321–330 of 938 posts
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 o…
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And yet one year later we learn that 18% of Americans are binge drinkers: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/americans-are-dri...
If approximately one in five people are doing it then either it needs to lose the stigma or the definition needs to change.
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 wearin…
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…
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…
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 h…
There are various studies floating about. The part that has me sceptical is that they don't seem to account for whether it's in a social setting. i.e. is it the wine or is the being with friends and having a laugh
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…
This is only a real problem for a small, but vocal part of the population. Most people don't think about these issues much at all.
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…
Don't really get pubs outside the UK. A pub is basically a place where you can sit and enjoy yourself and chat with mates. Sometimes people can get outrageously drunk. Also in UK you can buy alcohol from 18, (and if you go to the right places younger even...). It seems totally absurd that in the USA even a 20 YO can't buy himself a drink.
That said, I see way more people absolutely trashed at night walking around cities in the UK than I do the US. I’m not saying no one is trashed in the US, I’m just saying the frequency, percentage of people, and “normalcy” was way higher in the UK.
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It's mentioned in the article, but Europeans tend to look down on being drunk and view wine/beer as just part of the meal.
Unless you're British. Or Scandinavian. Or big swathes of Eastern Europe. Basically anywhere with atrocious weather.
https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/great-directors/aki-kaur...
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Alcohol is a harmful drug much worse than some of the other banned drugs on the market.
This is a common refrain but at the same time it seems to be the one substance commonly used across most of the world since ancient times. None of the other supposedly less harmful, banned drugs are so ubiquitous. Perhaps there's a good reason for this (besides varying availability of other substances)?
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Noticed this when I was in Germany/Austria as well. In America, if you go out drinking then that's the primary activity. It's what you're doing. But in central Europe socializing and seeing friends is the activity and you just happen to drink because that's what you do when you see your friends.
This makes no sense. Do you think that Americans go out drinking to get drunk arounds friends, but not to socialize with them?
Getting beer was always the event.
Like going to a weekly bowling game. Socializing happens but you go there for bowling.