On the other hand, why do you think we gave up the hunter/gatherer life style?
Cultivating grapes for wine and grain for beer was the origin of civilization!
I hate that alcohol, such an obvious health detriment, is so ingrained in culture that people don’t even question it… Your link makes it worse!
Like the link points out, we were drinking before we had written language.
It’s a matter of dealing with life on life’s terms. The reality is that people like drinking. Sometimes people drink too much, and a few unlucky folks can’t drink anything without risking death.
I ocne read a story about a Vietnam era war correspondent. He was a pacifist before going to cover combat and seeing combat up close made him hate war even more.
At one point a publisher asks him to contribute an article that ‘deglamorizes war.’
He wrote back that deglamorizing war would be as easy as deglamorizing sex.
I hate that existence, such an obvious health detriment, is so ingrained in culture that people don’t even question it…
With one important difference: Wine was often diluted back then and beer was not as strong as it is today, so it was much less dangerous on the whole, and it was so weak that even children drank it instead of the terrible water of the time. Though they also drank water when it was good.
Less strong, but since they drank beer instead of water overall consumption was higher. Lots of people should still drink less though.
Yeah! It was seen as an everyday good feeling healthy thing back then and not just something to get wasted on, though that happened a lot too. I’d take the ancient mindset of moderation over today’s alcohol addicted society anyday.
Not sure it was so much about good feeling. From what I read it was more about booze being less likely to grant you a plague debuff than water back in the days.
It’s almost certainly both. It’s not like alcohol is the only drug humans have used. Most do not have that justification, yet they’re still used.
Thankfully we haven’t progressed since then!
The oldest recipe we have found was a recipe for beer.
So you’re telling me without alcohol I could have spent my life picking berries before I died of a toothache at 25? And instead I’m reading excel sheets and will die a prolonged death after years of chemo at 85?
Damn alcohol really is the cause of all my problems…
No one is forcing you to brush your teeth.
True, but its illegal for me to wander my neighborhood and pick berries from “private property”
Realistically, if you eat out of trash cans you’ll have the same experience, and if you’re quiet and neat, no one will report you.
Found the racoon
We prefer “opportunistic omnivore” but yes
The “dying at 25” thing is the result of a common misrepresentation of data. Infant mortality rates were significantly higher in the past, so the average gets thrown off. But, if you remove those data points (to reflect post-infancy mortality), you’d be living roughly the same amount of time.
Back when life expectancy was 45.
Popular misconception.
There were a lot of people who never made it out of childhood, which skews the average down.
But if you made it to adulthood, you had a pretty good chance of making it to 65 or so.
That’s how averages work. Math.
That’s also why averages aren’t a good measure of a lot of things and are misleading.
Damn, glad I quit drinking.
(Hits vape pen.)
(/s, just in case it wasn’t clear.)
Had to do a double take with that image, the last time I saw it was in the instructions for how to use a menstrual cup. 😳
Left: wine glass with broken off foot.
Right: chess piece reveal party.
A cup? I usually just drink straight from the bottle
Life is the number one cause of death.
Its the worse sexual transmissive disease.
The only cure is death.
I’ve been working on fully cutting out alcohol from my diet. I tried for years but I think I am finally succeeding. Haven’t had a drink in almost two months.
Great work dude, keep it up 💪
Hell ya! ✊🏻 for my sober homies! I quit consuming alcohol in February. Keep it going Lemmy friend!
I’m working on my five minute chip right now
I don’t know what a five minute chip is?
I stopped srink8ng for four minute yesterplay and that is the besters I can do
Well its a start.
Gotta go sometime and I’d rather do it having enjoyed a little bit of wine
While all of this is true and concerning, now is not the time to raw dog reality.
Doing weed is also bad for me. It got me quite severe health effects that I’m dealing with right now.
I’m not regretting it for a second and the second my issues are under control I’ll use weed again (in much lower doses) because living in the raw reality right now just makes you depressed and suicidal. I’m m neither, and I’ll contribute that happily to pot, it made life nice again for a few years
Right? What’s to stop one from interpreting these results as “alcohol will get you off of this dogshit timeline sooner”?
Marijuana. None of that shit, only good stuffs!!
Not legal everywhere unfortunately. Alcohol is because it must be “safer” right? RIght?
Most drugs were scheduled to incriminate the lower income groups (i.e. mostly not white folks) They tried to ban alcohol once too. It didn’t go very well. Marijuana is less addictive and far less destructive, plus anyone can grow it, it’s like a fucking weed. Also, hops and Mary Jane are from the same family of plants.
Lsd
They also found that drinking raises the risk of:
…sexually transmitted infections
This statement really made we wonder if they thought about actual causality at all.
Stop. Fucking. Your. Beer. Bottles.
I’m more partial to whisky bottles.
Now you’re just bragging.
