Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 938 posts

Re: America has a drinking problem

#201

Post by bradleyjg »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #153

It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…

That’s a great (surprising) reference. Intellectually I know functional alcoholics exist but it’s still tough to come to grips with that many people drinking that much alcohol.

I’m curious what it looks by age, geography, and household income.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#202

Post by panzagl »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #64
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, as someone who has 2-3 drinks per day, I've always been more surprised by the amount of people who basically don't drink at all. In that chart it's over half of Americans. Travel a bit, any you'll quickly discover that a couple drinks in the evening is basically normal in much of the world. I'm not arguing that it's healthy (it's not), but the median American really doesn't drink much - our Puritan values r…

> but the median American really doesn't drink much - our Puritan values run deep. For many of us, it's not about Puritanical values. We simply choose healthier behaviors. It's true that the median alcohol drinkers in America doesn't drink much at all. The vast majority of alcohol is consumed by 10% of the population. Drinkers tend to cluster with other drinkers, and non-drinkers tend to become less interested with a…

> We simply choose healthier behaviors.

Hmm, I wonder where your desire to choose healthier behaviors came from...

Re: America has a drinking problem

#203

Post by Diederich »

Most of my male genetic relatives have/had a history of alcohol abuse, so I decided from an early age that the best approach was to not drink any alcohol at all, and I held to that until about nine years ago. Long research has indicated that one cup of red wine per day has measurable health benefits, so I started to drink one cup, like medicine, immediately before bed.

After doing that for a few weeks, I came home from work; my wife and son weren't home at the moment. I sat down at my computer and started working on my side project, as usual.

I was shocked to see that there was a large plastic container on my desk filled most of the way up with red wine, and I'd been gulping it down.

Honest to God, I had absolutely no recollection of getting that container, pouring the wine, and putting it on my desk.

That was very chilling, I poured the rest of it out and haven't had a drink since.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#205

Post by lotsofpulp »

koolba wrote: post #132
phkahler wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more weight loss to be had switching from Diet Coke to water. It's obviously not the calorie content, but the insulin response from sweet tasting things that will occur even with artificial sweeteners.

Does that apply to all artificial sweeteners such as sucralose or is it specific to aspartame?

I have yet to find a single study confirming any rumored ill effects of artificial sweeteners, including aspartame. At least in any reasonable consumption amounts since you need so little of the sweetener.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#206

Post by rootusrootus »

Reading Europeans' comments on threads like this leaves me wondering who is more ignorant about America, me (as an American...) or them.

I don't know anyone who goes out drinking to get drunk. I know people who socialize with friends and drink alcohol while doing it. I know some people who have a glass of wine or two with dinner. I myself drink a couple microbrews once a week with friends.

But what I'm getting from our European friends is that everyone they know from America is an alcoholic.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#207

Post by azinman2 »

Having lived in the UK and the US, I firmly disagree. I had never seen drinking at the extreme levels until I went to the UK.

I seriously doubt the entire articles premise that somehow alcohol binging is unique to the US. There are a lot of counties with a lot of forms of alcohol out there…

Re: America has a drinking problem

#208

Post by tamade »

There's really no exceptionalism when it comes to America's so-called drinking problem. Having worked at an alcoholic beverage MNC, it's pretty clear that every country has its own subculture of getting hammered. I'd even hazard the hot take that America is rather middle-of-the-road when it comes to binge drinking (certainly by per capita consumption is not exceptional).

Re: America has a drinking problem

#209

Post by jodrellblank »

handrous wrote: post #119
birdyrooster wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your comment because it pretty much answers itself in the edit.

Yeah, the universality and unoriginality of the observation isn't lost on me, but I do think there's some "the medium is the message" stuff going on with the sheer quantity and low-friction to selection of media and other options available to us now, with the Web and ubiquitous always-online computing devices turning into an outright engine for itch-generation and itch-scratching-of-same-itch. And that's before you f…

> "Consider what happens to a soul which always gets what it wants."

In a popular Alan Watts talk he imagines a dreamer:

"let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have.

And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be."

And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”. Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today."

https://genius.com/Alan-watts-the-dream-of-life-annotated

Re: America has a drinking problem

#210

Post by czbond »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #62
leifg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Club soda (or flavored seltzer) + bitters. There's alcohol there still but less than half a percent ABV. Not enough that it tastes boozy or impairs my judgement. Drinking one relatively low ABV beer impairs my judgement enough that a second drink sounds like a good idea, the soda and bitters never does that for me.

I've loved club soda - and dislike alcohol; however, never thought of adding bitters. I like this idea a lot.
Post reply on HN