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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#251

Post by tjs8rj »

offtop5 wrote: post #181
tjs8rj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying there aren't downsides inherent with drinking itself? I'm onboard with letting people do what they want, but if what they want to do has negative effects the least we should do is make them aware of that.

There are downsides to eating Oreos, but we don't need articles which state obvious facts. Much wrong has been done in this country by telling people their behavior is a moral. As long as you don't hurt me or anyone else do whatever you want, you're free to drink yourself silly every night

These aren't so obvious facts, and we DO write articles and run campaigns about the harms of junk food and overeating.

None of this is "moralizing", its simply reiterating the harmful effects of behaviors so others can make balanced decisions. Nobody is born aware of the dangers of junk food and alcohol, and they're easy to forget too unless one has personal experience with it (by then the damage is already done).

Re: America has a drinking problem

#252

Post by hervature »

ragona wrote: post #193
hervature wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, obviously weight also plays a big role in my previous statement. But the statement is still true: given that over half the population doesn't drink daily, if they decide to drink 10 drinks, it will have drastic physical effects. For what it's worth, the modern day description of "tolerance" is merely the individual's ability to mask their inebriation. There is a big difference of not being affected by something…

I think you’re incorrect about a few things. First, tolerance to substances is more physiological than simply learning to hide it. Second, consider one drink an hour ten eight hours. You’d barely be inebriated. It wouldn’t be particularly drastic.

Again, the modern view on alcohol tolerance is that people develop masking abilities. Their BAC and physiological effects remain relatively constant from [1]:

> Functional tolerance refers to a phenomenon where a person can ingest significant amounts of alcohol – either at once or slowly over time – and not appear to be intoxicated. A person who has developed a functional tolerance to alcohol may be under the influence of alcohol without it being noticeable, thus allowing them to participate in certain daily activities in a manner that appears normal to others.

This is also what TIPS, the training given to bartenders, teaches [2]. Finally, to the point about spreading out the drinks. Yes, this is how people consume large amounts of alcohol daily. I maintain that someone who barely drinks or never drinks will be incapable of doing their job after 4 hours, even after spreading out the drinks. They certainly shouldn't drive a vehicle.

[1] - https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/th... [2] - https://www.tipscertified.com/

Re: America has a drinking problem

#253

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #3

The statistics about alcohol consumption are so stunning that I often wonder how accurate they are. If these numbers are correct, the top 10% of alcohol drinkers consume the equivalent of 10 drinks per day : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think... The unit for a single drink is a fixed measurement, so someone pouring a tall glass of wine or a very stiff drink could be consuming 2-5 “drinks” in…

[deleted]

Re: America has a drinking problem

#254

Post by sdenton4 »

pseudolus wrote: post #40
tayo42 wrote: post #5

I found it pretty amusing to see how drunk our founding fathers were. I think being drunk played a huge role in the American revolution

Going back further, I'd love to know the source of the claim that the Mayflower was diverted from the mouth of the Hudson to Plymouth Rock because the ship was running low on beer. It seems like the sort of thing that would be more widely known.

The framing is a bit dubious, at the very least... The statement about 'preferring beer to water' ignores cholera, and the general difficult of keeping water potable over months at sea. Fermentation was, believe it or not, a public health strategy for ship voyages.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#255

Post by mellosouls »

croutonwagon wrote: post #26
mellosouls wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the majority of people control themselves though in the view of social normalisation of a poison like alcohol? The very fact that you (as do most of us) consider it a "normal life" activity indicates a very skewed and unhealthy perspective has taken hold at a fundamental level.

> The very fact that you (as do most of us) consider it a "normal life" activity indicates a very skewed and unhealthy perspective has taken hold at a fundamental level. I would argue it and the stats answers your own question. By in large yes they can. And personally I’m not one to judge peoples lifestyle decisions provided it’s not an epidemic of people doing things like b&E to hawk a motel microwave to get their n…

How do it and they answer the question in another way to mine given that it is a toxin and millions are using it to damage their health every day?

How many of those millions using could genuinely give up today forever easily if they wanted to?

Re: America has a drinking problem

#256

Post by saalweachter »

lovegoblin wrote: post #93
throwaway894345 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also drink about this much per week. I like a beer or wine or whiskey every now and again, but I've never really seen the point in getting buzzed or drunk (or high for that matter). When I do drink, I only have 1 or 2 at a time, not out of an express desire to stay sober, but because I'm usually pretty naturally satisfied by that amount. For whatever reason, I like sobriety. It's strange to me that people should th…

> It's strange to me that people should think we need a religious motive to prefer sobriety I would not at all be surprised to see a strong correlation of people who are religious and people who never drink. Even "one drink a week" or whatever is a significantly different category than "zero drinks, ever."

Eh, you throw out the 1/3 of the religious who have a direct religious prohibition against drinking and the correlation probably goes away.

Maybe depends on whether "would never drink again" and "basically never drink" are included in your definition of "never".

There are a lot of non-religious reasons people don't drink, and a lot of daylight between "one drink a week" and "zero drinks an ever". I fall into the "maybe 3-4 drinks per year" category. It could be more, it could be less -- alcohol just doesn't really occupy a different space for me than, say, pickles. I like pickles well enough, if one comes with my sandwich at a diner I'll eat it. But I only think to get a pickle from the jar in my fridge like once or twice a year, and eating pickles and drinking alcohol have about the same impact on my life and happiness.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#257

Post by dluan »

America's early history is mass drinking. Rum was 'invented' in Barbados in ~1650, but beer, wine, and brandy have been drunk in the Caribbean and Americas since it was first touched by colonizers.

Wayne Curtis reported that in the 1600/1700s the average person aged 15 years old and up drank 6 gallons of pure alcohol a year, equal to 75 fifths of 80 proof rum a year, or roughly 5 shots per day. Continental european emissaries who would visit towns in the new world would be shocked at the drunkenness of just countless near dead bodies laying in the streets, and from this British, and sometimes Irish, indentured workers got the reputation for being insane drunkards.

He posited that the main driver of heavy drinking was misery - in the colonies and early corporation towns back then, when the weather went bad and there was no work, you drank until things improved. Not too different from today imo.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#258

Post by Metacelsus »

azinman2 wrote: post #207

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…

Yeah, I've lived in both countries and UK is worse for sure.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#259

Post by Wohlf »

quadyeast wrote: post #249
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 chart does not make sense to me unless >10% of Americans are AA. I can't think of anyone, besides non-drinking Alcoholics, that have less than 1 drink/wk

Is it really that hard to imagine some people just don't have much of a desire to drink? I go pretty long stretches without drinking.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#260

Post by maya24 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #135

Article mirrors my experience. For context I'm German, my wife's French and we've got family in Croatia who own a vineyard so I'm used to being around alcohol and people drinking. My first impression when I spent time was in the US was indeed how bipolar drinking is compared to Europe. We probably drink a hell of a lot more in raw terms than the average American does.Two glasses of wine for dinner, another one in the…

Alcohol is a harmful drug much worse than some of the other banned drugs on the market.
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