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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#391

Post by munificent »

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 am a drinker. I am very fond of beer, whiskey, and wine. I love the taste of all three. I have a well-stocked liquor cabinet and always have a few beers in the fridge and bottle or wine or two in the kitchen.

Even so, in the past few years, I typically consume less than one drink per week. I used to have a nightcap or a beer with dinner pretty frequently. The dinner beer tapered off because I found it made me too sleepy to be on the ball with the evening routine with the kids. The nightcaps started to feel like pointless calories.

So these days, I might have a beer or whiskey on the weekend when I watch a movie with my wife. But I rarely drink during the week, and often don't on the weekend.

Granted, part of that is from having no ability to socialize the past year. I imagine my consumption will tick up soon. But I still don't expect it to get to more than one or two drinks per week.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#392

Post by refurb »

C19is20 wrote: post #182
vdnkh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Do you think that Americans go out drinking to get drunk arounds friends, but not to socialize with them?

From my (not op) experiences, oh yes. Just last night I was talking to a potential bar investor and one of the huuuuge talking points was " how do we cater for the americans?"

By that statement these are Americans outside America? Seems like an unrepresentative slice of the country?

Re: America has a drinking problem

#393

Post by recursive »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #314
tolbish wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honest question: Why?

Isn't that up to those who hold the stigma?

I'd have a stigma against dog walkers who left their dog crap at the park, even if I found it was most dog walkers. (I don't think it is)

Re: America has a drinking problem

#394

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #332
Bostonian wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we also have a very painful past and present" I don't see why that is more true of the U.S. than say Germany, Japan, Russia, China etc.

We've both refused to own our past national transgressions the way Japan and Germany have, we have more diversity than all of those countries, and have also not scrubbed all mention of said painful past from our national history like Russia and China.

[deleted]

Re: America has a drinking problem

#395

Post by the_doctah »

tolbish wrote: post #241
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy alcohol drinkers tend to cluster with each other. This leads to a self-reinforcing cycle wherein they see their peers consuming a lot of alcohol and assume that means it's normal and fine. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each other because after a while it's just not fun to hang out with people consuming copious amounts of alcohol all of the time while their health slowly declines. I had to stop inv…

Apparently 18% of Americans are binge drinkers: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/americans-are-dri...

You've posted the same thing multiple times in this thread.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#396

Post by recursive »

bluedino wrote: post #377
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.

You get used to it (playing a sport hungover, even). If you’re not a competitive athlete on a high level (it’s just a hobby), you’re missing out by not drinking because of your sport. If you enjoy drinking, that is.

Plenty of people compete as a hobby. You might also say if they were drinking, they'd be missing out on performance. If they enjoy performing better, that is.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#397

Post by munificent »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #326
TameAntelope wrote: post #261

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…

> we also have a very painful past and present that makes us acutely aware of our inability to socialize. 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.

Culture affects you even when you don't think you're thinking about it. In many ways, culture defines the channels that your thoughts flow through.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#398

Post by pedrosorio »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #380
tomnipotent wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Exactly. The numbers don't back up the narrative unless you do mental gymnastics to redefine Europe. HN often seems to forget that Europe extends south beyond the Alps and east beyond the Oder.

> HN often seems to forget that Europe extends south beyond the Alps

Unclear what this is supposed to mean. Italy[0], Portugal[1] and Spain[2] all have lower prevalence of heavy episodic drinking than the EU average.

Both Portugal ("south of the Alps") and France[3] ("north of the Alps") have higher alcohol consumption per capita than the EU average, which is largely due to a culture of moderate wine drinking with meals that has nothing to do with "functional alcoholism".

[0] https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/402190/... [1] https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/402198/... [2] https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/402202/... [3] https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/402185/...

Re: America has a drinking problem

#399

Post by mattnewton »

> During the Q&A, someone in the audience told him about the Ballmer Peak—the notion, named after the former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, that alcohol can affect programming ability. Drink a certain amount, and it gets better. Drink too much, and it goes to hell. Some programmers have been rumored to hook themselves up to alcohol-filled IV drips in hopes of hovering at the curve’s apex for an extended time.

This is almost certainly someone along the game of telephone taking the xkcd joke literally https://xkcd.com/323/

(the alt text says Apple uses schnapps IV’s - this is obviously not true in the comic context but someone along the way to printing this article “bit the Onion”)

Re: America has a drinking problem

#400

Post by throwawaycuriou »

bart_spoon wrote: post #335
jmcdl wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

One good reason is because alcoholic beverages could be stored for long periods of time and be safe for drinking. Water can become contaminated over time if bacteria is allowed to grow while it’s being stored, so it has to be relatively fresh to drink. Other options like milk would spoil quickly. Alcohol generally didn’t have these issues, giving it some utility that outweighed its advantages. In an age where other b…

is it plausible humans initially hated the taste of alcohol and suffered worse hangovers, but in a manner of a few thousand years descend from ancestors who selected for high euphoria and strong livers.... all because alcohol was healthier than water?
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