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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#261

Post by TameAntelope »

I'm going to generalize, but the US is more diverse (rank #90 vs #151 for Germany, #169 for France, #111 for Croatia [0]) and we also have a very painful past and present that makes us acutely aware of our inability to socialize.

America also has a cultural obsession with self-reliance/liberty/frontier-as-a-virtue which makes "socializing" a bit of a taboo concept, in a weird way. It's a crutch to "need" to be around others, despite it being fundamentally human to feel this way.

When you combine these two things, I think you get a group of people who need to interact with one another, but also kind of hate one another, and refuse to admit the dichotomy. What we've discovered then, is by heavy drinking we can start to pick at those barriers, though maybe that is, itself, part of the problem.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

Re: America has a drinking problem

#262

Post by barry-cotter »

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

I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them. Quoted by Israel Shenker, "Critics Here Focus on Films As Language Conference Opens," The New York Times (1972-12-28)

Often quoted as "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"; referring to George McGovern's loss to Richard Nixon in in the 1972 presidential election.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#263

Post by coderintherye »

leifg wrote: post #56
trts wrote: post #29

I decided to give up alcohol for a year. That was three years ago and doubt I will ever go back. Aside from having better sleep than at any other point as an adult, I truly enjoy the activities I partake in just as much, if not more, than when I still paired them with alcohol. It took about 6 months to stop feeling like I was missing out, and now I feel like everyone else is. Anxiety in general is noticeably lower (t…

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)

As another non-drinker, Kombucha and occasionally non-alcoholic beers.

Kombucha has a tiny bit of alcohol (<0.5%) and tastes a bit like a soda but has a tiny amount of sugar (usually only 8g / serving).

Re: America has a drinking problem

#264

Post by meowfly »

agumonkey wrote: post #76
trts wrote: post #29

I decided to give up alcohol for a year. That was three years ago and doubt I will ever go back. Aside from having better sleep than at any other point as an adult, I truly enjoy the activities I partake in just as much, if not more, than when I still paired them with alcohol. It took about 6 months to stop feeling like I was missing out, and now I feel like everyone else is. Anxiety in general is noticeably lower (t…

> Anxiety in general is noticeably lower you were more anxious when you were drinking ? that's a first not to look naive, but there was a period of my life having a beer [0] was really the only way for me to exist outside my bedroom walls, i wasn't even tipsy.. I was just able to sit in a room without crippling dread. [0] I didn't drink, but the few times I did at parties I realized how drinking a bit was lifting me…

My anecdote here is, I quit drinking temporarily three years ago to lose weight. My blood pressure went through the roof (Hypertension II) and I had extreme general anxiety. My physiological response was so intense I started thinking I might be in danger level of addiction. As I researched this more, it turns out high blood pressure and anxiety are normal responses.

Most people I know would not think I had a problem because I was functional and I didn't day drink. I might have two or three strong (> 7%) IPAs in the evening daily before bed. I would also on occasion binge pretty hard on weekends with friends.

After some time of not drinking my anxiety actually got better and I decided to keep it that way. I'm not a teetotaler but I have completely stopped bringing alcohol home and binge drinking in general. I still find that 2 drinks is harder than none, however.

My own take away (which may be different for everyone) is that alcohol is a reasonable way to make uncomfortable social situations tolerable but when used to treat a more general anxiety, it will likely make it worse.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#265

Post by joekrill »

blhack wrote: post #116

Some of my most cherished memories are those where I was out drinking wine and having really good food with my wife and friends. When people were telling stories about Jesus, the central figure of their religion, one of the miracles they told of was him turning water into wine. This is held up as one of the most important stories in their entire moral system. When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid…

This is horrible advice.

Just because something has been done a certain way for a long time does not mean it's something we should continue. In a lot of cases it just means we didn't have the knowledge that it was so bad for you. And that's exactly where alcohol fits in. We know alcohol is bad for us in just about every way. So there's really no such thing as "under drinking".

Cigarettes. Cocaine. Tanning. Not wearing seat belts. Not wearing helmets. Beating kids as punishment. Bloodletting. X-rays. I mean the list is just endless.

Folks should do as they please. I'm not suggesting everyone needs to stop drinking or anything. But to suggest that "perhaps also be cautious of under drinking as well" is just downright wrong.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#266

Post by [deleted] »

panzagl wrote: post #234
czbond wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine came from feeling like junk even after 1 beer/wine/cocktail the next day. I experimented with thinking it was an allergy to grains, allergy to hops, wine quality - but I think it's just alcohol.

Could be, but in general Americans obsess more about health than other nations, which also can be traced back to our Puritanical heritage.

[deleted]

Re: America has a drinking problem

#267

Post by jacobolus »

blhack wrote: post #116

Some of my most cherished memories are those where I was out drinking wine and having really good food with my wife and friends. When people were telling stories about Jesus, the central figure of their religion, one of the miracles they told of was him turning water into wine. This is held up as one of the most important stories in their entire moral system. When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid…

> When the pyramids were being built, the builders were paid in beer.

Yeah, because water used to be much harder to sanitize, and “beer” (thick, lumpy, mildly alcoholic – think fermented porridge) is basically liquid bread. Doing manual labor all day takes a lot of calories, and cereals are much cheaper than alternative foods. It’s hardly a healthy diet though.

Keeping peasants drunk enough to be pliable is a side benefit much appreciated by the lords of just about every feudal/plantation economy throughout history.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#268

Post by tqi »

"Media coverage, meanwhile, has swung from cheerfully overselling the (now disputed) health benefits of wine to screeching that no amount of alcohol is safe, ever; it might give you cancer and it will certainly make you die before your time."

This back and forth cycle in media coverage on any health topic is so predictable. At this point can any study be taken at face value, or is the only real answer "it varies?"

Re: America has a drinking problem

#269

Post by TameAntelope »

Diederich wrote: post #203

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 fr…

Just for clarification, no research (I'm aware of) has indicated that one cup of red wine has measurable health benefits above not drinking at all. The research suggests that if you must drink, then one cup of wine will have some positive impacts in addition to the negative impacts.

That said, I dunno if I'd be so strongly swayed either way by any single event without any real negative consequences such as you say here.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#270

Post by yosito »

dluan wrote: post #257

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 e…

Getting drunk is not a "colonizers" thing, it's a human thing. People have been getting drunk for tens of thousands of years, all around the globe.
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