One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough. James Thurber
Martinis are like boobs. One isn't enough and three is too many.
On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
61–70 of 170 posts
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have most likely done that already… but have you tried many different kinds of alcoholic drinks? Beer affects me exactly as you describe it so I almost never drink it. Single malt scotch, on the other hand, has a very different effect - gives me energy, makes me more sociable, lifts my spirit. Red wine affects me differently from white wine, cocktails also have a different effect (can’t have sugar with alcohol!).…
Your not drinking enough. There all the same eventually. Although, I'll pay that the severity hangover can differ pretty widely.
Obviously in terms of the overall contents they are not the same - even eventually. Alcohol contents can be the same but the rest of the drink can not be discarded from the equation. For example, my body react poorly to high amounts of sugar, so drinking a sugary cocktail is vastly different from a shot of tequila. Beer instantly makes me feel bloated, so if I drink 2 pints of beer to match a glass of scotch, I will feel slow and foggy, not upbeat and sociable.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#63This sounds very strange to the uninitiated, but I grew up in a part of the punk music scene that was rebelling against drugs and alcohol. As someone who has never had a drink, I've never seen the appeal, and I always wonder why more people don't give it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge
This is actually pretty big in Sydney, and I was inspired by a few people I'd met that were in hardcore / punk bands that were all straight edge!
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#64This sounds very strange to the uninitiated, but I grew up in a part of the punk music scene that was rebelling against drugs and alcohol. As someone who has never had a drink, I've never seen the appeal, and I always wonder why more people don't give it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge
I love straight edge music. Some of my favorite memories of the early 90's are from living in a squat where we would get some money together, get a keg and get trashed listening to Fugazi's Repeater.
Which also might sound strange to the uninitiated: we rebelled against straight edge people.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#65I never tried alcohol and never felt compelled to. As a kid I wondered what's happening with those drunk people I had a chance to see. So I read some books in library about alcohol (my mother was librarian, so that was my internet back then). It all just made sense and I decided that don't want to even try. I was asked to try alcohol by parents and relatives, I was ridiculed and insulted by classmates (drinking someh…
Beyond the social aspects the lens I view it through is escapism. If your life is where you want it to be and you're doing what you need to, why would you feel the need to escape? How do you feel about caffeine and other nootropics?
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This being the first time I read about this, I wonder if the same idea can be more generally applied to other bad habits.
I was wondering the same thing. The "neurons that fire together wire together" notion seems to hold in a lot of situations, but I don't know enough about the drug to know if it would be specific to treating alcoholism.
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Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#67[deleted]
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#68Time to plug "The Sinclair Method" again. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+sinclair+method
This being the first time I read about this, I wonder if the same idea can be more generally applied to other bad habits.
I accidentally quit smoking weed when a high dose of some other drug insensitized me to its effects completely.
I've asked people with relevant knowledge a number of times if that is a known effect of that other drug or if they had found a similar case, but apparently I'm just an anecdote, so excuse me if I don't share which drug it was. It could made more harm than good. Since there are ongoing studies on all kind of forbidden substances, it will surface eventually if it has merits beyond a casual interaction.
The experience also made alcohol useless, but I was a heavier user of weed at the time. A year later the buzz for both weed and alcohol returned, but I'd had enough time to ditch them as an habits, so no weed and only low-grad alcohol, always socially.
Overall, I'm very happy with the change. I see weed defended with good reasoning (not as bad as alcohol, creativity-inducing, anxiety relief, etc.) but over a certain threshold dosage, it's a net negative for most people and the nice effects quickly fade in a couple of months of heavy use.
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#69Alot of psychadelic-friendly communities don’t use alcohol In case anyone here needs inspiration on where its normal not to drink alcohol (Those communities arent about psychadelics, nor are they a replacement or addicting, its just the only common theme I see amongst various communities that will also not be into alcohol)
You can't dose every day. The saying when I was growing up was, "if you can't trip, you might as well drink".
Re: On why I gave up drinking in my early twenties
#70I never tried alcohol and never felt compelled to. As a kid I wondered what's happening with those drunk people I had a chance to see. So I read some books in library about alcohol (my mother was librarian, so that was my internet back then). It all just made sense and I decided that don't want to even try. I was asked to try alcohol by parents and relatives, I was ridiculed and insulted by classmates (drinking someh…
If you don't want to drink and don't think you are missing out, then that's a very healthy choice. No question, and I'm not trying to convince you otherwise.
As to why, however. It's no big mystery. It's "fun", or at least can be. If you don't feel it's "worth it", that perfectly fine, but we all have a range of what's "worth it" and what's not. Ranging from a Big Mac to cocaine.
*To be clear, I fall in the middle of that range. I don't advocate cocaine.