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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#361

Post by mxcrossr »

misiti3780 wrote: post #232
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…

I agree, these articles are ridiculous. If you have alcoholism in your family -- dont drink. If you're overweight because drinking causes you to eat shitty food and not exercise -- stop drinking. If you have anxiety because of drinking -- stop drinking. If drinking makes you an asshole and is causing relationship problems (I know a lot of people in this category) -- stop drinking. If you like to go out on the weeks a…

Did you even read the article?

Re: America has a drinking problem

#362

Post by ska »

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

May be an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias

Re: America has a drinking problem

#363

Post by bitexploder »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #320
bitexploder wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do pretty demanding sport as a hobby. Even one drink during the week greatly impacts recovery and ability to perform and lessens my enjoyment considerably. It’s rather commons in my circles for people to probably average a handful of drinks per year at most.

If one drink/wk is noticeably affecting you then you're either a professional athlete who's got world class people monitoring their performance or you need to see a doctor. Edit: Assuming the standard definition of drink that's roughly equivalent to one light beer or one shot

It’s not like I suddenly break down or something. There are a few factors in my sport. BJJ is mostly cardio so I sweat a lot. I train at or close to my limits most of the time. Recovery isn’t as easy at 41. Alcohol depletes just enough from my body and impedes recovery just enough that the next day, I won’t be 100%, and I’ll feel it. Even one drink in the evening is massively disruptive to sleep processes like REM sleep. It depletes key nutrients from muscles, etc. so maybe I’m just a little slower.

Then there is the cramping. Replenishing electrolytes when you leak as much of them as I do is hard. There is a really good chance I will get a moderate to severe cramp if I drank the night before. I think you are underestimating how significant a drink can be to someone training hard. Especially someone older, such as myself. You have to make a very large number of assumptions to arrive at your conclusion that is obviously incorrect for many athletes hobbyist or otherwise. Some guys can pull it off, and there are a few in my gym who can drink hard, come in hungover and survive a hard training session. That isn’t me or most people I know (anecdotally).

Re: America has a drinking problem

#364

Post by mythrwy »

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 drink but don't have one drink a week. The vast majority of weeks I have 0 drinks. Once in a great while I might have a couple of drinks (if I'm in the mood) but it's not a regular thing at all.

I'm not morally opposed to it and I'm certainly not an alcoholic, I just don't care much for or about it. It's kind of a low level toxin and it feels like it.

Is this really that strange? I know a lot of people that very rarely drink and certainly don't habitually, but will have a drink on occasion.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#365

Post by tomnipotent »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #316
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…

This trope needs to die. Europe doesn't have drinking "problems" because it mostly draws the line for "problems" in what would solidly be "functional alcoholic" territory in the US.

Wait, what?

From the WHO:

https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention...

"The WHO European Region has the highest proportion in the world of total ill health and premature death due to alcohol."

Re: America has a drinking problem

#367

Post by jackson1442 »

tolbish wrote: post #239
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How recent is your data? As of 2015, 18% of Americans are binge drinkers: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/americans-are-dri...

I imagine it’s only gotten worse with the pandemic.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#368

Post by nick__m »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #359
quickthrowman wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol is more dangerous than all other drugs, in my experience (been addicted to alcohol and heroin in the past, and have abused every common drug) and in my opinion. The addiction rate for cocaine/heroin/meth may be higher, but the negative effects of those drugs mostly stem from the high cost (theft) and insane profit margins (murder). If a heroin addict could get their supply for $5/day (and have it be pure hero…

Isn't meth just plain destructive, what it does to your body, and brain?

It's somewhat more subtle, pure medical grade methamphetamine (desoxyn) taken orally is theoretically the best ADD medicine available but it's almost never prescribed for political reasons.

Meth has lot less sympathetic side effects than dextroamphetamine per unit of dopaminergic stimulation, this simple difference enables abuser to consume ridiculously large dose and those high doses are destructive.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/know-your-amphetamines

Re: America has a drinking problem

#369

Post by throwaway0a5e »

phd514 wrote: post #114
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…

> our Puritan values run deep The Puritans drank plenty. I suspect that many such misconceptions about them are derived from HL Mencken's (wildly inaccurate) quip that "Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy."

The puritans are undeservingly white-washed and praised.

They were extremists by contemporary standards (an insanely low bar).

They barely waited until they stopped starving to start being jerks to each other and antagonizing the natives.

If you want to idolize early settlers idolize Rhode Islanders, they were basically successive waves of people who left Massachusetts because the latter was no place for anyone who let their conscience get in the way of their ideology (amazing how little some things change in 400yr) and they managed to maintain some of the best relations with the natives.

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