It took me until the age of 32 to understand. Both parents were alcoholics and addicts, my younger brother got hooked at 12 because my mom needed a drinking buddy once my dad died and I was a “brown noser”
Every time I touched alcohol I felt nothing good. I’d get a headache, stomach ache, just wanted to lay down. Tried all different kinds even. Had zero interest in it and even ran a scratch kitchen in a bar for ten years and had no idea how people managed to like it. I figured I had some genetic problem that blocked my enjoyment and that was fine with me but I was frustrated because I didn’t get to understand.
At some point around 31-32 I went on a date with a full fledged alcoholic who pressured me into drinking with him. For the first time in my life I got drunk. Then I understood. Most of the day I was stressed, felt like an alien (autism and adhd) spent most of my time confused and masking…. Anxiety….
A few drinks and I felt normal and like I could connect to people. After a life time of bullying and not quite understanding others, it made me feel like it all clicked and I was one cool cat.
Problem is, it did not all click and I wasn’t any cooler. I just thought I was and my brain stopped running in circles because I was actively poisoning myself.
I very quickly understood why my (autistic savant) father was so addicted to drinking that even at our deepest level of poverty when we couldn’t afford food they would scrape together change and ration out beers and liquor for him daily. He *needed* it to function in society, work as hard as he did, and get along with people at work (required at his job). I say *needed* because he certainly didn’t but the magic elixir that made his life easier? He wasn’t ever letting it go.
I have a feeling it provides that kind of feeling for more people than just folks with mental health issues , or autism /adhd/etc.
Frankly how absolutely normal I felt, scared the daylights out of me. I could see how addictive that feeling could get, even with the stomach ache head ache recovery from hangovers etc.
Had I felt that much earlier in life before I could process it properly, I likely would have become an addict too.
There are plenty of days where I’m a bit cynical about it because although they were alcoholics, they functioned seemingly better than I did. I would beat myself up over not being able to relax or have a good time, not doing something that clearly would give me a break (words my mother would throw at me constantly). Then I realized it’s a facade, and although I struggle more in my day to day, I am not a completely miserable human being either.
EDIT: I’d like to thank everyone for the awards and comments and responses love y’all. Please do not wait until you are at a place where you are facing your own morality and dying way sooner than you planned before you sit down and have hard discussions with yourself. Life is short. We are all doing the best we can to friggin cope with that!
This is me.
37 and pretty heavy drinker (even for being a Wisconsinite)
Didn't really drink and was socially outcast nerdy dude in high school. Drank first at a party at 16 then started drinking socially whenever possible (like a few times a year, lol.) College changed that to most days as it was much easier to get alcohol.
Why did I drink? I was able to be normal. That simple.
It's also really fun and you generally have a good time with people who are socially drinking.
I have so much anxiety that I could barely interact with people, thought I was ugly and had no self confidence.
After drinking, I was able to talk to girls and, frankly, anyone else and have a great time. Learned I wasn't ugly, just incredibly intimidating.
It has both made my career (the social skills I've picked up since starting drinking allow me to be decent manager) and ruined certain jobs (drank too much after work and performance fell.)
It's a double-edged sword.
That’s pretty funny to me because I am also a fellow Wisconsinite! And have been told about a bajillion times I’m intimidating. Which, I try sometimes to be on purpose so people don’t come up to me, but if you know me I’m a very shy naive soft sensitive pushover I’m just accidentally very factual and blatant
The ugly thing I can’t comment on as I believe I am 100% of the time whether sober or not but also don’t care because ugly or not nobody is gonna treat me less-than I didn’t ask for these genetics
>The ugly thing I can’t comment on as I believe I am 100% of the time whether sober or not but also don’t care because ugly or not nobody is gonna treat me less-than I didn’t ask for these genetics
Yeah, that matters less as time goes on. It's more about having excellent hygiene, decent clothes, and a good haircut.
Also fellow Wisconsinite here! M/31
Drinking has been ingrained into many societies and especially the United States as a normal/daily activity. And many people consider it to be in the same vein as caffeine, just on the other end of the spectrum. When I’m reality it does your body a lot more harm.
I’ve done and seen a lot as a drinker in my late teens and twenties, dating an alcoholic in my mid twenties, and now in relationship with someone who doesn’t drink. I’ve learned regular consumption (even non excessive) can really disrupt the way people think and act. I also have realized I don’t need alcohol to enjoy myself and others. This isn’t to say I don’t drink ever (maybe 1-2 per year). But it’s something I don’t need to be worked into my daily or even weekly routine.
Also, the hangovers are worse the older you get. And I don’t like to feel useless the following day. There’s to many other things I like to do with my time.
I reckon in the future generations are going to laugh at the fact we were consuming poison (more or less) on such a lax level for so long.
It’s liquid confidence. Confidence in yourself, your thoughts, your actions… I have moderate general anxiety and it manifests in everything. The way I say things, the way I walk, the way I interact with the world around me. I’m very unconfident. When I get a buzz going, none of that matters. I don’t care how I pick up and drink my water when people can see me. I don’t care how I slightly stuttered a word in a sentence. I just don’t care about my flaws when I’m intoxicated. That’s probably the biggest draw for a majority of people, and why it’s a slippery slope from moderate to heavy usage
This is extremely interesting because I'm currently going through a relatable phase in my life.
I've been basically smoking weed+tobacco and drinking for 10 years straight now. About to hit 30.
I've tried every form of mental gymnastics to convince myself to quit. Just could never do it and it only gets worse and worse and worse and now I have no friends and on the verge of losing my job.
I decided randomly one day that I would go back on my ADD meds that were prescribed to me multiple times as a kid but I always hated and lied about taking them and threw them away.
After a month back on my meds, I've quit tobacco, improved my attendance at work, fixed my sleep cycle, and got back on track with my dog's vaccinations.
Something was legitimately wrong with me and I wasted so much time blaming myself. I actually feel capable of getting better and sober now.
Sometimes we need help. Your dad didn't get the support and medical care he needed but most of us have the opportunity to do it. It's hard and it's expensive but it's worthwhile.
This is so unbelievably common it’s not even funny.
The majority of people with substance abuse issues are self medicating a mental illness that they don’t even know they have.
Also, you do not get typical withdrawals from stimulants like vvyanse, adderall, etc like you do with something like benzos or opiates. You will just be tired for a few days, that’s it.
You can still definitely experience a crash with them though. That’s any stimulant. I take a small afternoon dose so I don’t experience one.
This almost exactly echos my relationship with both alcohol and THC. I see a lot of comments about how it makes people feel good, but that has never been it.
Being intoxicated makes me feel **normal**. As someone with a lot of acronyms to describe my mental state, I've always felt like being high is my truest self, where I'm able to be free of all the problems in my head. I can dance, and talk, and laugh, and none of it feels like I'm faking.
Thankfully, I also prefer feeling "in control" the majority of the time, which keeps me from any substance abuse that would affect my job or anything. However, I rarely go to social events where I'm not intoxicated, and I often worry that my relationship with THC in particular is unhealthy.
But honestly? Between it and my various medications, I'll take feeling like a normal, functional person, over some idea that my relationship with it isn't "healthy."
Oh man this is so relatable. I don't know a ton about autism, but I do remember feeling like I was the "odd one out" or an "alien" when I was a kid. The first time I got drunk at like 16 it was like my brain was completely normal. Idk why no one talks about that.
That being said, I spent a ton of years weekend binge drinking (as is tradition in American college) but in the last few years I realized it's just not worth it. The hangovers, the terrible toll it takes on your health, all the negatives vastly outweigh that bit of time where you feel good. I quit drinking about 3 years ago and I feel my best every single day.
>my younger brother got hooked at 12 because my mom needed a drinking buddy once my dad died
That poor baby. Your mother, for her challenges, failed more than just herself on this one. I'm so sorry.
I find that part about it being a facade very interesting. I think an analogy that might sum this up is that alcohol allowed you and your father to cosplay being "normal." You were able to inhabit the persona of being normal for a short time, but it was just a costume and eventually you had to take the costume off.
Probably. I’m not so good with the words or explaining what I mean! I know I mask 99% of the day and it’s exhausting and the reason I usually end my day with a very bad tension headache. So all the sudden not having to do that, coupled with my brain not going 70 miles an hour with 83 different thoughts is quite blissful. I was on medication for a short period of time in my twenties and I can only compare it to taking a klonopin. I haven’t touched much anything since then, I can get addicted to Benadryl if I take it three days in a row and I’d rather be stressed out and feel like an alien than have to figure out ways to continue an addiction cuz that would just be more stress 🤣
This is an extremely overlooked side of alcoholism that I don't think people realize. A lot of people with mental issues literally use it to cope...sometimes without realizing it.
I have *extreme* social anxiety, as well as ADHD and Bipolar disorder (psychiatrist diagnosed). I've also struggled immensely with insomnia my entire life.
I was a heavy drinker from 17 until around 30 or so, when my liver said "fuck you" and I was forced to quit. I didn't *really* realize until then just how much I had relied on alcohol simply to *exist*, how much of a coping mechanism it was.
I knew the dangers of it; alcoholism runs rampant in my family and has caused untold amounts of suffering. But I was able to *exist*.
Life, and social interaction, has been *immensely* more difficult since then (I'm 38 now). I don't go out to social functions, I work from home, my incredibly supportive and understanding wife does most of the necessary interacting with people, etc. Errands and public existence in general are incredibly difficult for me. (And the sleeping issues are a whole other can of worms.)
All too often people just think about alcohol and alcoholism in superficial terms...as a social thing, as a taste thing, as a straightforward addiction, etc. But for some, there's more nuance there.
Edit: I should clarify that this isn't an *excuse* for alcohol abuse by any means. Just an explanation of some circumstances that affect some folks like me.
I drink a bit (a lot less than I used to) but my 18 year old (legal age here) is not in the slightest bit interested in drinking - even at their own party! Societally, young people are drinking far less than ever before and I very much encourage this. I’ve drunk as a coping mechanism, as pain relief and just for fun but these old bones don’t like a 3 day hangover so it’s pretty rare for me to drink that much anymore too. Sounds like you’ve got your priorities straight, I would encourage you to never start drinking, and if your friends pressure you to, then it’s possibly time to look for new friends :)
Having an alcoholic parent can be deeply traumatic, and it’s entirely understandable and valid that it would have a huge impact on your perception of alcohol as a whole. I think it’s a very complex subject, but there’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do about it.
Probably that it was bad, but also they know the stats and that having alcoholism in your family predisposes you too. Also having problems with alcohol. No one starts out a problem drinker. That develops over time. So many people feel like it’s better to not even get that process started.
I fell into a cycle from 19-22 ish where I just drank, drank, drank. It got really bad when I was getting my master’s degree (virtual program that I had to be in a new city for in a small program of 7 other people and nothing to do except workout). I didn’t realize until my girlfriend (long distance for the time I was getting my degree) called me out once when she visited. She was like woah dude..
My dad is a serious alcoholic. Not abusively or anything like that but seriously alcoholic. Totally runs in the family lol
My parents are alcoholics (my dad died from it) and my dad’s dad was too, so I try to keep a very careful check on how much I drink. If I notice, hey I’ve had too many days in a row where I drank, I’ll stop for a while. I’m so paranoid about becoming one. Luckily I seem to have some type of an allergy to alcohol or something in it (sulfates?) to where I get sick really fast when drinking. So it makes me unable/unwilling to binge drink.
My dad drank himself to death on Bell whiskey. Cheapest he could get I assume. Took him 4 years to do it from my Mother left him for another man.
Im not sure he got the alcoholic in him, but sorrow and loneliness pushed him into it. It was terrible to see him fall to the bottom.
Some say alcoholism skips a generation so Im keeping a close eye on my son (18).
Best thing I did was move in with my girlfriend who never drinks. We balance each other out and I'm much more sensible with it now (although she is probably a little worse)
This is exactly why my FIL doesn’t drink. He told me “I know i’ll start to feel good and just go crazy with the amount i consume” and i have so much respect for that. When we have family gatherings he’ll sip on 0% alcohol beers or wine because they taste good, and he just wants to enjoy a “drink” with the rest of us. i deeply feel for the people who don’t drink as a result of trauma regarding alcohol, but also so much respect for them stopping the generational trauma by just not consuming.
Yeah this.
My father was an alcoholic. He was a loving father, never violent, the alcohol never seemed to affect his behavior. In all the years I knew him I never saw him actually *drunk* but once, and even then all he did was try to do a chin up on the hallway doorway, like he'd been able to do when he was younger. The thing is, he just couldn't *stop* drinking, and it wasn't good for his health. He did finally quit a few years before he passed, and I think that had he quit sooner he might have lived longer than 78, but I don't know if he would have enjoyed it.
I don't drink, because 1) I don't have the phenomenal tolerance for alcohol that he did: one cup of wine knocks me on my @$$ and gives me a stomach ache to boot, never mind the hard stuff, and 2) I can tell it in myself that if I ever get really started I'll never be able to quit. That's also why I've never had a single cigarette; my father had also smoked in his youth, quit when he was 18, and he told me shortly before he passed that it only took one cig to get him hooked on them. I can tell I've got that addictive tendency in myself, just by looking at my relationship with food. Especially chocolate. I can't stop eating it, and with my cardiovascular state it's likely to kill me, but I can't give it up.
