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Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

nytimes.com

91–100 of 314 posts

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#91
post #26

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner. Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedb…

> And I really enjoyed the 5 minutes between the pandemic and WWIII.

I chuckled. I'm glad you still have your sense of humor. But from another perspective, yes, it's quite sad for humanity. I remind myself that disease and war were far more widespread in centuries past.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#92

Similarly when the divorce stats for this period come out in a year or two it will be stunning I have more friends/neighbors/professional acquaintances who got divorced in the last 2 years than in the previous 10. The last 2 years have been very good for some, and very bad for others. Few had a normal one.

Yeah, some people have called it the great quickening. Basically, all the couples would have ended up divorced at some point, and it only accelerated the process.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#93

My older brother is an alcoholic. I suspect it's somewhat cliche to say, but when he's sober he's the nicest guy I know - almost nobody else I'd rather spend time with - and when he's drunk, he's chaos. The past few years he's been really struggling with sobriety - on and off like a roller coaster. The pandemic was an absolute nightmare for someone like him - in between jobs, trying to stay sober, trying to find the…

Has he tried antabuse or something like that? Those pills make you vomit when you drink and are quite effective in harnessing the body's natural anti-poison response system to curb drinking.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#94

I'm more and more convinced that people who don't have kids should have double the tax burden compared to parents, at least for the first 5-10 years. The stress is unimaginable, and then some people have the gall to complain when parents try to do it well. Appalling behaviour. I would not tolerate such complaints as a manager, but thankfully I have never met such attitude in my life.

Quoted post unavailable.

Make sure you have a firm grip on that ladder as you pull it up. Don't want splinters.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#95
post #41
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try calculating "Dead with water" and tell me how dangerous you think water is. Looksl ike another misrepresentation by the "covid fanatics"

Water is dangerous. That why you have life guards, rules at swimming pools et al, guidelines about reducing your speed when driving in wet conditions etc.

And if you're spending a lot of time underwater, you have to .. wear a mask!

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defensive, I'm trying to explain my position (as a self-proclaimed "smart and rational" person) since you claimed there was no (logical) reason to have those vices. You're making strong claims, and I'm just asking you to back those up without forcing people to buy a book that you say supports those claims. Otherwise there isn't much value in you making your claims here. I'm sure (or rather, I hope) the book h…

I asked why you found it enjoyable and you didn't respond, so it's hard to explain the author's viewpoint when you haven't explained why you drink. To give generalised responses to the three main reasons that people give: - Do you enjoy the taste? - Alcohol is ultimately a foul-tasting poison. No one ever liked their first taste of beer. We start with highly-flavoured drinks like alcopops and after a while our body s…

>- Do you think it's necessary to enjoy social situations?

I don't think it's necessary (for me). I am in social situations with and without alcohol often enough and it's easy to see I on average enjoy myself more when drinking in those.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#97
post #80
post #26

Right before the first lockdown I started a new high stress job and for several months our two toddlers weren't allowed to attend school. During the first few weeks we tried to make it "fun", I'd start working around 4-5AM , alternating morning and evening shifts of work / toddlers with my partner. Then colleagues started complaining "wtf this guy's playing with his kids in the park at 2PM" and I got really bad feedb…

Did your colleagues get jealous because you used the alternate schedule well or simply because you had an alternate schedule?

Not sure if they were jealous. They were very young and most were very talented & driven. When you're 25 and living with your parents you can't grasp what it's like to have a wife and kids on top of the job. It was a combination of really bad timing due to the pandemic and me just being a bad fit in the team, and management was garbage. One of those kids was really talented and I learned a lot from him ripping me to pieces in the pull requests.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#98
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your colleagues get jealous because you used the alternate schedule well or simply because you had an alternate schedule?

They got jealous because they're toxic dickheads. Who does that to people?

Hard to say without knowing their complaints. Not sure how I’d manage to be productive when collaborating with some of my team members if they were not there during Norma working hours but were there during the middle of the night.

Offsets all requests and fixes from them by a day.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defensive, I'm trying to explain my position (as a self-proclaimed "smart and rational" person) since you claimed there was no (logical) reason to have those vices. You're making strong claims, and I'm just asking you to back those up without forcing people to buy a book that you say supports those claims. Otherwise there isn't much value in you making your claims here. I'm sure (or rather, I hope) the book h…

I asked why you found it enjoyable and you didn't respond, so it's hard to explain the author's viewpoint when you haven't explained why you drink. To give generalised responses to the three main reasons that people give: - Do you enjoy the taste? - Alcohol is ultimately a foul-tasting poison. No one ever liked their first taste of beer. We start with highly-flavoured drinks like alcopops and after a while our body s…

Going to these lengths of rationalizing not drinking seems a bit absurd.

Especially the one about taste.

Someone says they enjoy the taste and the rationalization is essentially "you're wrong, it tastes bad, you just think it tastes good". Okay well if I think it tastes good, then it tastes good. What's the point here?

I suppose if I wanted to avoid drinking, I could seek out something like this to help give me a framework for thinking about it in a different way. It might help. A program like AA might help as well, and I might seek that out if I wanted to stop drinking. But just as going to AA if you're not trying to stop drinking would be pretty unusual and maybe even silly, these attempts at rationalization seem pretty silly, over complicated, faulty, and unnecessary to me.

Re: Alcohol-related deaths spiked during the pandemic, a study shows

#100
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked why you found it enjoyable and you didn't respond, so it's hard to explain the author's viewpoint when you haven't explained why you drink. To give generalised responses to the three main reasons that people give: - Do you enjoy the taste? - Alcohol is ultimately a foul-tasting poison. No one ever liked their first taste of beer. We start with highly-flavoured drinks like alcopops and after a while our body s…

Nobody likes their first taste of black coffee or unsweetened grapefruit, either. The bitter tastes are definitely acquired, and tend to be liked by men more than women.

Chili peppers too. All of these initially-offputting tastes are strategies by the plant to make animals not want to eat them. However as humans we've decided they're tasty and that it's worth learning to like them.

The key difference between these and alcohol is that we know none of them are actually harmful (yes I know that coffee is harmful in large quantities).

This is quite different to drinking ethanol, a literal poison that sends the liver into panic stations the instant it detects it.

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