Alcohol moderation

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Noedig
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Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:15 pm

Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Noedig »

Alcohol has always sent me to sleep, I can manage a weak beer, but more than that and I'm dozing unless I'm doing something physical to keep me awake.

There are also the emotional associations: my Pa drank, and it didn't improve him. Perhaps for that reason none of us three kids ever did deep benders and my brother is teetotal.

That said, cycling home after a couple of beers is great - and certainly helps cut down on the hangover next day. Sounds mad, particularly in London, but I do that every few months.

My favourite - 2.8% Morrison's Biere Continentale in those little french squat 250ml bottles. Easily strong enough for me on a sunny day.

poleo
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by poleo »

I'm Norwegian living in Norway, and our drinking culture has historically been one of getting hammered in the weekends on whatever you can get your hands on. The last 10-20 years have seen a slow adoption of more "continental" habits, i.e. like the French and Italian of having a modest drink in the weekdays - though notice that this in no way has replaced the old culture, only added to it. So there's a lot of drinking going on.

Personally I very much enjoy a drink, both the inebriating social cans of beer and the fine aspects the Scottish highlands, rolling fields of Mosel or whatever. I'm also an avid home brewer, which helps in keeping costs low, as Norway is extremely expensive for alcohol. What all this means is that I potentially could be drinking quite a lot, as I used to do.

What I've found useful in developing a healthy relationship to drinks, is simple. Have a meaningful life, filled with rewarding activities, and you quickly discover that there's little time left for drinking regularly. The times when you do graba a few drink, it becomes a bit of a special occasion, and you take the following day off in order to take it easy and perhaps recover. I do this kind of social drinking once or twice a month.

As for alcoholic drinks purely for culinary luxury, I enjoy these also quite rarely, and generally on weekends when I don't have to get up in the morning. Not that I get drunk, or even a buzz from this, but I find even the smallest amount of alcohol has a noticeable effect on my ability to feel fresh in the morning.

In other words, my solution to the original problem is to draw up a life with meaningful pursuits, as to make drinking a lower priority than everything else. I think all kinds of white days, weeks or years are stupid, since this is basically simple denial of the problem - it doesn't go away. For me, the meaningful pursuits are farming, working as a self-taught cook in a restaurant, reading, socializing and spending time outdoors. For me, I see these things and my ability to do them as a direct consequence of my implementing the ERE principles into my life.

akratic
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Location: Boston, MA

Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by akratic »

I drink in moderation, but not because I've mastered alcohol, but more because I don't like it.

I don't like how it messes up my sleep and my body and my mind. I don't like crutches, and I don't need it to relax or socialize. However, I do need it to dance. And I also need to drink occasionally to help relate to the many people who have alcohol as a dominant part of their life.

I was reluctant to try alcohol for the first time because I already considered myself to have poor control over my impulses, and I was worried that I'd become an alcoholic. But it turned out that since I don't like drinking very much it's easy to control. I would say the best advice you could get is not from someone like me, but instead someone who had a real problem that they conquered. Have you read the AA Big Book? It's a pretty interesting book even if you don't have a problem. Although they're not going for moderation as much as getting their life back, so maybe it's too heavy.

cmonkey
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by cmonkey »

I think the answer to this is to develop tastes outside of alcohol. Don't even consider it. Become addicted to water instead. Add in some apple juice.

I haven't had alcohol for over a year and that was homebrew elderflower. Last time I bought........maybe 2+ years. Not because I fear addiction but because it costs way too much and I'm too lazy to make my own.

theanimal
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by theanimal »

I can count the number of times I drink on an annual basis likely with less than one hand nowadays, occasionally two. That is still too much for my liking. Like Akratic and others, I hate the effect alcohol has on my body and mind. Just one or two drinks and I can feel slightly worse the next day. There is no sense in poisoning my body for that. I used to drink fairly regularly in high school and 2 out of my 3 years in college. But those days are long gone.

It's interesting to see how most people past college in their 20s and 30s still like to drink a lot. I find it pretty immature. I get why it's done, it's an escape and a means for bonding, but it is peculiar how so many people place alcohol on a pedestal in their lives. This and worship/devotion to the TV is beyond my realm of understanding.