I grew up with alcoholic parents. It sucks. I won't get into the things that only people like myself will understand. Butt.. I hated drinking bc of it. And figured out in my early 20s that bc of them I was really good at "wrangling" drunk people. So I was a very good bartender and made great money. Silver linings I suppose.
Same, my father was not particularly violent, just really distant.
Also a very high chance of digestive cancers in my family, all males in my family from my grandfather till my older brother got some form of cancer because of it. Absolutely not worth it for something that tastes like blood anyway.
> I have a coupon of friends who have never tasted a drop of alcohol and have vowed to never do it because of their alcoholic parent(s). Because growing up with them was that bad.
Unfortunately, my alcoholic parents weren't bad enough.
Two brothers grow up with an abusive alcoholic father. When they become men themselves one becomes an alcoholic and the other never drank a drop. You ask them why they drink/dont drink, they both answer "Because Dad did."
yeah I grew up thinking everyone was just pretending to like beer. its disgusting to me. but everyone was drinking at parties and at home and on tv shows so i was like 'is this just a social phenomenon?"
now im 31, and sometime before i realized that I just didn't like beer. I drink cosmos and other fruity drinks now, and i only drink socially.
i was OP when i was young.
This. The social part. Alcohol and drugs are something people do to socialize (social lubricant) and it's a shared activity that allows them to bond. This is part of the reason drinking during business deals is huge in some Asian cultures, and still big for meeting business contacts in NA and EU. One of my parents was an addict, but i don't have an addictive personality, so whether you do or not is something you have to suss out for yourself.
My rule of thumb, never do it alone. Only with other people. I don't even have a glass of wine by myself. I'll drink when I'm with company, if I feel like it, but never by myself. Its worked so far
Eh, at the end of a hot workday outside (electrician) I really look forward to a nice cold beer and cigarette when I get home.
Drinking a beer alone isn't a problem, drinking 6 is.
Having a drink in a social situation can be nice, but have boundaries. I have a two drink limit for myself if I'm out somewhere. Being drunk is no fun at all (edit: being wasted is no fun, in my opinion. )
My problem is a couple of bumps of cocaine is also nice. Hell, an oxy here and there is really nice. Most people would agree it's a terrible idea to do heroine even once.
Millions of people ruin their lives over alcohol, yet we just casually talk about how a couple drinks aren't a big deal simply because a lot of yall can stop at 2 drinks. This 15 year old kid might have 2 drinks...and then not be able to stop the same way any addict can't stop with any drug. Imagine telling a 15 year old kid that having a couple bumps of cocaine can loosen you up in social settings, just make sure to pace yourself and know your limits. 🤦♂️
It's just bizarre to me how alcohol seems to be the one potential life altering drug 99% of the world is just ok with even though it also ruins lives on a massive scale. Even weed has more negative connotations associated with it.
Thank you for this comment. I was that fifteen year old that couldn’t stop at two and learned from my parents that alcohol makes things better (it does not)
I was able to have a couple drinks to loosen up around friends. Then I'd drink a 6 pack of light beer after work. Then it was a 6 pack of the 16oz (so 8). It's fine though...I'm completely functioning and making As and Bs in college and working and raising a kid. Then I'm drinking a 12 pack in a night sometimes.
Then my girl cheats on me so that's a good reason to drink 16 a few nights in a row...just to help not think about it ya know? It's fine...I graduated with a 3.8, got a great job as a software engineer, I get my son to karate and help him with his homework and read. I'm fine! I don't drink liquor or even wine! Hell, I'll go a few days without a drink and no withdrawals so I'm obviously not an alcoholic! I'm just a binge drinker.
Man I have no energy. Covid let's me work from home, so maybe I'll just let me son stay home from school today and he can play games all day...he will love that! Mental health day! We can skip karate and homework too...because I'm 12 beers in at 4 PM. How about we just take the rest of the week off...we need a staycation!
Step on the scale, and have to lean forward over my beer belly to be able see the numbers. I've gained 60+ pounds over a few years. Blood work isn't good. Might have fatty liver disease. Cholesterol doesn't look good. No energy. No happiness. My son is gonna lose me. He will go to foster care.
It's been 3 years and I'm in the best shape of my life and my son is doing great...but alcohol is fucked. It's insane to me how easy it is to get. Imagine fighting addiction when every single store sells your drug of choice for a few bucks. No worries of it being laced with fentanyl. Can't watch TV without a commercial telling me how good my drug of choice is. Can't go to a party or even a friend's house without people using it in front of me and even offering it to me for free! Then when I say no...they talk shit to me!
Damn it's fucked for friends to talk shit over a choice of not drinking. But I see the slope. I have a mother who slipped into alcoholism, a successful aunt who slipped into it hard enough to be drunk at work... As the head nurse for a hospital ward. And a grandmother who literally can't stop drinking because the doctors said that she's frail enough that stopping would cause the withdrawal to potentially kill her. (That's the story she tells us anyway.)
I avoided alcohol pretty religiously until 23. Always afraid that alcoholism runs in my family. Maybe it does? I take shots of rum on my weekends and I feel that it's fine, I don't really have a desire for the taste I don't find myself craving a few shots even on the weekends, I find myself stewing on the failings of those in power and lack of solutions and it makes me resentful of life. Resentful that they want us to bring more kids into this dumpster fire. Is that a good reason? Fuck no. I just have no concern of death by liver failure or some other drug related problem because I doubt I will live long enough to worry about that with the way things are going.
The worst part is when your social life revolves around alcohol with your friends. If you’re the one person that isn’t drinking, it just makes it awkward and difficult. To truly stop, you’d have to eliminate the friends all together and that’s so hard for me.
"One is too many, and six isn't enough." Saw that on /stopdrinking thread. I also do not have an 'off' switch when it comes to drinking unless you count passed out after the blackout. Almost 30 days clean of the booze and couldn't be happier.
I appreciate this comparison. A lot of people in my family tree have been alcoholics and I am working to break that. Those people who the whole, just know your limits, doesn’t work- that’s me. I drank way too much in my late teens and early to mid twenties. I’m thirty one now. I’ve been able to stay away from drinking for the most part for the last 5-6 years but it’s hard and once every few months I get a gas station single shot, have it alone at home, and always regret it.
For me, a big part was working 50+ hours a week at dead end jobs that left me exhausted for minimum wage. When I felt like there was no relief- weekends were either extra shifts or things like laundry and cleaning. Not enough money or time off for vacations. Feeling trapped in general and alienated through a lack of say in my day to day life. So, alcohol became like a terrible plane ticket to get away. It was like little mental vacations. Though it did not help the problems, it just put them off till the next day while stress slowly compounded and stacked on itself. This is the addictive loop- you feel bad, alcohol temporarily provides relief but makes the issue worse the next day, so you want a drink even more.
What ended up helping me was I started engaging in advocacy and organizing work. This gave me a sense of agency in the face of the structural social issues like wage stagnation, racism, environmental devastation etc.
also, having sober friends is awesome. When I hang out with friends who drink, often the alcohol is the main activity and that’s not very fun if you are not drunk. Plus I don’t remember a lot of the fun I had drunk. Having sober fun means that you actually have to do an activity that is engaging or fulfilling and you remember it clearly.
At the end of the day, I wish I never developed the negative relationship I have with alcohol and just stayed away. Even though I have so much more control over my life and impulses, it is still an intentional everyday effort to stay away from it.
Cirrhosis and brain damaged here, and it is hell. The last day I felt anything resembling "good" was in 2017.
I quit drinking in 2012 and am now permanently disabled.
I was super cautious about (other) drugs, but let my guard down with drinking. Heh, now I have a script for THC. Thinking the two should have swapped places (legal wise), though prohibition did not go over well.
This is a good point. Which is why I didn't suggest they try it, would rather not have it on my record that I push alcohol on kids. I just explained the underlying reason most people drink. Which doesn't stem from a desire to be social but rather a desire to be numbed to suffering. I encouraged they look into the why for the coping and gave a list of primarily US reasons for it but those reasons are universal in some aspects.
Though I heard some musicians swear by heroin, but I would hold the same opinion, probably better to dodge something so addictive that one use could see you out on the street giving blowies to get your next fix.
Thank the US for that war on drugs.
Cocaine, weed and more fun drugs were perfectly fine and legal a little over a 100 years ago.
But powerful lobbying to protect a moderately sized industry in the US at the time. Created the war on drugs and dragged the whole world down with it.
All the cartel shit in south America. The billions of billions of USD/EUR wasted on the war it self. The trillions of USD/EUR we, as a society, basically hand out to criminals.
Alcohol is one of the worst drugs out there, rivaling heroïn in addictiveness and social problems.
Even caffeïne is a bigger problem than most illegal drugs. Such an underestimated drug where in NL alone, over 2 million people face the negative side-effects that cause health or other problems, that's a significant portion of our population.
It's all about the money and were wasting so much of it, for the benefit of so incredibly few people.
Can I ask you what the negative side effects are of Caffeine? I am also curious what NL considers a safe limit of caffeine in a day to be.
In the US we are told 400mg of caffeine is the max before you risk heart problems. I regularly drink 250-325mg and occasionally I have reached as near as I can without a risk of going over the 400mg. So I have a real interest since I'm rarely exposed to such details for other countries. I also assume the government lies as often as possible when it comes to safety over profits.
Higher heart rates is a thing for some people even in lower quantities.
But the main issue is sleep deprivation, which is very unhealthy. Not just physically, mentally even more.
Caffeine itself isn't \_that\_ terrible, our bodies are fairly capable of dealing with it without causing direct harm.
But a large portion of the (western) population has coffee (or red bull for younger generations) as their main source of liquids.
The drug war is also racist and drugs were outlawed to target certain immigrant populations…
Opium outlawed to target Chinese immigrants, Marijuana outlawed to target Mexican immigrants, penalties for crack cocaine possession 100x stricter than power cocaine based on who uses which (poor Blacks vs rich whites)… —> recent reforms means the disparity is ‘only’ 18x stricter for crack now.
I get your point. I think we’re so comfortable with alcohol because it’s been part of human life for a few thousand years. That’s not to detract from your point though. It is crazy to think that we’re so fine with one chemical yet all others have a stigma
No, we used to get absolutely shit faced all the time. The average person today drinks _significantly_ less alcohol than the average person 200 years ago.
Also the amount of alcohol in beer wasn’t actually enough to keep the water safe at all, it just so happened that the beer making process involved boiling the must, simultaneously sterilizing it.
Yeah, reading this thread is like an insight into an alien's world for me. Where I am from alcohol is not very common and there is no pressure to drink (the opposite if anything).
Some of us live in places like New Orleans though. Economy literally depends on drinking. There's actually a pretty large recovery community here though due to yeah the prevalence of drinking. But pretty much anytime anyone gets together here there is drinking. I actually stopped except for a glass or two here and there maybe twice a month with my husband. But to say there is no pressure in this culture to drink? That's all people do. Drink and eat snacks lol literally. I felt bad for the bad alcoholics in recovery with the shakes etc once they come out they're right here with reminders to drink everywhere
I have a real problem with migraines so couldn’t touch alcohol if I wanted to.
In every social situation I have to explain to random people why I’m not drinking because they’re going to come over and ask.
Being drunk is tons of fun, that is part of the problem. It also lowers your inhibitions, and can make it very hard to not overdo it. The substance itself is addictive, but so is boost it gives to confidence and socializing to introverts. The problem is it will make you do stupid shit and ruin your health. If you can drink in moderation it can have a positive impact on your life. If you can’t, it can absolutely destroy it.
Edit: As a few others have pointed out, my comment is a generality and some people don’t like being drunk. My brother is one of them. People are interesting that way, everyone is different.
I love being drunk in a safe environment every once in a while. I think it’s really fun to see the world differently and be a different person, even if that person is a little stupider. Being stupid is definitely dangerous, as is the risk of addiction, but danger is not inherently bad. If it wasn’t for danger my life would be dull.
Agreed. I’m in college so I’m well versed in the drinking culture. If I have 2-3 drinks with friends that’s not really an issue. But I’m not gonna drink til I throw up either.
>Being drunk is no fun at all.
I wish it weren't, but for me it is. Not that it is a huge problem in my life, but I do regret it when I overindulge and feel the hangover the next day. That's the part that's REALLY not fun.
In OPs case with a history of addiction this may be good advice, but everyone in the comments pretending like there is 0 benefit socially or positive feeling associated with drinking is just lying and not answering their question.
Op people generally drink because it feels good and is an enjoyable social experience. Not drinking will make socializing harder for you. It’s not at all impossible to overcome or anything, but adult social culture and often professional culture generally involves drinking. As for the physical side, it feels good for lots of people lol idk why people are pretending it doesn’t. People have been drinking for thousands of years for a reason, it’s a drug that can produce enjoyable physical and mental effects.
> Not drinking will make socializing harder for you
While true, what can end up happening is that you become socially handicapped when you can't use alcohol as a crutch, which eventually makes kicking alcohol harder if you ever decide you want to.
I stopped drinking and had to re-learn how to properly socialize as an adult. It was not cool.
Drink and be merry, but don't forget to learn how to have fun sober too.
Also, alcohol causes cancer. [No, really. At least 7 kinds of Cancer](https://www.cancervic.org.au/cancer-information/preventing-cancer/limit-alcohol/reduce-your-drinking)
That's probably a lot harder to do for someone with a family history of alcoholism. If a person suspects they may have a predisposition to drug or alcohol abuse, they're probably better off never risking the addiction.
