking about the Sleep section of Apple's Health app? AutoSleep seems to track more data than that does. It estimates my deep sleep, takes into account my HRV and heart rate, and gives me a sleep rating for the night (e.g. 90 out of 100).
Apple's Health app just tracks total time spent asleep which ignores my heart rate. My heart rate is always much higher if I've drank alcohol or ate something too close to bedtime, which AutoSleep uses to determine that my sleep quality is lower.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
What were in these cocktails? Gold and gemstones? The (really good, fairly pricey, good service) cocktail bars that I have gone to in SF and NYC charge less than $17 for their normal cocktails (and the only one I've seen that had a $30 price tag was because it used Remy Martin XO)
gone to in 2010
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Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#170Not to mention the money you save. I was recently at a cocktail bar for a party. I think the cheapest cocktail was $17, but most were between $20-$30. And most people had at least two. Meanwhile a lot of these places have cheap food (to encourage you to drink more), so I'm there in the corner scoffing my $4 pizza and $3 diet coke. Heh heh heh, suckers...
What were in these cocktails? Gold and gemstones? The (really good, fairly pricey, good service) cocktail bars that I have gone to in SF and NYC charge less than $17 for their normal cocktails (and the only one I've seen that had a $30 price tag was because it used Remy Martin XO)
I should probably have added (for an international audience), this is in Australia which has a pretty high alcohol tax. Plus the exchange rate - $17 AUD is $11.50 USD.