OTCW
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Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:55 am

Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by OTCW »

I drink 0 to 5 beers a week. Average about 2.5 if I was guessing. Usually 2 on social night with the SO's work colleagues, and the others sprinkled in randomly one at a time. I like a good beer, but my days of many beers at a sitting are long gone. My 'secret' to alcohol moderation has been maturing or growing up. Never acquired a taste for liquor or wine.

BRUTE
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by BRUTE »

alcohol tastes terrible. brute does not understand why humans ingest it. uuugh.

bryan
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by bryan »

BRUTE wrote:alcohol tastes terrible. brute does not understand why humans ingest it. uuugh.
it goes with being human, BRUTE.

BRUTE
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by BRUTE »

who's the laughing man now? :D

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Ego
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Ego »

Kudos to Wired for publishing this, considering a lot of their advertising comes from the big-alcohol.

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/muddled-t ... ze-cancer/

This past March, Jennie Connor, a preventative and social medicine researcher from New Zealand’s University of Otago, published a review of studies looking at the correlation between drinking and cancer, concluding that “there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others.” Her analysis credits alcohol with nearly 6 percent of all cancer deaths worldwide.

The big change here is is the use of the word "causes".

“Lots of us drink and we’d really like to believe drinking is good for us,” says Naimi. “But the research around that has really fallen apart in the last couple years.”

steveo73
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by steveo73 »

Ego - thanks for that. I really like seeing facts regarding health.

Did
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Did »

I understand alcohol does cause cancer but in all but the most obscene levels of consumption overall morality is reduced due to the cardiovascular protective effect. To not drink at all is to increase risk of death generally speaking.

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jennypenny
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by jennypenny »

Did wrote:To not drink at all is to increase risk of death generally speaking.
especially for the people around me :P


I wonder if mass-produced products, specifically beer and wine, are unhealthy compared with homebrew varieties. Does it matter? Probably not with expensive liquor and wine, but I'm curious about the cheaper stuff because processed food is worse than 'real' food. Is a Bud Light worse for you than a homebrew? I have no idea.

I also wonder if alcohol was ok when we (the collective 'we') weren't so metabolically damaged. Maybe our thin/fit grandparents could tolerate alcohol better than our current glucose-drenched bodies.

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Ego
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Ego »

Did wrote:To not drink at all is to increase risk of death generally speaking.
People want to drink so they want to believe this is true. Unfortunately, that is not what the (non-industry) experts are finding. We have a good friend, a heavy drinker our age, who just went through a bout of breast cancer and who still believes what you said above. Sadly, alcohol is very addictive and so it encourages a very strong motivated reasoning.

Did
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Did »

No doubt you could be one of the unlucky ones and have alcohol cause your death with moderate drinking. But many studies do show overall a reduction in mortality.

Did
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Did »

@jp I don't know either ! I think coming from a drinking race helps with consumption.

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Ego
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Ego »

Did wrote:But many studies do show overall a reduction in mortality.
I am going to continue to challenge this every time you propose it because it is a damaging misconception. When those studies were corrected for the "Sick-quitters", the people who no longer drank because they were ill, the reduction in mortality disappears.

Papers of Indenture
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Papers of Indenture »

Ego wrote:
Did wrote:But many studies do show overall a reduction in mortality.
I am going to continue to challenge this every time you propose it because it is a damaging misconception. When those studies were corrected for the "Sick-quitters", the people who no longer drank because they were ill, the reduction in mortality disappears.
Yup. The old red wine study is dead in the water.

Papers of Indenture
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Papers of Indenture »

I drink 1 night every week. Usually Friday or Saturday. My problem is that it usually involves 8 to sometimes 10 drinks....not one or two. I have no idea if this is worse than having one or two drinks every single night. I would imagine that my habit is worse.

Dragline
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Re: Alcohol moderation

Post by Dragline »

Papers of Indenture wrote:
Yup. The old red wine study is dead in the water.

Don't you mean "dead on the vine"? :lol:

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