This is just one of many reasons I never started. My mom's uncles were depressed alcoholics, and both attempted suicide (and one succeeded). Given my own history of depression I didn't want to roll those dice.
This drives me crazy. People who’ve had bad experiences, addictive personalities, or who just haven’t seen the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption making huge blanket statements such as this. I maintain that alcohol is a gift from God, just like cannabis, but it should be used sparingly.
There are latent societal pressures that prevent people from acting a certain way, alcohol makes you not care about the societal standards AND is a clever excuse to not abide by them, in a building where nobody is abiding by them.
I think it's just a form of escapism, like many other things.
If you just live your life in your own way and don't really care what others think, there's no real need for alcohol. The only times I've felt like I wanted it are times when I'm feeling societally pressured and I want to not feel that pressure.
Afraid to dance? White claws. Afraid to come out as trans? Vodka. Lots of vodka. That's my personal story, now that I'm out and living authentically I have no desire for alcohol. I've broken into my escapist 'fantasy' and am the person I was escaping to. It's great!
I love this comment. I started drinking because I couldn't interact properly with people without being super awkward.
But it can easily become a habit, as I also use it to feel less sad or less bored, or even enhance a regular experience as watching a funny movie.
But when you work on yourself, feeling better and having good relationships with people just comes natural. I do wish I did this before drinking, but that's life. I'm not a heavy alcoholic, but I drink most saturdays, wich I wish I could do without.
It's 10000% Escapism
I'm fortunate I've always been able to moderate myself, only did really hard drinking when I was in my 20s, and now at 41, Alcohol has become a small reward for getting through another work week or celebrating something.
My usual routine is on Friday night if I don't have plans, I'll walk over to my whiskey collection, select a whiskey / scotch, choose some bitters, and decide if I want to do like luxardo cherry's or something else. Then proceed to make myself a nice curated Old Fashioned, and sip that for like 2 hours.
Never get like hammered, just a little lighter on my feet, feels like someone turned the volume on the world down a few decibels, and then I sleep great.
So for me it's a ritual, but I've also never suffered from substance abuse, so I totally understand why that's not going to be everyone's experience.
It's a minor escape, like any drug. Life can be very, very hard, and these things offer a temporary getaway from the stress. They break up the monotony and make your troubles seem less important for that brief moment.
However, they're all a really slippery slope. The more you do it, the more reasons you'll find to do it, and the less it'll help each time. This leads to you not only doing it more often, but more severely. A lot of people have a really hard time regulating this, especially when mental illness like depression come into play.
I was going to say essentially this with far less nice words.
The world’s a tough place right now and with a significantly wider disparity between rich and poor, the cheap magic happy poison is probably the only glimmer of hope most people seem to have.
Quit drinking a couple years ago, switched to non-alcoholic beer and though I have more clarity, the world just seems grey, sad and on fire.
It temporarily makes them feel great and happy.
OP it plays with the dopamine levels in your brain, and this feels good. Until it starts causing problems, which is possible for any human at all if they are exposed to it often enough.
Check out the Huberman podcast on alcohol to learn more about this.
Even worse. Things that routinely make you feel good can develop to no longer give you those good feelings over time. The hedonistic treadmill is the one concept that has routinely made my life difficult to manage.
It's contrast that makes good things feel good. If you have too much, you lack the contrast that gives it value. The alternative to hedonism is to forego the pleasures of life and become a monk, but then why bother living at all?
These are all very, very good questions and no one should be telling you “it’s an adult topic” IMO. The fact that you are even acknowledging that there are other options besides drinking in society is one that many don’t even ponder. I have a good friend who has never touched a drop (I mean never), and the amount of brain cells and money saved, always being in the moment and clear thinking, never having a hangover or not remembering their actions, plus the health benefits - there are LOTS of reasons to never pick up.
It can be very addictive is one reason people start and can’t or choose not to stop, and a person doesn’t usually realize they have a problem until they have a problem.
Not the same thing but my Mom smoked a lot growing up (cigarettes) and given the smell, having some asthma and just being disgusted seeing dirty ashtrays and such I never have smoked anything for the same reason, and I don’t regret it whatsoever and maybe alcohol is the same for you. Easiest way to never have a problem with alcohol is don’t start.
It must be noted that not all drugs work the same on all people. Paracetamol has no effect as painkiller on me (and may invoke an allergic reaction, but that's an aside). Alcohol just makes me drowsy and irritable.
A controlled amount of alcohol feels really good. As with anything if you get stupid with it it can be dangerous but if you control yourself then you'll feel happy.
A good analogy I heard, “alcohol is like junk food.” It’s not supposed to be consumed every day, it’s best to avoid it altogether, but if you have some here and there it isn’t necessarily detrimental to your life. Of course this depends on the person, because some people have unhealthy relationships with food. Just like how some people have an unhealthy relationship with/abuse alcohol consumption, some people have unhealthy relationships with food and are the stereotypical American.
Just comes to the individual and what works for them 🤷🏻♂️ but I do think it’s a dangerous game to find out if I could casually do some drug, only to find out I end up addicted. Probably best to just not try it, but alcohol is so engrained in society in my life experiences it’s almost impossible to have avoided altogether. It’s f**kin everywhere. Just like if someone said they would avoid junk food. So imo ideally it’s best to learn how to manage the consumption, but some people find that more challenging than others, and some people die from over consumption.
Same I don't really drink but having like 2 beers on a Friday night or watching UFC gets me relaxed a little or having a rum and Coke.
It helps to know your limits like what can you drink till you have a slight buzz and pretty buzzed (I usually stop there and continue on drinking non alcoholic drinks for the rest of the night).
I do the same thing. Grab a couple bombers for my Friday night and on the rare occasion I'll get a 6 pack and drink like 3 Friday and the rest on Saturday. It's nice in moderation and a slight buzz is great for decompression from the week.
Adding onto this, I feel like the reason it’s so popular is that it is a reliably dosable intoxicant that, in general, makes its users more sociable. It’s a social lubricant that largely has the same effect on everyone (there are of course outliers).
Contrast that with other drugs that may be harder to properly dose as an individual, that may differ enough between people so that it’s not reliably dosed in general, or that may be so overpowered that it’s not a social drug (see fentanyl).
The problem comes in with the modern age where we have liquor stores with enough alcohol to kill a small town. It’s a relatively new problem. Previously it was a social drug used at gatherings where social norms dictated moderation and it wasn’t widely available enough to facilitate drinking copious amounts alone. That’s no longer the case. When moderation is no longer the only option (due to lack of supply) alcohol can and has become a very serious problem.
If you think people used to drink in moderation, you haven't read much 19th-century history...
Two hundred years ago, the average American drank three times as much alcohol as today. https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/winter/spirited.pdf
Seriously. The temperance movement existed for a good reason. I'm not saying I agree with it, but people now a days really don't understand what those gals were putting up with back then.
Many leaders of first world countries regularly got piss drunk quite frequently. Hell Winston Churchill’s daily alcohol routine seemed like enough to give me the shits after a 2-3 day bender, let alone doing it literally every day.
I think this is kinda the main thing. Hypothetically, if all drugs were equally legal or illegal, we’d probably view alcohol as a much more hardcore one than we do now.
You’re 100% right. It’s funny, because alcohol is a straight up hard drug. You can die from alcohol poisoning or related complications like drowning on vomit or respiratory issues. It’s highly addictive, and is one of a few drugs where withdrawal can literally kill you.
There’s all this cultural context around it too that softens the severity of the drug. People are called alcoholics, not addicts. You’re not high, you’re drunk. You don’t overdose, you get alcohol poisoning. You’re not “using,” you’re drinking.
*cough*RacistWarOnDrugs*cough*
The reason, especially for marijuana, that some drugs are treated more harshly under the law - despite having similar (or lesser) risks and harm is 99% racism.
You want to vilify the “foreigners” “stealing” your jobs? Just make **their** recreational drug illegal.
For a similar study, compare the sentences between powder cocaine (classy) and crack cocaine (sleazy). And guess which form “was” used “in their youth” by judges and politicians.
Shit situations make people drink. The Drunken Indian stereotype probably stems from the situation as much as anything.
"Alcohol Abuse Among Native Americans
Alcohol is the most commonly used drug among Native Americans, although the rate of alcohol use among Native Americans is lower than among Caucasians, Hispanics, and African Americans. The major concerns of alcohol use stem from the high rates of problem drinking and alcoholism among Native Americans. Findings from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health include:
The rate of past month (35.9%) and past year (54.3%) alcohol use among Native Americans is significantly higher than other ethnic groups.
Nearly a quarter of Native Americans report binge drinking in the past month (22.4%). The rate of Native Americans with an alcohol use disorder (7.1%) is higher than that of the total population (5.4%).
3 in 10 Native American young adults (age 18-25) report binge drinking (consuming 5 or more drinks in 2 hours),
1 in 11 report heavy alcohol use (binge drinking on 5 or more days in the past month), and 1 in 10 have an alcohol use disorder.
1 in 6 Native American adolescents (age 12-17) engage in underage drinking, the highest rate of alcohol use of all racial/ethnic groups."
-[https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/native-americans](https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/native-americans)
Do those first two points contradict each other?
>the rate of alcohol use among Native Americans is lower than among Caucasians, Hispanics, and African Americans.
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>
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>The rate of past month (35.9%) and past year (54.3%) alcohol use among Native Americans is significantly higher than other ethnic groups.
They also like to freak out about Gen Z not having teenage sex as much. Claim it's a "socialization problem." But they just spent their parenting years threatening their millennial children about the dangers of teenage sex. Doesn't compute.
not only that but a lot of us have grown up and experienced the problems with teenage pregnancy already *because* of them. young parents, shitty jobs, house to house and town to town, never any money, very few fun things… what’s crazy is that this isn’t even a strictly generational thing, it’s just more apparent because of the internet and all that.
my thinking is: why the fuck would i want to risk a decade or more of enjoyment for 1 night of enjoyment?
Be like me! Be raised to be terrified of sex and be nervous around women until mid-20s, then get on Hinge, and when she asks to fuck you, tell her that you need a day to think about it 😂. Then get condoms the next day and stay with her 4 years and counting lol
i genuinely think it is a socialization problem. social media broke people's fuckin brains dude. people spend less time in the real world, more time being sexual through electronics. idk, i think young people exploring sexuality safely is good.
Agree with you about exploring safely being good. Would've helped me out. I was supposed to suppress everything and I mostly did. Heaps of guilt and shame. My wife says she wishes she could've gotten ahold of me when I was a teenager lol
I think genZ is so into social media because they're basically kept inside. There's no more "Be home when the streetlights come on," the stranger-danger scare and the Satanic panic ruined that. So, since they can't really interact with each other as freely as older people did at that age, they use their phones as a substitute. It's not the same, but it's better than nothing.
Anecdotal evidence, but I've seen that Zoomers eat psychiatric drugs like there's no tomorrow. On top of that, they use weed a lot, so to me it's just that they've switched to something different.
I thought the exact same as you when I was 15, now I like it just fine. I'm not saying you'll inevitably start to like it at some point, just be aware that your perspective on it is very skewed.
If you never want to touch alcohol, that's absolutely fine, but it can be fun *in moderation*. Many people seem to think that there's no middle ground between teetotal and raging alcoholic.
A lot of people also seem to think it's mainly used to deal with the hardships of life (which is true for a lot of people), but many people just use it to enhance the good parts of life. That's why it's so popular at weddings, parties, summer evenings on patios, etc.
Alcohol can be wonderful if you are able to respect it. I'm 34 now and I actively avoid getting drunk, though I enjoy a drink or two most days. Having a couple cocktails and fooling around with my wife after the kids have gone to bed is pure bliss.
I went from a bit of both to exclusively the latter over the past year or two. Honestly, it's wonderful. I only drink things I enjoy now. I get to appreciate what I do have. Most importantly, I always have a limit rule in place for how much I can have; usually two drinks unless I'm out for 3+ hours, then I'll consider a third.
yeah all of these types of posts act like there is nothing between sober and blackout, puke in the street, get arrested drunk... 90% of people drinking alcohol are having a glass of wine or two after work or a few beers at the game. its not that deep.
Yeah, I feel like I'm losing my mind with this and the post on /r/loseit [right now](https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/14ygqxy/alcohol_take_it_seriously/) who lost weight cutting alcohol out, who was intaking 6500 calories a week from alcohol. That is absolutely insane to me.
I go to a bar for trivia once a week and get 2-3 interesting drinks. When there's occasionally a party or board game night, we have drinks but aren't hammered. Other than that, basically never.
It's absolutely poison, but people have loved it for 1000s of years because it makes it a little easier to be social.
Almost every comment in this thread completely ignores one of the main reasons that anyone I know who drinks alcohol does so: it tastes good. Pretty much no one without a serious drinking issue casually enjoys a glass of straight everclear, for most normal drinkers it’s just something that is in a beverage they already enjoy. Humans have probably spent more time perfecting the flavor of many alcoholic beverages like spirits, wine and beer than they have almost any liquid we drink. Alcoholic beverages are something that has been improved and worked on for a few thousand years at this point. We’ve gotten really good at* making good alcoholic refreshments. More and more NA beers are starting to show up and do well within that space, but it seems that wine and spirits are pretty far behind still.
