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Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

nytimes.com

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Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#21

Post by chockchocschoir »

shrikant wrote: post #12

Is this some glitch in the Matrix? I could swear I saw this exact post on the front page a couple of days back, with at least a couple of the exact same comments! What even is happening! Edit: No, it's either a bug in HN, or the post's been bumped for visibility. Screenshot of a search I did just about now: https://i.imgur.com/Sr1S3eB.png Edit edit: Actually, could be a bug too, the relative and absolute timestamps o…

Probably just part of the "Second-Change" initiative.

> HN's second-chance pool is a way to give links a second chance at the front page. Moderators and a small number of reviewers go through old submissions looking for articles that are in the spirit of the site—gratifying intellectual curiosity—and which seem like they might interest the community. These get put into a hopper from which software randomly picks one every so often and lobs it randomly onto the lower part of the front page. If it interests the community, it gets upvoted and discussed; if not, it falls off.

- Show HN: Second-Chance Pool (news.ycombinator.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

- https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#22

Post by ascar »

Epiphany21 wrote: post #5

Recently (within the last two years) I had to help someone suffering with alcoholism/DTS and I was horrified by the abysmal outpatient support the medical system here provides. If he didn't have health insurance and a ride I would not have been able to convince him to go, and he could have died. It's very hard to argue with his contempt for hospitals and doctors when all they do is give you an overpriced potassium IV…

I'm not sure what can be done here. Having had a very close relative (as close as it gets, but I don't wanna associate anything precise publicly) being an alcoholic for decades, watching them succumb, degenerate and eventually die over a long and horrifying period, I don't see how the medical system can be the solution to this problem.

The motivation to stop drinking and continue to stop drinking has to be mostly intrinsic. There can be additional extrinsic factors (like doing it for your family) strengthening the intrinsic motivation, but without a strong and constant inner will to stop nothing will.

My relative took the final bottle of Whiskey on a lonely Christmas day. It took 2 months of suffering before it finally ended for good. No medical system can prevent the loneliness and dark times. And relatives also have their own lifes.

Addiction is a terrible problem and it's great that there is help for the persons motivated to seek help, and AA is a good initiative for that. But not everyone can be helped.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#23

Post by dazc »

ejb999 wrote: post #20
Epiphany21 wrote: post #5

Recently (within the last two years) I had to help someone suffering with alcoholism/DTS and I was horrified by the abysmal outpatient support the medical system here provides. If he didn't have health insurance and a ride I would not have been able to convince him to go, and he could have died. It's very hard to argue with his contempt for hospitals and doctors when all they do is give you an overpriced potassium IV…

>>then push you out the door and tell you to find an AA group. What is it exactly you want the hospital to do if your friend won't stop drinking?

Maybe there is something more going on than some person making a conscious decision to keep drinking? I'm not sure what the hospital should do in this exact situation but simply 'pushing someone out of the door' is very likely to have one result and this is the same person coming back through the same door time and time again.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#25

Post by _Microft »

shrikant wrote: post #12

Is this some glitch in the Matrix? I could swear I saw this exact post on the front page a couple of days back, with at least a couple of the exact same comments! What even is happening! Edit: No, it's either a bug in HN, or the post's been bumped for visibility. Screenshot of a search I did just about now: https://i.imgur.com/Sr1S3eB.png Edit edit: Actually, could be a bug too, the relative and absolute timestamps o…

That's the second chance pool in action. If the moderators think that a submission looks good but it didn't gain traction, they might put it into this pool to be offered a second chance. You can inspect the pool here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#26

Post by stef25 »

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner.

Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedback from my manager. He'd tell me full of glee that "certain colleagues" went to complain behind my back.

And since then it was non stop screaming at the kids, my partner ... it was hell. I'm not even ashamed to admit I was opening bottles of wine at 10AM and downing them in 30 min.

When the wife & kids went abroad for a week to stay with her parents and I took a week off from work I didn't even drink a drop of alcohol. It was purely to cope with the stress, for which alcohol does work very well! But it was a truly horrible time. And IMHO if you weren't at home with toddlers you didn't experience true suffering.

Ten months in to the job I got laid off and spent a year basically doing nothing apart from be there for the kids and the household.

Since then I did however develop bad sleeping habits and I still tend to wake up at 3-4AM to start work, which I actually enjoy if it wasn't for the fact you're destroyed as from late afternoon.

It's been a really rough 2 years. And I really enjoyed the 5 minutes between the pandemic and WWIII.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#27

Post by saiya-jin »

Epiphany21 wrote: post #5

Recently (within the last two years) I had to help someone suffering with alcoholism/DTS and I was horrified by the abysmal outpatient support the medical system here provides. If he didn't have health insurance and a ride I would not have been able to convince him to go, and he could have died. It's very hard to argue with his contempt for hospitals and doctors when all they do is give you an overpriced potassium IV…

I think the issue is mismatched expectations. General, ie university hospitals are normally not a place to treat addictions of any kind. You have rehab clinics, psychologists, AAs, church for those who need such authority and so on. These tend to be on their own, separate, not in hospital.

Emergency services is set to treat physical damage to the body, not psychological issues of any kind.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#28

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

dijonman2 wrote: post #10
raverbashing wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, number of alcohol deaths > rising to 99,017 in 2020, up from 78,927 the previous year Covid deaths in the US: 300k in 2020 Looks like another misrepresentation by the "covid skeptics"

Regardless of which side you’re on I think everyone needs to be willing to engage in civil discourse. We’re more divided than ever and should actively work to fix it. It’s true that some people are anti lockdown and there may be merit. There may not be. The truth is we won’t know for a few years until we have more information.

No, the truth is immediately apparent, and the post you're replying to is mentioning part of it: we know how many people died, and have good enough data on causes. Lockdowns caused some deaths, with alcoholism being part of it. It also saved quite a few lives by reducing the number of traffic accidents. And no matter how you slice it, nothing comes close to the number of actual COVID deaths, let alone the number of deaths we would have seen if we had let the first waves infect everyone. That would have been abut 5x as much, or 1.5 million, not including the problem that medical care and the economy would have completely collapsed in such a scenario.

Anyway... "let's wait until we have all the data" has been my favorite losing argument starting in like week 5 of the pandemic, when the deaths started mounting in Sweden.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#29

Post by CyanDeparture »

Epiphany21 wrote: post #5

Recently (within the last two years) I had to help someone suffering with alcoholism/DTS and I was horrified by the abysmal outpatient support the medical system here provides. If he didn't have health insurance and a ride I would not have been able to convince him to go, and he could have died. It's very hard to argue with his contempt for hospitals and doctors when all they do is give you an overpriced potassium IV…

A potassium IV should not be painful in the sligtest, it should just be a tiny pin prick when it's going in. Something went wrong if that was hurting.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#30

Post by saiya-jin »

krageon wrote: post #17
rnk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole world that stayed home is stressed, depressed, not recovered. This includes high functioning adults, kids, teenagers. I am in this group as is most of my friends.

> The whole world that stayed home is stressed, depressed, not recovered. Generalising about the "whole world" based on your depressed friend group is not very productive.

Each case is very individual. I am still on WFH, but now its my own choice, to have more free time (and a bit of stressful crunch if too many issues meet at same time). I've spent more time in past 2 years with my small kids than I would before covid in maybe 10 years of daily office work & commute. First 3 years are invaluable time for personality building.

For that only, regardless of all extra free time to do chores, pick up packages, go for walks/runs/exercises etc. it was worth it, very special time and bonds created.

But yeah without kids craving for all attention they could get it would suck much much more. Even though it was hard, much harder than go for a break from kids to the office like many dads used to do.

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