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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#601

Post by bigfudge »

kenneth wrote: post #493
jnathsf wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many have gone California sober [0] - moving away from alcohol to cannabis and psychedlics as a way to be more healthy and sustainable [0] https://www.addictionresource.net/blog/california-sober/

Cannabis is in no way healthier than alcohol. It's hard to quantify the damages done by one vs. the other; but there are very serious social and psychological downsides to regular cannabis use.

Expert opinion and evidence doesn’t agree with you. See David Nutts papers which quantify harms in various domains for different recreational drugs. Both harms to users and others are way higher for alcohol than cannabis.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#602

Post by bigfudge »

kenneth wrote: post #493
jnathsf wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many have gone California sober [0] - moving away from alcohol to cannabis and psychedlics as a way to be more healthy and sustainable [0] https://www.addictionresource.net/blog/california-sober/

Cannabis is in no way healthier than alcohol. It's hard to quantify the damages done by one vs. the other; but there are very serious social and psychological downsides to regular cannabis use.

This is the Lancet paper. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Re: America has a drinking problem

#603

Post by zwp »

ABCLAW wrote: post #519
ekidd wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the price, Americans drank an absurdly, mind-bendingly large amount of booze. I once skimmed Prohibition-era academic text that described US drinking culture of the pre-Prohibition period in detail. It was fairly disturbing, as you suggest—whiskey in serving sizes that would work better with beer, and things like that. But even though Prohibition failed to stop people from drinking, it apparently _did_ disrup…

My statement isn't that Americans are still drowning in cheaper than milk corn-booze. It's that there's a shared history regarding alcohol consumption which is uniquely American in nature. Prohibition is part of that unique experience, and very much a part of the explanation for the compression of the consumption distribution.

A slight tangent but Hogarth's "Beer Street and Gin Lane" (1751) documents a similar example of low grain prices resulting in massive, country-wide alcohol consumption in England. The subsequent government reaction and legislation did not go as far as American prohibition though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane

Re: America has a drinking problem

#604

Post by bigfudge »

kenneth wrote: post #508
jasondigitized wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure alcohol is way harder on your body than edibles or vaping cannabis. Alcoholism has a huge blast radius.

I feel like it's likely a larger proportion of weed-users have it affect their productivity and motivation to grow in life than the proportion of drinkers who become dangerous alcoholics or end up with cirrhosis. I don't have data to back this up though. I've seen more lives around me hampered by marijuana than by alcohol, despite having a very large amount of heavy drinkers in my circles.

Is it also possible that alcohol is the lubricant for a society with dysfunctional social and environmental principles? Perhaps what we sometimes describe as motivation or personal growth isn’t actually that valuable when directed at goals that destroy the planet and isolate us from other humans.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#605

Post by bigfudge »

amscanne wrote: post #531
gcanyon wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK expert disagrees —- marijuana does less damage to the user, and much less to friends and family, than alcohol does: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210

That article is about the harm to society as a whole. Pulling a single line from the article to summarize: > Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.

No, harms to user are also higher and the paper attempts to separate use rates from harms. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Re: America has a drinking problem

#606

Post by bigfudge »

stryan wrote: post #532
kenneth wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannabis is in no way healthier than alcohol. It's hard to quantify the damages done by one vs. the other; but there are very serious social and psychological downsides to regular cannabis use.

Cannabis is absolutely healthier then alcohol by the sheer fact that it can not kill you.

I don’t know why you’ve been downvoted. Yes there might be other metrics to use but this is a valid one

Re: America has a drinking problem

#607

Post by bigfudge »

recursive wrote: post #393
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I think the difference there is that even if most people left dog crap we might still have a consensus that that was a bad thing and that people shouldn’t do it.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#608

Post by bigfudge »

Marsymars wrote: post #462
buu700 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's an odd statement to me. I don't not drink , but I also don't go out of my way to drink that often. Even considering the mean rather than median, I'm pretty sure that I fall short of 52 drinks/year. I wouldn't necessarily assume that I'm in the majority, but it's not as though my behavior in this area is particularly abnormal.

I get how one could pretty easily fall into a group of people who drink on a weekly (or more frequent) basis. That being said, of people I'm close to, my parents are a good counter-example. They split one beer every month or so.

Out of interest. What do people do at social occasions? What would you do if you met a friend after work on a Friday night? I think we need better options for this in the Uk... most cafes shut and not drinking in a pub still feels weird (and soft drinks are so sweet)

Re: America has a drinking problem

#609

Post by bigfudge »

dcolkitt wrote: post #430
quadyeast wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Older people drink significantly less than the young. By age 65, more than half Americans are teetotalers.

This is partly why alcohol epidemiology is so hard. People drink less in ways correlated with their general health.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#610

Post by dang »

To see all the 600+ comments, you'll need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this:

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(Comments like this will go away when we turn off pagination. I know it's annoying if you've seen them a lot. Sorry.)

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