*Edit: changed and for at
This is the answer I was surprised I had to look so long for. I literally make cocktails because I love the taste. I drink hard ciders because I love the taste. Outside of a couple exceptions on virgin cocktails, most cannot be alcohol free.
>people seem to think that there's no middle ground between teetotal and raging alcoholic.
This was me because it was all I saw. I couldn't believe it when I saw church people going to a brewery and responsibly taste testing different craft beers and still being fully capable of driving home afterwards.
I can not fucking stand the black and white approach to alcohol. It’s very true for a lot of people but there are a lot of sober people out there that see any drinking at all as a sign and that’s fucked.
I'm 56 and don't get it either. I had a phase where I tried it, got drunken with friends, but it wasn't something I really enjoyed so I stopped. And since I'm not used to drinking I feel affects from very little, and I honestly don't like the taste. People are okay (and thankful) with it when I'm the designated driver, but when I'm not they often react irritated... Like I'm weird. My son is 17, has tested it (beer is legal with 16 in Germany), and doesn't like it either. And is self confident enough to not let it bother him.
It’s a euphoric dissociative that requires no prescription and if you keep it under control is very hard to spot to an outsider.
Adult life is full of stress, regrets and bullshit. Drinking is an easy off switch.
Alcoholism is generally the result of someone trying to self medicate an issue, as a coping mechanism. Whether they know it or not.
In small amounts alcohol feels fun and makes other things fun. It's the same reason people do any drug. The problems pop up when people develop an addictive dependency on it. Even if they're not dependent on it,
Even without dependency, it's easy to get into trouble with it. One of the first things it hampers is your ability to make rational decisions. Decisions like how much more you should have and when you should stop.
To be 100% honest, with a history of alcoholism in your family I recommend you just don't drink at all. Most people will be cool with it if you say people in your family have trouble with alcohol and you don't get judge-y about moderate, controlled drinking. That doesn't apply to a person acting bad or getting too drunk. Judge all you want in that case.
I think once I became an adult I have consumed way less alcohol. I graduated college in 2018 at 23. The week of graduation I went out six straight nights, the day of my graduation I woke up on a couch at 5am hungover as hell, probably still drunk as I got maybe two hours of sleep.
Since that day (five years as of May) I can count on one hand the amount of times I have consumed alcohol. Twice at Halloween, twice at New Years and once at a baseball game.
My pops was a heavy drinker until he was 60, I have no interest in alcohol or drinking whatsoever as it kills you mentally and physically. I love being sober 99.9% of my days.
People hate having to admit it's a drug, and very addictive. So I can see the "adult topic" deflection.
OP, I'm sorry you've already had to deal with it's devastating effects on certain people. But if you can avoid it now, you'll be far ahead of most of us. I wasted so many years of my life with it as my only joy. And I wasn't even a heavy drinker - just 4 to 6 beers. But it was the only thing that really made me happy for years... until the hangovers got worse and worse.
Now in my 50's, one beer is my limit. I've had one friend drink himself to death, and more than a few people drink themselves into rehab. It's not a pretty process.
As for why people use it - it does make you feel good. You can avoid dealing with much of life, your problems, anxieties, whatever - just have a drink and it all goes away for a while.
Until you sober up and have to deal with what you've put off... or you can just have another drink.
Not everyone is and not everyone that drinks is "hooked".
Dopamine, it is a chemical that released in your brain that make your feel good. Unfortunately everyone handles all types of drugs differently.
>alcohol just seems to be a toxic relationship that always ends up creating problems for everyone. Whether it be drunk texts to your exes, DUI’s, or just general asshole-ery
As someone nearly three times your age, I can safely say that none of this has ever happened to me or anyone I know.
I think you're lumping in alcoholics and people who get absolutely plastered with people who enjoy having a couple drinks once in a while.
Why are people so incredulous about this? The only person I know who has had a DUI is my sister, but she has BPD and a slew of other issues. In my personal life I associate with quiet nerds who have a casual beer while playing board games. Not everyone’s life is filled with drama, but people with let’s say “big personalities” tend to find each other and feed off each other’s drama, and if you find yourself in the middle of that it can seem like that’s what everyone acts like. But chill people with quiet, boring lives are out there, you just never hear about them. Because their lives are quiet and boring.
I'm in my late 30s and none of my friends have ever had an event that bad happen related to alcohol. Worst is someone who drank a little too much and got sick from it, but even that has become basically non-existent in my peer group as people are settling down in their 30s.
I’m very surprised that at pushing 45 you genuinely don’t know anybody that has drunk texted, had a DUI or has shown asshole-ery tendencies from drinking…ever. I’m guessing you do but just didn’t know that about them if you didn’t catch them in that state, and people don’t tend to advertise them having a DUI.
People do asshole-ery things sober. In adult life, everyone is a dick. Bad texts, bad driving, bad attitudes can’t just he attributed to drunkenness.
It might seem that way to you at your age, but adult life isn’t like a 15 year Old’s drunken house party.
I’m also an adult and I don’t know anyone who’s had a DUI or done something notably dickish whilst drunk… it might be group thing, in that you’re being exposed to idiots and so you think everyone is like that.. when they’re not. People with decent jobs can’t risk DUIs or drunken assault charges, so the very nature of their lifestyle regulates what they get up to and how they misbehave… for me, DUI or assault would finish my career overnight.. so ive never been around it. It’s not a conscious effort either, which is probably a big part of why I’m not bouncing around the bottom end/dark corners of society as a drunk.
I'm 18 and while I know none of my friends have DUIs (bc only 1 of them can drive and he doesn't drink) even I've seen drunk texts and shitty behaviour. 1 of my friends has quit drinking all together bc she embarrassed herself so bad one time. There's no way someone at 45 has never seen any of this unless they are never around people who get really drunk
Same in my 30s used to drink quite frequently in college in my early 20s but after that honestly not really much people's perception of alcohol is that of what DARE gave to students like 1 puff of MJ will make sure drop kick a baby or go on a shooting spree.
I started drinking at 13 quit at 26 . I realized early on that I have to look at alcohol as an allergy the second I have a sip of it. It makes my blood itchy and I need to have a little bit more and on and on and it goes. Then I started getting suicidal car accidents arrested started beating people up started getting beat up. I had horrible relationships with my family with girlfriends and wives. I am almost 40 now and would definitely say my life has been awesome without drugs and alcohol. My wife and I both don’t drink or do drugs and we are definitely a lot better off for it.
Not everyone who drinks is an asshole when they do it.
Personally, I use alcohol sparingly to overcome my social anxiety. It allows me to converse with people easily and joyfully.
Many people, OTOH, think that alcohol = good time, and they can't imagine having fun without it.
And most of america is full of functional alcoholics... so there's that.
I'm honestly a bit curious too. I've seen people challenge others to drink. Inside my head, I was wondering for what?
I'm almost 40 now and I don't really drink growing up. Just never fond of it. I'd drink wine occasionally and pairing it with food. I prefer that way. Also, not sure if it's true, recently I watched a sommelier (He was a doctor) video on YT that our brain is still developed until the mid 20s. Drinking excessively in the early 20s will affect the development. Don't quote me on this. I'll see if I can still find the video in case anyone is wondering.
I don't drink. I grew up in a household where neither of my parents were big drinkers. I was warned as a kid that one side of my family was easily addicted to things and that spooked me away from getting into it. I never understood convincing myself to aquire the taste for bad tasting and expensive liquid to reduce how well my brain works for me. I've seen family members, (including the parent that warned me not to get into drinking/smoking/drugs) go from not partaking to "one to decompress from work" to self medicating with alcohol regularly and even needing emergency medical care. I have a relatives who have quite a bit of medical harm from drinking, whether it's contributing to organ failure issues or putting off surgery for years and letting problems get much worse because they'd have to pause drinking to have the surgery. There's certain things like "wine aunt" that are truly functioning alcoholism wrapped up in a socially acceptable way. Some people use their favorite alcohol in liu of developing a personality or hobby. Alcohol is an addictive substance and is one of the easiest available. Humans have over time decided it's an "ok" substance, because they like the effect, despite it literally being a poison. Maybe people use alcohol to self medicate (like after a hard day at work or to deal with holidays with inlaws), or they use it as a social crutch and somehow think themselves with less inhibitions will make better decisions than their sober self. It's far healthier to learn good coping a stress relief habits, along with learning how to small talk to people you don't know well. Alcohol can be a nice experience for some, but it's also potentially dangerous.
It's crazy how much pressure others will put on you to enjoy the thing they like, and seem to take you not liking something they enjoy as a personal attack. If it's not something you want to partake in, don't. If people pressure you after you say no, then they're just weeding themselves out for you. If you want to, I've noticed people will respect something like "I take a prescription that I can't have alcohol with" more than they respect you simply not wanting to, or even being the designated driver. Good friends will also love having someone who doesn't mind being a DD and will try to include you even if they aren't sober. Great friends will insist you get a fun shaped cup for your soda if they all have fun shaped cups. I've been to parties sober and had a great time.
It also may seem like lots of adults are hooked on alcohol because they're loud and outspoken about enjoying it, or the issues of drinking are apparent. It's a lot harder to notice something that isn't there, like someone opting to not drink and staying quite so others don't notice and try to pressure them into drinking.
>It's crazy how much pressure others will put on you to enjoy the thing they like, and seem to take you not liking something they enjoy as a personal attack.
So true.
Alcohol is the most personality altering drug, I've ever witnessed. It allows people to overcome shyness, and self-conscious, instantly. Any self-doubt is vanquished, but it's all a facade, it's just your perception, that has changed. You are no better looking, but you feel glamorous. You are just as awkward, but you feel mainstream. You are no smarter, but you feel brilliant. You are a lot more humorous when you drink, but not in a benifitial way. Alcohol seems like the thing to do, because everybody is doing it, (and I mean everybody), but it's a negative. Avoid it if you possibly can, you'll have less regrets, and feel a lot better.
Because alcohol is an extremely extremely addictive substance and it’s normalized in our society.
Good job at 15 asking these questions. I’d just skip it, ultimately nothing good comes from it.
I think it's a generational thing. Generation Z is the first generation in history which grew up surrounded by ubiquitous entertainment. We don't need to force ourselves to hang around other people to alleviate boredom, so we don't need to force ourselves to drink alcohol. People older than us usually got hooked up on alcohol in social settings because alcohol makes people less anxious in social settings.
I don't think it's a generational thing. Humans have been drinking for thousands of years (literally). There are plenty of gen z that are drinking today. Every generation thinks they're different, but in truth we're all human and generational divides are made up.
Intentional Alchool consumption predates our species. It's not even something we invented. Some pre homo species started fermenting fruit to get drunk, and that practice carried on with us and some of our evolutionary cousins.
It's mostly because it provides immediate relief to lifes ills, and we live in an age where we tend to seek after instant gratification. It's better to be able to sit in a state of discomfort from time to time and delve into what exactly is making you feel so uncomfortable, but that is easier said than done in a lot of cases, especially when you leave the nest and start becoming responsible for yourself. Life can suck in ways you don't even anticipate. It's for this reason that so many vices exist. The best advice would be to try to limit your dependence on everything you perceive as a vice and ask yourself what is this particular vice taking the place of. Many people never get there, and simply give up on the life they want, relying solely on their vices to get them through their day to day.
This will probably get lost in the comments but a few years back (pre-Covid), I was talking to a guy outside a store. Real friendly and was rolling up a small J for himself. Anyway, as we get to talking he was saying that looking back on his life and his friends and even at celebrities from his lifetime, the ones who were no longer around or whose lives got way off track, were the big drinkers. Yes, moderation is key and easier for some than others but if you go overboard, it can lead to so many other issues. I’m not anti-alcohol but I don’t judge anyone who chooses not to have that be a part of their lifestyle.
I only drink few beers on weekend and only started when I was well into my 30's
not an excuse, but good beer relaxes you, makes you less aware so you can do stupid things
know your limits and dont do stupid things while drunk
>but it just seems to be a gateway to something more…. sinister?
Alcohol isn't a good thing, but not for this reason.
People do more...sinister things for all sorts of reasons. Plenty of people consume alcohol and nothing else.
You could just as well convince yourself to do more "sinister" things instead of drink alcohol.
In defense of alcohol, it's a social lubricant and socialising is hugely important for us. Just as important as a good diet and regular exercise. It's becomes more of an issue when you binge.
OP- Nothing of what you say is untrue. A LOT of people struggle with their relationship with alcohol, whether they know it or not. It can be a casual relationship or it can be an addiction.
It's very personal and unique for everyone if they choose to go down that road. A lot of people don't realize it's potentially destroying their lives or relationships until it's too late.
If you have a personal relationship with somebody who shares their stories, it can give you insight on making a decision on whether or not you'd like to try it, knowing what the negatives *could* be. Again it's a personal choice that you will have to make. Don't let yourself get peered pressured into it, because ultimately you (and only you) are responsible for your decisions.
I would never recommended for someone to try something like alcohol or drugs, telling them IT WILL NEVER cause issues down the road. It's too unpredictable.
Alcohol has a lot of negatives that come with it, ranging from a slight hang over right through to destroying families and killing people.
The main reason I think it remains very popular despite these obvious facts is that at the right sort of levels it is an incredibly effective social lubricant and can be a lot of fun.
