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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

#211

Post by scottLobster »

after_care wrote: post #157
hackeraccount wrote: post #104

I am so glad I got married and had a kid. My wife doesn't drink - and honestly it's way less fun to drink - even have a glass of wine with a meal - when someone else isn't. Plus with my daughter I don't drink when my wife isn't around because I'm always worried something is going to come up and I'll have to drive her some place on short notice. I think if it were just me on my own I might drink more ... and I always…

Always having meals with the same people, being consistently worried you’ll be responsible to drop what you’re doing on short notice to drive someone. I’m glad I did not marry or have kids.

If I've learned one thing about myself being married with a kid on the way, it's that I lack a lot of intrinsic motivation to do anything productive. Left alone I'll video-game and drink my way into an early grave. I need something to be responsible for to keep my self-destructive instincts in line.

I only started working out consistently because a couple of years into marriage my wife made an ultimatum that she didn't want to have kids with someone who doesn't exercise. And as pissed off as I was in the moment I couldn't really argue with that. Being a dad (which was something I wanted) demands a certain level of health/energy to do well, never mind longevity, and I was rationalizing not working out on a weekly basis ("I'm too tired, won't be able to watch my form." "I'm still kinda sore from last time." "My foot hurts a little, better not push it", and other sorry excuses). To be fair I'd never worked out consistently in my life. I needed that kick in the ass to form the habit from scratch as an adult.

Likewise I've steered myself away from many self-destructive impulses in the last few months simply because my soon-to-be daughter deserves something better than a tired, beaten-down bastion of mediocrity for a father. It's even helping my career, as I have to set an example for her and being a tuned-out clock puncher isn't what I want for her.

Call it a pathetic lack of self esteem, or a natural lack of inhibition, but I've always been wired this way as long as I can remember. I need the responsibility, and even if I resent it in the moment I know by taking it on I'll end up in a better place, and the people I'm responsible for usually do better as well.

Just offering an alternate perspective. Different people are wired differently.

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

#212

Post by abduhl »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #68
chockchocschoir wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defensive, I'm trying to explain my position (as a self-proclaimed "smart and rational" person) since you claimed there was no (logical) reason to have those vices. You're making strong claims, and I'm just asking you to back those up without forcing people to buy a book that you say supports those claims. Otherwise there isn't much value in you making your claims here. I'm sure (or rather, I hope) the book h…

I asked why you found it enjoyable and you didn't respond, so it's hard to explain the author's viewpoint when you haven't explained why you drink. To give generalised responses to the three main reasons that people give: - Do you enjoy the taste? - Alcohol is ultimately a foul-tasting poison. No one ever liked their first taste of beer. We start with highly-flavoured drinks like alcopops and after a while our body s…

>> On a deeper level, generally to relax you need to fix the thing that would stop you from relaxing - you have a headache and you take aspirin. Alcohol is not the solution to any stressor.

So aspirin for a headache helps you relax but alcohol for an introvert’s social setting anxiety does not help you relax? What a strange line to draw between “stressors” that are acceptable to solve with drugs.

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

#213

Post by ativzzz »

sokoloff wrote: post #140
geden wrote: post #118

I stopped drinking during the pandemic. I think for good. I wasn't drinking much. A bottle of wine or two at the weekend with my wife. Never really liked beer that much. It's hard to articulate exactly why I stopped I think there was some sort of insight into how boring and mechanical it had become, how little I was gaining from it, the drip drip negative effect it had on my body and crucially, how my drinking enable…

I switched almost entirely over to non-alcoholic beer in pandemic. It wasn't particularly health or problem related, but just that I like the taste of beer, but don't need the alcohol and two real beers would leave me slightly hungover/tired the next day while NA beers don't.

Athletic Brewing makes good non alcoholic beers!

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

#214

Post by holler »

duped wrote: post #199
rchaud wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, AA doesn't make you swear on the Bible or profess one's faith in Christ before you're allowed to join a meeting. You can ignore the religious stuff and still make use of AA's highest-impact features: - regular meetings, no appointment required - being open and vulnerable in front of other people who understand the hell of addiction in ways your partner or family won't. - having an accountability partners to ca…

The alternative to AA isn't a crisis hotline, but medical treatment with empirical support for its effectiveness

What medical treatment? 12 step is fundamentally about community and connection (opposite of addiction), there is no pill that can give one that.

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

#215

Post by warning26 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #177
emerged wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you clearly didn’t read the article because the entire thing is talking about all of the sorts of causes you listed.

Please avoid shallow dismissals of other commentors. Everyone here is a real person who has feelings.

I'd argue the parent commenter committed this very sin; shallowly dismissing the article's conclusion to push their preferred narrative (ie, pandemic restrictions == bad).

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

#216

Post by MissionInfl »

sjg007 wrote: post #93
kaishiro wrote: post #44

My older brother is an alcoholic. I suspect it's somewhat cliche to say, but when he's sober he's the nicest guy I know - almost nobody else I'd rather spend time with - and when he's drunk, he's chaos. The past few years he's been really struggling with sobriety - on and off like a roller coaster. The pandemic was an absolute nightmare for someone like him - in between jobs, trying to stay sober, trying to find the…

Has he tried antabuse or something like that? Those pills make you vomit when you drink and are quite effective in harnessing the body's natural anti-poison response system to curb drinking.

To anyone hoping to learn more about alcoholism medication, I highly recommend /r/Alcoholism_Medication. That subreddit, The Sinclair Method, and Naltrexone saved my life. More details in some of my recent comments too if you are interested.

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

#217

Post by bduerst »

ponow wrote: post #155
elliekelly wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason we, as a society, have decided certain health problems are moral failures to be treated with shame and cured through willpower alone rather than modern medical intervention.

"For some reason" there are temptations to addiction all around us, and alcohol is only one. We can't treat being human as merely a medical condition. Human cultures have adapted using shame as a tool.

Human cultures nave also historically adapted slavery, misogyny, and other "tools".

That doesn't mean that shame is an acceptable nor an effective form of addiction treatment.

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

#218

Post by holler »

vkou wrote: post #183
dotancohen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That service exists, though. The hospital specifically referred them to AA.

AA barely works, though.

I know lots of ppl with years of sobriety through AA so I would say it does work for some. It existing as a choice free of charge around the world for ppl suffering is a good thing.

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

#219

Post by throwawaycities »

ponow wrote: post #155
elliekelly wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason we, as a society, have decided certain health problems are moral failures to be treated with shame and cured through willpower alone rather than modern medical intervention.

"For some reason" there are temptations to addiction all around us, and alcohol is only one. We can't treat being human as merely a medical condition. Human cultures have adapted using shame as a tool.

> Human cultures have adapted using shame as a tool.

As you said temptation to addiction is all around us, and alcohol is only one…well shame is just another one of those tempting addictions and it happens to be the addiction de jour.

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

#220

Post by whywhywhywhy »

lkxijlewlf wrote: post #106
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say without knowing their complaints. Not sure how I’d manage to be productive when collaborating with some of my team members if they were not there during Norma working hours but were there during the middle of the night. Offsets all requests and fixes from them by a day.

Sounds more like a problem with how stories/tasks are split.

Being part of a team means being part of a team and communication and connecting with the team to be a coherent whole, not just logging in and staring at your ticket todo list and not speaking to anyone.
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