1984 calendar meme
From a summary:
Drinking damages the liver and may make the body more vulnerable to infectious diseases, including sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis.
Or from the review itself:
Infectious disease
The causal impact of alcohol on the four broad categories of infectious disease from the last Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health [1] has been confirmed in recent reviews [15, 16]. The main biological mechanism involves alcohol-induced liver dysfunction, which disrupts both non-specific innate and adaptive immune responses through acute and chronic alcohol consumption [80-84]. Lowered immune responses increase susceptibility to communicable diseases. More specific biological pathways are described in the references listed in Table 1.
Didn’t know liver and immune system are that connected
Good point, highly likely the PhD students who authored this review were never taught about causation and correlation.
I’ll drink to that
Welp. cracks open another one
It’s the cause of 100% of my arguments and misunderstandings, haha.
Owning a gun makes you 12-times more likely to die from a gunshot.
Yep, and having a pool in your backyard makes you 12-times more likely to die from drowning.
Eh, I quit a few years ago. When you have to have conversations with yourself about it, it’s time. So cold turkey I went, luckily NBD for me. The only time I miss it is after a really trying, long day; or I’m just craving flavors that aren’t sugary drinks like soda. I don’t like sweet drinks very much. Alcohol lends an intensity to flavors that’s impossible to replicate.
Looking back at it I’m really glad I quit.
Anyway, hopefully added years/stopped shaving years off my life. We’ll see.
I like flavored seltzer water.
I destroy those since going sober. I think it’s that carbonation itself has a flavor, and in cheap beer that carbonation was actually the majority of the feel/flavor. Occasionally I’ll feel silly buying so much, but then I remember how much I used to spend on booze without batting an eye and grab another 12 pack for $2.85.
We also picked up a carbonation setup so we can make our own sodas and mineral water. Just to reduce plastic waste, I don’t think it’s cheaper than what you’re buying, though.
That’s good, and just fizzy mineral water too. Luckily the NA market for more interesting adult drinks is growing, so things like fake Moscow mules, Hop Tea, or other mocktails that have interesting flavors are starting to become more widely available and have zero alcohol. Not the same as the real thing, but generally pretty good and better than soda or other sugary stuff.
What is the intensity that can’t be replicated, burn of the alcohol?
Depends. Alcohol dissolves things that normally are only fat soluble so you can get an entirely different flavour from common foods (wine and beer tastings/pairings for example)
For fermented beverages the yeast and malt make a pretty unique flavour. Same with hops in a good pale ale or IPA. There’s also the body and mouth feel that’s hard to replicate without making alcohol. Residual sugars after fermentation are also kind of unique to alcohol since you always have normal sugars mixed in with other foods.
This is right. Alcohol is almost a flavor multiplier and also holds flavors that might be more volatile and disappear. That’s why if you were to completely remove the alcohol from a drink like gin or something it would taste wildly different and probably very flat even though the rest of the beverage is the same.
kombucha is really good for that, it may contain small amounts of alcohol but its really difficult to get it as potent before it turns more like vinegar. but the carbonation and even variations with hops are out there and are great.
I used to do edibles every once in a while when they became legal here and found that alcohol was terrible when high because Id just get dizzy so i started drinking kombucha and it was amazing
“Poison is bad for you.”
Dose makes the poison. Water can kill you. There’s nothing wrong with alcohol.
As someone who enjoys drinking alcohol: there’s no beneficial or harmless amount of alcohol.
Yeah I’m sober a year now due to drinking myself into severe heart failure (ejection fraction of 17%, up to 47% now) and this is correct. If you can enjoy it great, but the second people start making excuses it’s over, it’s just a matter of how long the slide takes.
There’s nothing wrong with alcohol.
Science says otherwise
Depends on what the alternative is. I’d prefer a beer to the water water of Flint i.e.
Actually it doesn’t depend. Acknowledging alcohol is bad for you makes no claim that other things are better or worse.
I say this as someone who deeply enjoys the occasional drink: there is no known minimum safe dose of alcohol. Every drink shortens your potential lifespan.
Whoever this “Dose” person is we need to stop them.
As a nurse, yeah no, you can’t really compare those. Water is essential for the human body. Alcohol has no benefits for the human body, quite the opposite.
As far as I know, medicine came to the conclusion that there is no amount higher than 0 that won’t harm your body.
In theory, cocaine, opiates, etc. too. It’s just that our culture does not fearmonger about “ethanol addiction”, does not call “drinking” a slang term of junkies, and you cannot go to the shop to buy “Wallstreet Rush Hour”, “Businessmen’s salad”, or “Charlie’s Home-made Snowstorm”.
One of the best substances but it is harmful
That analysis statistically was terrible and the title is disingenuous and misrepresents the data set.
I don’t know how someone who grew up around people who drinked could have any other perception of alcohol than as poison. I don’t know a single person who drinks regularly who doesn’t have health conditions directly linked to it.