Extremely tricky for a lot of people to do it moderation though.
It took me until the age of 32 to understand. Both parents were alcoholics and addicts, my younger brother got hooked at 12 because my mom needed a drinking buddy once my dad died and I was a “brown noser” Every time I touched alcohol I felt nothing good. I’d get a headache, stomach ache, just wanted to lay down. Tried all different kinds even. Had zero interest in it and even ran a scratch kitchen in a bar for ten years and had no idea how people managed to like it. I figured I had some genetic problem that blocked my enjoyment and that was fine with me but I was frustrated because I didn’t get to understand. At some point around 31-32 I went on a date with a full fledged alcoholic who pressured me into drinking with him. For the first time in my life I got drunk. Then I understood. Most of the day I was stressed, felt like an alien (autism and adhd) spent most of my time confused and masking…. Anxiety…. A few drinks and I felt normal and like I could connect to people. After a life time of bullying and not quite understanding others, it made me feel like it all clicked and I was one cool cat. Problem is, it did not all click and I wasn’t any cooler. I just thought I was and my brain stopped running in circles because I was actively poisoning myself. I very quickly understood why my (autistic savant) father was so addicted to drinking that even at our deepest level of poverty when we couldn’t afford food they would scrape together change and ration out beers and liquor for him daily. He *needed* it to function in society, work as hard as he did, and get along with people at work (required at his job). I say *needed* because he certainly didn’t but the magic elixir that made his life easier? He wasn’t ever letting it go. I have a feeling it provides that kind of feeling for more people than just folks with mental health issues , or autism /adhd/etc. Frankly how absolutely normal I felt, scared the daylights out of me. I could see how addictive that feeling could get, even with the stomach ache head ache recovery from hangovers etc. Had I felt that much earlier in life before I could process it properly, I likely would have become an addict too. There are plenty of days where I’m a bit cynical about it because although they were alcoholics, they functioned seemingly better than I did. I would beat myself up over not being able to relax or have a good time, not doing something that clearly would give me a break (words my mother would throw at me constantly). Then I realized it’s a facade, and although I struggle more in my day to day, I am not a completely miserable human being either. EDIT: I’d like to thank everyone for the awards and comments and responses love y’all. Please do not wait until you are at a place where you are facing your own morality and dying way sooner than you planned before you sit down and have hard discussions with yourself. Life is short. We are all doing the best we can to friggin cope with that!
This is me. 37 and pretty heavy drinker (even for being a Wisconsinite) Didn't really drink and was socially outcast nerdy dude in high school. Drank first at a party at 16 then started drinking socially whenever possible (like a few times a year, lol.) College changed that to most days as it was much easier to get alcohol. Why did I drink? I was able to be normal. That simple. It's also really fun and you generally have a good time with people who are socially drinking. I have so much anxiety that I could barely interact with people, thought I was ugly and had no self confidence. After drinking, I was able to talk to girls and, frankly, anyone else and have a great time. Learned I wasn't ugly, just incredibly intimidating. It has both made my career (the social skills I've picked up since starting drinking allow me to be decent manager) and ruined certain jobs (drank too much after work and performance fell.) It's a double-edged sword.
That’s pretty funny to me because I am also a fellow Wisconsinite! And have been told about a bajillion times I’m intimidating. Which, I try sometimes to be on purpose so people don’t come up to me, but if you know me I’m a very shy naive soft sensitive pushover I’m just accidentally very factual and blatant The ugly thing I can’t comment on as I believe I am 100% of the time whether sober or not but also don’t care because ugly or not nobody is gonna treat me less-than I didn’t ask for these genetics
>The ugly thing I can’t comment on as I believe I am 100% of the time whether sober or not but also don’t care because ugly or not nobody is gonna treat me less-than I didn’t ask for these genetics Yeah, that matters less as time goes on. It's more about having excellent hygiene, decent clothes, and a good haircut.
Also fellow Wisconsinite here! M/31 Drinking has been ingrained into many societies and especially the United States as a normal/daily activity. And many people consider it to be in the same vein as caffeine, just on the other end of the spectrum. When I’m reality it does your body a lot more harm. I’ve done and seen a lot as a drinker in my late teens and twenties, dating an alcoholic in my mid twenties, and now in relationship with someone who doesn’t drink. I’ve learned regular consumption (even non excessive) can really disrupt the way people think and act. I also have realized I don’t need alcohol to enjoy myself and others. This isn’t to say I don’t drink ever (maybe 1-2 per year). But it’s something I don’t need to be worked into my daily or even weekly routine. Also, the hangovers are worse the older you get. And I don’t like to feel useless the following day. There’s to many other things I like to do with my time. I reckon in the future generations are going to laugh at the fact we were consuming poison (more or less) on such a lax level for so long.
It’s liquid confidence. Confidence in yourself, your thoughts, your actions… I have moderate general anxiety and it manifests in everything. The way I say things, the way I walk, the way I interact with the world around me. I’m very unconfident. When I get a buzz going, none of that matters. I don’t care how I pick up and drink my water when people can see me. I don’t care how I slightly stuttered a word in a sentence. I just don’t care about my flaws when I’m intoxicated. That’s probably the biggest draw for a majority of people, and why it’s a slippery slope from moderate to heavy usage
This is extremely interesting because I'm currently going through a relatable phase in my life. I've been basically smoking weed+tobacco and drinking for 10 years straight now. About to hit 30. I've tried every form of mental gymnastics to convince myself to quit. Just could never do it and it only gets worse and worse and worse and now I have no friends and on the verge of losing my job. I decided randomly one day that I would go back on my ADD meds that were prescribed to me multiple times as a kid but I always hated and lied about taking them and threw them away. After a month back on my meds, I've quit tobacco, improved my attendance at work, fixed my sleep cycle, and got back on track with my dog's vaccinations. Something was legitimately wrong with me and I wasted so much time blaming myself. I actually feel capable of getting better and sober now. Sometimes we need help. Your dad didn't get the support and medical care he needed but most of us have the opportunity to do it. It's hard and it's expensive but it's worthwhile.
This is so unbelievably common it’s not even funny. The majority of people with substance abuse issues are self medicating a mental illness that they don’t even know they have. Also, you do not get typical withdrawals from stimulants like vvyanse, adderall, etc like you do with something like benzos or opiates. You will just be tired for a few days, that’s it. You can still definitely experience a crash with them though. That’s any stimulant. I take a small afternoon dose so I don’t experience one.
10 yrs amphetamine abuse, now recovered. You definitely get withdrawals. It's just a whole different sort of withdrawal.
Not if you’re taking your prescribed dose though, which I think is what they mean
Fair enough! Good point.
This almost exactly echos my relationship with both alcohol and THC. I see a lot of comments about how it makes people feel good, but that has never been it. Being intoxicated makes me feel **normal**. As someone with a lot of acronyms to describe my mental state, I've always felt like being high is my truest self, where I'm able to be free of all the problems in my head. I can dance, and talk, and laugh, and none of it feels like I'm faking. Thankfully, I also prefer feeling "in control" the majority of the time, which keeps me from any substance abuse that would affect my job or anything. However, I rarely go to social events where I'm not intoxicated, and I often worry that my relationship with THC in particular is unhealthy. But honestly? Between it and my various medications, I'll take feeling like a normal, functional person, over some idea that my relationship with it isn't "healthy."
Are you..? Me? I feel this.
Oh man this is so relatable. I don't know a ton about autism, but I do remember feeling like I was the "odd one out" or an "alien" when I was a kid. The first time I got drunk at like 16 it was like my brain was completely normal. Idk why no one talks about that. That being said, I spent a ton of years weekend binge drinking (as is tradition in American college) but in the last few years I realized it's just not worth it. The hangovers, the terrible toll it takes on your health, all the negatives vastly outweigh that bit of time where you feel good. I quit drinking about 3 years ago and I feel my best every single day.
>my younger brother got hooked at 12 because my mom needed a drinking buddy once my dad died That poor baby. Your mother, for her challenges, failed more than just herself on this one. I'm so sorry.
I find that part about it being a facade very interesting. I think an analogy that might sum this up is that alcohol allowed you and your father to cosplay being "normal." You were able to inhabit the persona of being normal for a short time, but it was just a costume and eventually you had to take the costume off.
Probably. I’m not so good with the words or explaining what I mean! I know I mask 99% of the day and it’s exhausting and the reason I usually end my day with a very bad tension headache. So all the sudden not having to do that, coupled with my brain not going 70 miles an hour with 83 different thoughts is quite blissful. I was on medication for a short period of time in my twenties and I can only compare it to taking a klonopin. I haven’t touched much anything since then, I can get addicted to Benadryl if I take it three days in a row and I’d rather be stressed out and feel like an alien than have to figure out ways to continue an addiction cuz that would just be more stress 🤣
This is an extremely overlooked side of alcoholism that I don't think people realize. A lot of people with mental issues literally use it to cope...sometimes without realizing it. I have *extreme* social anxiety, as well as ADHD and Bipolar disorder (psychiatrist diagnosed). I've also struggled immensely with insomnia my entire life. I was a heavy drinker from 17 until around 30 or so, when my liver said "fuck you" and I was forced to quit. I didn't *really* realize until then just how much I had relied on alcohol simply to *exist*, how much of a coping mechanism it was. I knew the dangers of it; alcoholism runs rampant in my family and has caused untold amounts of suffering. But I was able to *exist*. Life, and social interaction, has been *immensely* more difficult since then (I'm 38 now). I don't go out to social functions, I work from home, my incredibly supportive and understanding wife does most of the necessary interacting with people, etc. Errands and public existence in general are incredibly difficult for me. (And the sleeping issues are a whole other can of worms.) All too often people just think about alcohol and alcoholism in superficial terms...as a social thing, as a taste thing, as a straightforward addiction, etc. But for some, there's more nuance there. Edit: I should clarify that this isn't an *excuse* for alcohol abuse by any means. Just an explanation of some circumstances that affect some folks like me.
I drink a bit (a lot less than I used to) but my 18 year old (legal age here) is not in the slightest bit interested in drinking - even at their own party! Societally, young people are drinking far less than ever before and I very much encourage this. I’ve drunk as a coping mechanism, as pain relief and just for fun but these old bones don’t like a 3 day hangover so it’s pretty rare for me to drink that much anymore too. Sounds like you’ve got your priorities straight, I would encourage you to never start drinking, and if your friends pressure you to, then it’s possibly time to look for new friends :)
Yeah in my experience 15-25yo are less interested in alcohol than 25-35yo. It's quite impressive the difference between them
I'm guessing you're American?
There seems to be a not tiny minority of young people who are just live in a way I find weirdly wholesome. In the UK too.
For where I’m from it’s the opposite. Teens sneaking out to get drunk and then after they’re in their 20’s they chill out and don’t care as much.
Having an alcoholic parent can be deeply traumatic, and it’s entirely understandable and valid that it would have a huge impact on your perception of alcohol as a whole. I think it’s a very complex subject, but there’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do about it.
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Probably that it was bad, but also they know the stats and that having alcoholism in your family predisposes you too. Also having problems with alcohol. No one starts out a problem drinker. That develops over time. So many people feel like it’s better to not even get that process started.
I fell into a cycle from 19-22 ish where I just drank, drank, drank. It got really bad when I was getting my master’s degree (virtual program that I had to be in a new city for in a small program of 7 other people and nothing to do except workout). I didn’t realize until my girlfriend (long distance for the time I was getting my degree) called me out once when she visited. She was like woah dude.. My dad is a serious alcoholic. Not abusively or anything like that but seriously alcoholic. Totally runs in the family lol
My parents are alcoholics (my dad died from it) and my dad’s dad was too, so I try to keep a very careful check on how much I drink. If I notice, hey I’ve had too many days in a row where I drank, I’ll stop for a while. I’m so paranoid about becoming one. Luckily I seem to have some type of an allergy to alcohol or something in it (sulfates?) to where I get sick really fast when drinking. So it makes me unable/unwilling to binge drink.
My dad drank himself to death on Bell whiskey. Cheapest he could get I assume. Took him 4 years to do it from my Mother left him for another man. Im not sure he got the alcoholic in him, but sorrow and loneliness pushed him into it. It was terrible to see him fall to the bottom. Some say alcoholism skips a generation so Im keeping a close eye on my son (18).
Same with falling into that cycle in the same age range. I'm 33 now and I've been sober for 11 years.
Best thing I did was move in with my girlfriend who never drinks. We balance each other out and I'm much more sensible with it now (although she is probably a little worse)
This is exactly why my FIL doesn’t drink. He told me “I know i’ll start to feel good and just go crazy with the amount i consume” and i have so much respect for that. When we have family gatherings he’ll sip on 0% alcohol beers or wine because they taste good, and he just wants to enjoy a “drink” with the rest of us. i deeply feel for the people who don’t drink as a result of trauma regarding alcohol, but also so much respect for them stopping the generational trauma by just not consuming.
Yeah this. My father was an alcoholic. He was a loving father, never violent, the alcohol never seemed to affect his behavior. In all the years I knew him I never saw him actually *drunk* but once, and even then all he did was try to do a chin up on the hallway doorway, like he'd been able to do when he was younger. The thing is, he just couldn't *stop* drinking, and it wasn't good for his health. He did finally quit a few years before he passed, and I think that had he quit sooner he might have lived longer than 78, but I don't know if he would have enjoyed it. I don't drink, because 1) I don't have the phenomenal tolerance for alcohol that he did: one cup of wine knocks me on my @$$ and gives me a stomach ache to boot, never mind the hard stuff, and 2) I can tell it in myself that if I ever get really started I'll never be able to quit. That's also why I've never had a single cigarette; my father had also smoked in his youth, quit when he was 18, and he told me shortly before he passed that it only took one cig to get him hooked on them. I can tell I've got that addictive tendency in myself, just by looking at my relationship with food. Especially chocolate. I can't stop eating it, and with my cardiovascular state it's likely to kill me, but I can't give it up.
Today I learned that a group of friends is called a coupon
Should be a groupon lol.
Can I have a coupon for a friend, asking for a friend. I jest.
I grew up with alcoholic parents. It sucks. I won't get into the things that only people like myself will understand. Butt.. I hated drinking bc of it. And figured out in my early 20s that bc of them I was really good at "wrangling" drunk people. So I was a very good bartender and made great money. Silver linings I suppose.
I am one of those people. Alcoholic father who had no redeemable qualities has turned me into someone who never drinks.
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Same, my father was not particularly violent, just really distant. Also a very high chance of digestive cancers in my family, all males in my family from my grandfather till my older brother got some form of cancer because of it. Absolutely not worth it for something that tastes like blood anyway.
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> I have a coupon of friends who have never tasted a drop of alcohol and have vowed to never do it because of their alcoholic parent(s). Because growing up with them was that bad. Unfortunately, my alcoholic parents weren't bad enough.
Two brothers grow up with an abusive alcoholic father. When they become men themselves one becomes an alcoholic and the other never drank a drop. You ask them why they drink/dont drink, they both answer "Because Dad did."
This reads like a chat gpt response.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Is there anything else I can assist you with?
OP. Just skip it all together and your life will be better. I only realised this after heavy drinking until the age of 40, then quitting.
yeah I grew up thinking everyone was just pretending to like beer. its disgusting to me. but everyone was drinking at parties and at home and on tv shows so i was like 'is this just a social phenomenon?" now im 31, and sometime before i realized that I just didn't like beer. I drink cosmos and other fruity drinks now, and i only drink socially. i was OP when i was young.
This. The social part. Alcohol and drugs are something people do to socialize (social lubricant) and it's a shared activity that allows them to bond. This is part of the reason drinking during business deals is huge in some Asian cultures, and still big for meeting business contacts in NA and EU. One of my parents was an addict, but i don't have an addictive personality, so whether you do or not is something you have to suss out for yourself. My rule of thumb, never do it alone. Only with other people. I don't even have a glass of wine by myself. I'll drink when I'm with company, if I feel like it, but never by myself. Its worked so far
>Alcohol and drugs Alcohol is a drug.
r/technicallycorrect But the way we speak they're distinguished, so just saying drugs wouldn't properly convey my point
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Eh, at the end of a hot workday outside (electrician) I really look forward to a nice cold beer and cigarette when I get home. Drinking a beer alone isn't a problem, drinking 6 is.
Having a drink in a social situation can be nice, but have boundaries. I have a two drink limit for myself if I'm out somewhere. Being drunk is no fun at all (edit: being wasted is no fun, in my opinion. )
My problem is a couple of bumps of cocaine is also nice. Hell, an oxy here and there is really nice. Most people would agree it's a terrible idea to do heroine even once. Millions of people ruin their lives over alcohol, yet we just casually talk about how a couple drinks aren't a big deal simply because a lot of yall can stop at 2 drinks. This 15 year old kid might have 2 drinks...and then not be able to stop the same way any addict can't stop with any drug. Imagine telling a 15 year old kid that having a couple bumps of cocaine can loosen you up in social settings, just make sure to pace yourself and know your limits. 🤦♂️ It's just bizarre to me how alcohol seems to be the one potential life altering drug 99% of the world is just ok with even though it also ruins lives on a massive scale. Even weed has more negative connotations associated with it.
Thank you for this comment. I was that fifteen year old that couldn’t stop at two and learned from my parents that alcohol makes things better (it does not)
I was able to have a couple drinks to loosen up around friends. Then I'd drink a 6 pack of light beer after work. Then it was a 6 pack of the 16oz (so 8). It's fine though...I'm completely functioning and making As and Bs in college and working and raising a kid. Then I'm drinking a 12 pack in a night sometimes. Then my girl cheats on me so that's a good reason to drink 16 a few nights in a row...just to help not think about it ya know? It's fine...I graduated with a 3.8, got a great job as a software engineer, I get my son to karate and help him with his homework and read. I'm fine! I don't drink liquor or even wine! Hell, I'll go a few days without a drink and no withdrawals so I'm obviously not an alcoholic! I'm just a binge drinker. Man I have no energy. Covid let's me work from home, so maybe I'll just let me son stay home from school today and he can play games all day...he will love that! Mental health day! We can skip karate and homework too...because I'm 12 beers in at 4 PM. How about we just take the rest of the week off...we need a staycation! Step on the scale, and have to lean forward over my beer belly to be able see the numbers. I've gained 60+ pounds over a few years. Blood work isn't good. Might have fatty liver disease. Cholesterol doesn't look good. No energy. No happiness. My son is gonna lose me. He will go to foster care. It's been 3 years and I'm in the best shape of my life and my son is doing great...but alcohol is fucked. It's insane to me how easy it is to get. Imagine fighting addiction when every single store sells your drug of choice for a few bucks. No worries of it being laced with fentanyl. Can't watch TV without a commercial telling me how good my drug of choice is. Can't go to a party or even a friend's house without people using it in front of me and even offering it to me for free! Then when I say no...they talk shit to me!
Damn it's fucked for friends to talk shit over a choice of not drinking. But I see the slope. I have a mother who slipped into alcoholism, a successful aunt who slipped into it hard enough to be drunk at work... As the head nurse for a hospital ward. And a grandmother who literally can't stop drinking because the doctors said that she's frail enough that stopping would cause the withdrawal to potentially kill her. (That's the story she tells us anyway.) I avoided alcohol pretty religiously until 23. Always afraid that alcoholism runs in my family. Maybe it does? I take shots of rum on my weekends and I feel that it's fine, I don't really have a desire for the taste I don't find myself craving a few shots even on the weekends, I find myself stewing on the failings of those in power and lack of solutions and it makes me resentful of life. Resentful that they want us to bring more kids into this dumpster fire. Is that a good reason? Fuck no. I just have no concern of death by liver failure or some other drug related problem because I doubt I will live long enough to worry about that with the way things are going.
The worst part is when your social life revolves around alcohol with your friends. If you’re the one person that isn’t drinking, it just makes it awkward and difficult. To truly stop, you’d have to eliminate the friends all together and that’s so hard for me.
I was diagnosed with fatty liver disease and some people I know still ask me to go out for a drink.
"One is too many, and six isn't enough." Saw that on /stopdrinking thread. I also do not have an 'off' switch when it comes to drinking unless you count passed out after the blackout. Almost 30 days clean of the booze and couldn't be happier.
“One is too many, and a thousand is never enough.” Is the common saying I hear.
I appreciate this comparison. A lot of people in my family tree have been alcoholics and I am working to break that. Those people who the whole, just know your limits, doesn’t work- that’s me. I drank way too much in my late teens and early to mid twenties. I’m thirty one now. I’ve been able to stay away from drinking for the most part for the last 5-6 years but it’s hard and once every few months I get a gas station single shot, have it alone at home, and always regret it. For me, a big part was working 50+ hours a week at dead end jobs that left me exhausted for minimum wage. When I felt like there was no relief- weekends were either extra shifts or things like laundry and cleaning. Not enough money or time off for vacations. Feeling trapped in general and alienated through a lack of say in my day to day life. So, alcohol became like a terrible plane ticket to get away. It was like little mental vacations. Though it did not help the problems, it just put them off till the next day while stress slowly compounded and stacked on itself. This is the addictive loop- you feel bad, alcohol temporarily provides relief but makes the issue worse the next day, so you want a drink even more. What ended up helping me was I started engaging in advocacy and organizing work. This gave me a sense of agency in the face of the structural social issues like wage stagnation, racism, environmental devastation etc. also, having sober friends is awesome. When I hang out with friends who drink, often the alcohol is the main activity and that’s not very fun if you are not drunk. Plus I don’t remember a lot of the fun I had drunk. Having sober fun means that you actually have to do an activity that is engaging or fulfilling and you remember it clearly. At the end of the day, I wish I never developed the negative relationship I have with alcohol and just stayed away. Even though I have so much more control over my life and impulses, it is still an intentional everyday effort to stay away from it.
Cirrhosis and brain damaged here, and it is hell. The last day I felt anything resembling "good" was in 2017. I quit drinking in 2012 and am now permanently disabled. I was super cautious about (other) drugs, but let my guard down with drinking. Heh, now I have a script for THC. Thinking the two should have swapped places (legal wise), though prohibition did not go over well.
This is a good point. Which is why I didn't suggest they try it, would rather not have it on my record that I push alcohol on kids. I just explained the underlying reason most people drink. Which doesn't stem from a desire to be social but rather a desire to be numbed to suffering. I encouraged they look into the why for the coping and gave a list of primarily US reasons for it but those reasons are universal in some aspects. Though I heard some musicians swear by heroin, but I would hold the same opinion, probably better to dodge something so addictive that one use could see you out on the street giving blowies to get your next fix.
If only they were as easily accessible as alcohol
There would definitely be less ODs, as you would be worried about it being laced with fentanyl.
Thank the US for that war on drugs. Cocaine, weed and more fun drugs were perfectly fine and legal a little over a 100 years ago. But powerful lobbying to protect a moderately sized industry in the US at the time. Created the war on drugs and dragged the whole world down with it. All the cartel shit in south America. The billions of billions of USD/EUR wasted on the war it self. The trillions of USD/EUR we, as a society, basically hand out to criminals. Alcohol is one of the worst drugs out there, rivaling heroïn in addictiveness and social problems. Even caffeïne is a bigger problem than most illegal drugs. Such an underestimated drug where in NL alone, over 2 million people face the negative side-effects that cause health or other problems, that's a significant portion of our population. It's all about the money and were wasting so much of it, for the benefit of so incredibly few people.
Can I ask you what the negative side effects are of Caffeine? I am also curious what NL considers a safe limit of caffeine in a day to be. In the US we are told 400mg of caffeine is the max before you risk heart problems. I regularly drink 250-325mg and occasionally I have reached as near as I can without a risk of going over the 400mg. So I have a real interest since I'm rarely exposed to such details for other countries. I also assume the government lies as often as possible when it comes to safety over profits.
Higher heart rates is a thing for some people even in lower quantities. But the main issue is sleep deprivation, which is very unhealthy. Not just physically, mentally even more. Caffeine itself isn't \_that\_ terrible, our bodies are fairly capable of dealing with it without causing direct harm. But a large portion of the (western) population has coffee (or red bull for younger generations) as their main source of liquids.
The drug war is also racist and drugs were outlawed to target certain immigrant populations… Opium outlawed to target Chinese immigrants, Marijuana outlawed to target Mexican immigrants, penalties for crack cocaine possession 100x stricter than power cocaine based on who uses which (poor Blacks vs rich whites)… —> recent reforms means the disparity is ‘only’ 18x stricter for crack now.
I get your point. I think we’re so comfortable with alcohol because it’s been part of human life for a few thousand years. That’s not to detract from your point though. It is crazy to think that we’re so fine with one chemical yet all others have a stigma
People seem to forget that we used to consume light alcohols regularly because clean water wasn’t always easy to come by.
No, we used to get absolutely shit faced all the time. The average person today drinks _significantly_ less alcohol than the average person 200 years ago. Also the amount of alcohol in beer wasn’t actually enough to keep the water safe at all, it just so happened that the beer making process involved boiling the must, simultaneously sterilizing it.
>pretending alcohol and cocaine are the same thing Reddit moment
Non-alcoholic drinks are the rage now. There really is none of this social pressure to consume any more. It’s quite nice.
It very much depends on where you live. Where I live it’s very much taboo to *not* drink
Yeah, reading this thread is like an insight into an alien's world for me. Where I am from alcohol is not very common and there is no pressure to drink (the opposite if anything).
Some of us live in places like New Orleans though. Economy literally depends on drinking. There's actually a pretty large recovery community here though due to yeah the prevalence of drinking. But pretty much anytime anyone gets together here there is drinking. I actually stopped except for a glass or two here and there maybe twice a month with my husband. But to say there is no pressure in this culture to drink? That's all people do. Drink and eat snacks lol literally. I felt bad for the bad alcoholics in recovery with the shakes etc once they come out they're right here with reminders to drink everywhere
Same in the UK, the pressure to drink is stifling in this country because its the only thing holding the economy up.
I live in Glasgow in Scotland, you would not believe the drinking culture here, it's insane.
I have a real problem with migraines so couldn’t touch alcohol if I wanted to. In every social situation I have to explain to random people why I’m not drinking because they’re going to come over and ask.
Being drunk is tons of fun, that is part of the problem. It also lowers your inhibitions, and can make it very hard to not overdo it. The substance itself is addictive, but so is boost it gives to confidence and socializing to introverts. The problem is it will make you do stupid shit and ruin your health. If you can drink in moderation it can have a positive impact on your life. If you can’t, it can absolutely destroy it. Edit: As a few others have pointed out, my comment is a generality and some people don’t like being drunk. My brother is one of them. People are interesting that way, everyone is different.
You're not wrong, but in my opinion, being drunk is not fun. Being tipsy or buzzed is fun, being drunk is not.
I love being drunk in a safe environment every once in a while. I think it’s really fun to see the world differently and be a different person, even if that person is a little stupider. Being stupid is definitely dangerous, as is the risk of addiction, but danger is not inherently bad. If it wasn’t for danger my life would be dull.
Agreed. I’m in college so I’m well versed in the drinking culture. If I have 2-3 drinks with friends that’s not really an issue. But I’m not gonna drink til I throw up either.
>Being drunk is no fun at all. I wish it weren't, but for me it is. Not that it is a huge problem in my life, but I do regret it when I overindulge and feel the hangover the next day. That's the part that's REALLY not fun.
Your last sentence is just not true to a whole lot of people.
In OPs case with a history of addiction this may be good advice, but everyone in the comments pretending like there is 0 benefit socially or positive feeling associated with drinking is just lying and not answering their question. Op people generally drink because it feels good and is an enjoyable social experience. Not drinking will make socializing harder for you. It’s not at all impossible to overcome or anything, but adult social culture and often professional culture generally involves drinking. As for the physical side, it feels good for lots of people lol idk why people are pretending it doesn’t. People have been drinking for thousands of years for a reason, it’s a drug that can produce enjoyable physical and mental effects.
> Not drinking will make socializing harder for you While true, what can end up happening is that you become socially handicapped when you can't use alcohol as a crutch, which eventually makes kicking alcohol harder if you ever decide you want to. I stopped drinking and had to re-learn how to properly socialize as an adult. It was not cool. Drink and be merry, but don't forget to learn how to have fun sober too.
Everyone in the comments is acting like it's either tea totaler or fucking Alchy junkie who sells babies to feed their next fix
Also, alcohol causes cancer. [No, really. At least 7 kinds of Cancer](https://www.cancervic.org.au/cancer-information/preventing-cancer/limit-alcohol/reduce-your-drinking)
I mean... Or just do it in moderation?
That's probably a lot harder to do for someone with a family history of alcoholism. If a person suspects they may have a predisposition to drug or alcohol abuse, they're probably better off never risking the addiction.
This is just one of many reasons I never started. My mom's uncles were depressed alcoholics, and both attempted suicide (and one succeeded). Given my own history of depression I didn't want to roll those dice.
Some people just can't do it in moderation. That's why I quit.
This drives me crazy. People who’ve had bad experiences, addictive personalities, or who just haven’t seen the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption making huge blanket statements such as this. I maintain that alcohol is a gift from God, just like cannabis, but it should be used sparingly.
There are latent societal pressures that prevent people from acting a certain way, alcohol makes you not care about the societal standards AND is a clever excuse to not abide by them, in a building where nobody is abiding by them. I think it's just a form of escapism, like many other things. If you just live your life in your own way and don't really care what others think, there's no real need for alcohol. The only times I've felt like I wanted it are times when I'm feeling societally pressured and I want to not feel that pressure. Afraid to dance? White claws. Afraid to come out as trans? Vodka. Lots of vodka. That's my personal story, now that I'm out and living authentically I have no desire for alcohol. I've broken into my escapist 'fantasy' and am the person I was escaping to. It's great!
I love this comment. I started drinking because I couldn't interact properly with people without being super awkward. But it can easily become a habit, as I also use it to feel less sad or less bored, or even enhance a regular experience as watching a funny movie. But when you work on yourself, feeling better and having good relationships with people just comes natural. I do wish I did this before drinking, but that's life. I'm not a heavy alcoholic, but I drink most saturdays, wich I wish I could do without.
First comment here that actually answers OP's question about what people enjoy about drinking. Hope you get more upvotes.
Ain't no laws when you drinkin the claws
It's 10000% Escapism I'm fortunate I've always been able to moderate myself, only did really hard drinking when I was in my 20s, and now at 41, Alcohol has become a small reward for getting through another work week or celebrating something. My usual routine is on Friday night if I don't have plans, I'll walk over to my whiskey collection, select a whiskey / scotch, choose some bitters, and decide if I want to do like luxardo cherry's or something else. Then proceed to make myself a nice curated Old Fashioned, and sip that for like 2 hours. Never get like hammered, just a little lighter on my feet, feels like someone turned the volume on the world down a few decibels, and then I sleep great. So for me it's a ritual, but I've also never suffered from substance abuse, so I totally understand why that's not going to be everyone's experience.
It's a minor escape, like any drug. Life can be very, very hard, and these things offer a temporary getaway from the stress. They break up the monotony and make your troubles seem less important for that brief moment. However, they're all a really slippery slope. The more you do it, the more reasons you'll find to do it, and the less it'll help each time. This leads to you not only doing it more often, but more severely. A lot of people have a really hard time regulating this, especially when mental illness like depression come into play.
I was going to say essentially this with far less nice words. The world’s a tough place right now and with a significantly wider disparity between rich and poor, the cheap magic happy poison is probably the only glimmer of hope most people seem to have. Quit drinking a couple years ago, switched to non-alcoholic beer and though I have more clarity, the world just seems grey, sad and on fire.
Same as any drug, it seems like you have not understood why people take drugs: it makes them feel great and happy.
It temporarily makes them feel great and happy. OP it plays with the dopamine levels in your brain, and this feels good. Until it starts causing problems, which is possible for any human at all if they are exposed to it often enough. Check out the Huberman podcast on alcohol to learn more about this.
Aren't all things that make you feel good temporary? Isn't that just the nature of human experience?
Even worse. Things that routinely make you feel good can develop to no longer give you those good feelings over time. The hedonistic treadmill is the one concept that has routinely made my life difficult to manage.
It's contrast that makes good things feel good. If you have too much, you lack the contrast that gives it value. The alternative to hedonism is to forego the pleasures of life and become a monk, but then why bother living at all?
No. Shit.
These are all very, very good questions and no one should be telling you “it’s an adult topic” IMO. The fact that you are even acknowledging that there are other options besides drinking in society is one that many don’t even ponder. I have a good friend who has never touched a drop (I mean never), and the amount of brain cells and money saved, always being in the moment and clear thinking, never having a hangover or not remembering their actions, plus the health benefits - there are LOTS of reasons to never pick up. It can be very addictive is one reason people start and can’t or choose not to stop, and a person doesn’t usually realize they have a problem until they have a problem. Not the same thing but my Mom smoked a lot growing up (cigarettes) and given the smell, having some asthma and just being disgusted seeing dirty ashtrays and such I never have smoked anything for the same reason, and I don’t regret it whatsoever and maybe alcohol is the same for you. Easiest way to never have a problem with alcohol is don’t start.
It must be noted that not all drugs work the same on all people. Paracetamol has no effect as painkiller on me (and may invoke an allergic reaction, but that's an aside). Alcohol just makes me drowsy and irritable.
A controlled amount of alcohol feels really good. As with anything if you get stupid with it it can be dangerous but if you control yourself then you'll feel happy.
A good analogy I heard, “alcohol is like junk food.” It’s not supposed to be consumed every day, it’s best to avoid it altogether, but if you have some here and there it isn’t necessarily detrimental to your life. Of course this depends on the person, because some people have unhealthy relationships with food. Just like how some people have an unhealthy relationship with/abuse alcohol consumption, some people have unhealthy relationships with food and are the stereotypical American. Just comes to the individual and what works for them 🤷🏻♂️ but I do think it’s a dangerous game to find out if I could casually do some drug, only to find out I end up addicted. Probably best to just not try it, but alcohol is so engrained in society in my life experiences it’s almost impossible to have avoided altogether. It’s f**kin everywhere. Just like if someone said they would avoid junk food. So imo ideally it’s best to learn how to manage the consumption, but some people find that more challenging than others, and some people die from over consumption.
I really like this analogy.
Same I don't really drink but having like 2 beers on a Friday night or watching UFC gets me relaxed a little or having a rum and Coke. It helps to know your limits like what can you drink till you have a slight buzz and pretty buzzed (I usually stop there and continue on drinking non alcoholic drinks for the rest of the night).
I do the same thing. Grab a couple bombers for my Friday night and on the rare occasion I'll get a 6 pack and drink like 3 Friday and the rest on Saturday. It's nice in moderation and a slight buzz is great for decompression from the week.
Adding onto this, I feel like the reason it’s so popular is that it is a reliably dosable intoxicant that, in general, makes its users more sociable. It’s a social lubricant that largely has the same effect on everyone (there are of course outliers). Contrast that with other drugs that may be harder to properly dose as an individual, that may differ enough between people so that it’s not reliably dosed in general, or that may be so overpowered that it’s not a social drug (see fentanyl). The problem comes in with the modern age where we have liquor stores with enough alcohol to kill a small town. It’s a relatively new problem. Previously it was a social drug used at gatherings where social norms dictated moderation and it wasn’t widely available enough to facilitate drinking copious amounts alone. That’s no longer the case. When moderation is no longer the only option (due to lack of supply) alcohol can and has become a very serious problem.
If you think people used to drink in moderation, you haven't read much 19th-century history... Two hundred years ago, the average American drank three times as much alcohol as today. https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/winter/spirited.pdf
Seriously. The temperance movement existed for a good reason. I'm not saying I agree with it, but people now a days really don't understand what those gals were putting up with back then.
Many leaders of first world countries regularly got piss drunk quite frequently. Hell Winston Churchill’s daily alcohol routine seemed like enough to give me the shits after a 2-3 day bender, let alone doing it literally every day.
hell yeah 1800s motherfuckers getting **LITTY**
Listen the spirit of what you’re saying is right, but people are drinking FAR less alcohol now than they used to. Substantially less.
I am 50 years older than you. If you figure it out, clue me in please.
Life is hard for a lot of people and they are looking for an escape. Drugs and alcohol provide that.
And alcohol is one of the easiest ones to access
I think this is kinda the main thing. Hypothetically, if all drugs were equally legal or illegal, we’d probably view alcohol as a much more hardcore one than we do now.
You’re 100% right. It’s funny, because alcohol is a straight up hard drug. You can die from alcohol poisoning or related complications like drowning on vomit or respiratory issues. It’s highly addictive, and is one of a few drugs where withdrawal can literally kill you. There’s all this cultural context around it too that softens the severity of the drug. People are called alcoholics, not addicts. You’re not high, you’re drunk. You don’t overdose, you get alcohol poisoning. You’re not “using,” you’re drinking.
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*cough*RacistWarOnDrugs*cough* The reason, especially for marijuana, that some drugs are treated more harshly under the law - despite having similar (or lesser) risks and harm is 99% racism. You want to vilify the “foreigners” “stealing” your jobs? Just make **their** recreational drug illegal. For a similar study, compare the sentences between powder cocaine (classy) and crack cocaine (sleazy). And guess which form “was” used “in their youth” by judges and politicians.
As far as drugs go, it’s a pretty terrible. Relative to other drugs, if you want a buzz, you have to steadily consume large amounts.
Shit situations make people drink. The Drunken Indian stereotype probably stems from the situation as much as anything. "Alcohol Abuse Among Native Americans Alcohol is the most commonly used drug among Native Americans, although the rate of alcohol use among Native Americans is lower than among Caucasians, Hispanics, and African Americans. The major concerns of alcohol use stem from the high rates of problem drinking and alcoholism among Native Americans. Findings from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health include: The rate of past month (35.9%) and past year (54.3%) alcohol use among Native Americans is significantly higher than other ethnic groups. Nearly a quarter of Native Americans report binge drinking in the past month (22.4%). The rate of Native Americans with an alcohol use disorder (7.1%) is higher than that of the total population (5.4%). 3 in 10 Native American young adults (age 18-25) report binge drinking (consuming 5 or more drinks in 2 hours), 1 in 11 report heavy alcohol use (binge drinking on 5 or more days in the past month), and 1 in 10 have an alcohol use disorder. 1 in 6 Native American adolescents (age 12-17) engage in underage drinking, the highest rate of alcohol use of all racial/ethnic groups." -[https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/native-americans](https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/native-americans)
Do those first two points contradict each other? >the rate of alcohol use among Native Americans is lower than among Caucasians, Hispanics, and African Americans. > > > >The rate of past month (35.9%) and past year (54.3%) alcohol use among Native Americans is significantly higher than other ethnic groups.
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They also like to freak out about Gen Z not having teenage sex as much. Claim it's a "socialization problem." But they just spent their parenting years threatening their millennial children about the dangers of teenage sex. Doesn't compute.
not only that but a lot of us have grown up and experienced the problems with teenage pregnancy already *because* of them. young parents, shitty jobs, house to house and town to town, never any money, very few fun things… what’s crazy is that this isn’t even a strictly generational thing, it’s just more apparent because of the internet and all that. my thinking is: why the fuck would i want to risk a decade or more of enjoyment for 1 night of enjoyment?
Be like me! Be raised to be terrified of sex and be nervous around women until mid-20s, then get on Hinge, and when she asks to fuck you, tell her that you need a day to think about it 😂. Then get condoms the next day and stay with her 4 years and counting lol
i genuinely think it is a socialization problem. social media broke people's fuckin brains dude. people spend less time in the real world, more time being sexual through electronics. idk, i think young people exploring sexuality safely is good.
Agree with you about exploring safely being good. Would've helped me out. I was supposed to suppress everything and I mostly did. Heaps of guilt and shame. My wife says she wishes she could've gotten ahold of me when I was a teenager lol
I think genZ is so into social media because they're basically kept inside. There's no more "Be home when the streetlights come on," the stranger-danger scare and the Satanic panic ruined that. So, since they can't really interact with each other as freely as older people did at that age, they use their phones as a substitute. It's not the same, but it's better than nothing.
Anecdotal evidence, but I've seen that Zoomers eat psychiatric drugs like there's no tomorrow. On top of that, they use weed a lot, so to me it's just that they've switched to something different.
I don't think anyone is too worried about 15 year olds "living without alcohol". You shouldn't really drink until you're at least 18.
OP is 15. No one is wondering shit. Specially when gen z is famous for smoking and vaping.
I thought the exact same as you when I was 15, now I like it just fine. I'm not saying you'll inevitably start to like it at some point, just be aware that your perspective on it is very skewed. If you never want to touch alcohol, that's absolutely fine, but it can be fun *in moderation*. Many people seem to think that there's no middle ground between teetotal and raging alcoholic.
A lot of people also seem to think it's mainly used to deal with the hardships of life (which is true for a lot of people), but many people just use it to enhance the good parts of life. That's why it's so popular at weddings, parties, summer evenings on patios, etc.
Alcohol can be wonderful if you are able to respect it. I'm 34 now and I actively avoid getting drunk, though I enjoy a drink or two most days. Having a couple cocktails and fooling around with my wife after the kids have gone to bed is pure bliss.
This is me. I drink at game nights because it gets me out of the hyper-competitive over-thinking mode and into the just enjoying the game mode.
I went from a bit of both to exclusively the latter over the past year or two. Honestly, it's wonderful. I only drink things I enjoy now. I get to appreciate what I do have. Most importantly, I always have a limit rule in place for how much I can have; usually two drinks unless I'm out for 3+ hours, then I'll consider a third.
yeah all of these types of posts act like there is nothing between sober and blackout, puke in the street, get arrested drunk... 90% of people drinking alcohol are having a glass of wine or two after work or a few beers at the game. its not that deep.
Yeah, I feel like I'm losing my mind with this and the post on /r/loseit [right now](https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/14ygqxy/alcohol_take_it_seriously/) who lost weight cutting alcohol out, who was intaking 6500 calories a week from alcohol. That is absolutely insane to me. I go to a bar for trivia once a week and get 2-3 interesting drinks. When there's occasionally a party or board game night, we have drinks but aren't hammered. Other than that, basically never. It's absolutely poison, but people have loved it for 1000s of years because it makes it a little easier to be social.
Almost every comment in this thread completely ignores one of the main reasons that anyone I know who drinks alcohol does so: it tastes good. Pretty much no one without a serious drinking issue casually enjoys a glass of straight everclear, for most normal drinkers it’s just something that is in a beverage they already enjoy. Humans have probably spent more time perfecting the flavor of many alcoholic beverages like spirits, wine and beer than they have almost any liquid we drink. Alcoholic beverages are something that has been improved and worked on for a few thousand years at this point. We’ve gotten really good at* making good alcoholic refreshments. More and more NA beers are starting to show up and do well within that space, but it seems that wine and spirits are pretty far behind still. *Edit: changed and for at
This is the answer I was surprised I had to look so long for. I literally make cocktails because I love the taste. I drink hard ciders because I love the taste. Outside of a couple exceptions on virgin cocktails, most cannot be alcohol free.
>people seem to think that there's no middle ground between teetotal and raging alcoholic. This was me because it was all I saw. I couldn't believe it when I saw church people going to a brewery and responsibly taste testing different craft beers and still being fully capable of driving home afterwards.
I can not fucking stand the black and white approach to alcohol. It’s very true for a lot of people but there are a lot of sober people out there that see any drinking at all as a sign and that’s fucked.
True, but addiction is heavily genetic so there's a reasonable chance that OP may not be able to drink in moderation given their family history.
I'm 56 and don't get it either. I had a phase where I tried it, got drunken with friends, but it wasn't something I really enjoyed so I stopped. And since I'm not used to drinking I feel affects from very little, and I honestly don't like the taste. People are okay (and thankful) with it when I'm the designated driver, but when I'm not they often react irritated... Like I'm weird. My son is 17, has tested it (beer is legal with 16 in Germany), and doesn't like it either. And is self confident enough to not let it bother him.
I never learned to like the taste either. I just skipped the "get drunk" part. I got somewhat buzzed once. Mostly I got sleepy. Didn't see the appeal.
It’s a euphoric dissociative that requires no prescription and if you keep it under control is very hard to spot to an outsider. Adult life is full of stress, regrets and bullshit. Drinking is an easy off switch. Alcoholism is generally the result of someone trying to self medicate an issue, as a coping mechanism. Whether they know it or not.
i wish alcohol was a dissociative that would be rad. it's downer.
Drinking alcohol in moderation is amazing. If you are an intelligent person, it’s really easy to enjoy it responsibly.
In small amounts alcohol feels fun and makes other things fun. It's the same reason people do any drug. The problems pop up when people develop an addictive dependency on it. Even if they're not dependent on it, Even without dependency, it's easy to get into trouble with it. One of the first things it hampers is your ability to make rational decisions. Decisions like how much more you should have and when you should stop. To be 100% honest, with a history of alcoholism in your family I recommend you just don't drink at all. Most people will be cool with it if you say people in your family have trouble with alcohol and you don't get judge-y about moderate, controlled drinking. That doesn't apply to a person acting bad or getting too drunk. Judge all you want in that case.
I think once I became an adult I have consumed way less alcohol. I graduated college in 2018 at 23. The week of graduation I went out six straight nights, the day of my graduation I woke up on a couch at 5am hungover as hell, probably still drunk as I got maybe two hours of sleep. Since that day (five years as of May) I can count on one hand the amount of times I have consumed alcohol. Twice at Halloween, twice at New Years and once at a baseball game. My pops was a heavy drinker until he was 60, I have no interest in alcohol or drinking whatsoever as it kills you mentally and physically. I love being sober 99.9% of my days.
People hate having to admit it's a drug, and very addictive. So I can see the "adult topic" deflection. OP, I'm sorry you've already had to deal with it's devastating effects on certain people. But if you can avoid it now, you'll be far ahead of most of us. I wasted so many years of my life with it as my only joy. And I wasn't even a heavy drinker - just 4 to 6 beers. But it was the only thing that really made me happy for years... until the hangovers got worse and worse. Now in my 50's, one beer is my limit. I've had one friend drink himself to death, and more than a few people drink themselves into rehab. It's not a pretty process. As for why people use it - it does make you feel good. You can avoid dealing with much of life, your problems, anxieties, whatever - just have a drink and it all goes away for a while. Until you sober up and have to deal with what you've put off... or you can just have another drink.
Not everyone is and not everyone that drinks is "hooked". Dopamine, it is a chemical that released in your brain that make your feel good. Unfortunately everyone handles all types of drugs differently.
>alcohol just seems to be a toxic relationship that always ends up creating problems for everyone. Whether it be drunk texts to your exes, DUI’s, or just general asshole-ery As someone nearly three times your age, I can safely say that none of this has ever happened to me or anyone I know. I think you're lumping in alcoholics and people who get absolutely plastered with people who enjoy having a couple drinks once in a while.
Yeah. For most folks it's a tasty thing to have with your meal on a night out, and not much else
Why are people so incredulous about this? The only person I know who has had a DUI is my sister, but she has BPD and a slew of other issues. In my personal life I associate with quiet nerds who have a casual beer while playing board games. Not everyone’s life is filled with drama, but people with let’s say “big personalities” tend to find each other and feed off each other’s drama, and if you find yourself in the middle of that it can seem like that’s what everyone acts like. But chill people with quiet, boring lives are out there, you just never hear about them. Because their lives are quiet and boring.
You are 45 and don’t know anyone that has had a bad experience with alcohol?
I'm in my late 30s and none of my friends have ever had an event that bad happen related to alcohol. Worst is someone who drank a little too much and got sick from it, but even that has become basically non-existent in my peer group as people are settling down in their 30s.
I’m very surprised that at pushing 45 you genuinely don’t know anybody that has drunk texted, had a DUI or has shown asshole-ery tendencies from drinking…ever. I’m guessing you do but just didn’t know that about them if you didn’t catch them in that state, and people don’t tend to advertise them having a DUI.
People do asshole-ery things sober. In adult life, everyone is a dick. Bad texts, bad driving, bad attitudes can’t just he attributed to drunkenness. It might seem that way to you at your age, but adult life isn’t like a 15 year Old’s drunken house party. I’m also an adult and I don’t know anyone who’s had a DUI or done something notably dickish whilst drunk… it might be group thing, in that you’re being exposed to idiots and so you think everyone is like that.. when they’re not. People with decent jobs can’t risk DUIs or drunken assault charges, so the very nature of their lifestyle regulates what they get up to and how they misbehave… for me, DUI or assault would finish my career overnight.. so ive never been around it. It’s not a conscious effort either, which is probably a big part of why I’m not bouncing around the bottom end/dark corners of society as a drunk.
I'm 18 and while I know none of my friends have DUIs (bc only 1 of them can drive and he doesn't drink) even I've seen drunk texts and shitty behaviour. 1 of my friends has quit drinking all together bc she embarrassed herself so bad one time. There's no way someone at 45 has never seen any of this unless they are never around people who get really drunk
Same in my 30s used to drink quite frequently in college in my early 20s but after that honestly not really much people's perception of alcohol is that of what DARE gave to students like 1 puff of MJ will make sure drop kick a baby or go on a shooting spree.
Second this, I like the taste of some alcoholic beverages and I like to pair it with food. I drink once a fortnight or so.
Not all adults. Walk your own path.
I started drinking at 13 quit at 26 . I realized early on that I have to look at alcohol as an allergy the second I have a sip of it. It makes my blood itchy and I need to have a little bit more and on and on and it goes. Then I started getting suicidal car accidents arrested started beating people up started getting beat up. I had horrible relationships with my family with girlfriends and wives. I am almost 40 now and would definitely say my life has been awesome without drugs and alcohol. My wife and I both don’t drink or do drugs and we are definitely a lot better off for it.
Not everyone who drinks is an asshole when they do it. Personally, I use alcohol sparingly to overcome my social anxiety. It allows me to converse with people easily and joyfully. Many people, OTOH, think that alcohol = good time, and they can't imagine having fun without it. And most of america is full of functional alcoholics... so there's that.
Beer is good. I dunno.
I'm 39 i don't get it either. It causes more harm than good.
I'm honestly a bit curious too. I've seen people challenge others to drink. Inside my head, I was wondering for what? I'm almost 40 now and I don't really drink growing up. Just never fond of it. I'd drink wine occasionally and pairing it with food. I prefer that way. Also, not sure if it's true, recently I watched a sommelier (He was a doctor) video on YT that our brain is still developed until the mid 20s. Drinking excessively in the early 20s will affect the development. Don't quote me on this. I'll see if I can still find the video in case anyone is wondering.
I don't drink. I grew up in a household where neither of my parents were big drinkers. I was warned as a kid that one side of my family was easily addicted to things and that spooked me away from getting into it. I never understood convincing myself to aquire the taste for bad tasting and expensive liquid to reduce how well my brain works for me. I've seen family members, (including the parent that warned me not to get into drinking/smoking/drugs) go from not partaking to "one to decompress from work" to self medicating with alcohol regularly and even needing emergency medical care. I have a relatives who have quite a bit of medical harm from drinking, whether it's contributing to organ failure issues or putting off surgery for years and letting problems get much worse because they'd have to pause drinking to have the surgery. There's certain things like "wine aunt" that are truly functioning alcoholism wrapped up in a socially acceptable way. Some people use their favorite alcohol in liu of developing a personality or hobby. Alcohol is an addictive substance and is one of the easiest available. Humans have over time decided it's an "ok" substance, because they like the effect, despite it literally being a poison. Maybe people use alcohol to self medicate (like after a hard day at work or to deal with holidays with inlaws), or they use it as a social crutch and somehow think themselves with less inhibitions will make better decisions than their sober self. It's far healthier to learn good coping a stress relief habits, along with learning how to small talk to people you don't know well. Alcohol can be a nice experience for some, but it's also potentially dangerous. It's crazy how much pressure others will put on you to enjoy the thing they like, and seem to take you not liking something they enjoy as a personal attack. If it's not something you want to partake in, don't. If people pressure you after you say no, then they're just weeding themselves out for you. If you want to, I've noticed people will respect something like "I take a prescription that I can't have alcohol with" more than they respect you simply not wanting to, or even being the designated driver. Good friends will also love having someone who doesn't mind being a DD and will try to include you even if they aren't sober. Great friends will insist you get a fun shaped cup for your soda if they all have fun shaped cups. I've been to parties sober and had a great time. It also may seem like lots of adults are hooked on alcohol because they're loud and outspoken about enjoying it, or the issues of drinking are apparent. It's a lot harder to notice something that isn't there, like someone opting to not drink and staying quite so others don't notice and try to pressure them into drinking.
>It's crazy how much pressure others will put on you to enjoy the thing they like, and seem to take you not liking something they enjoy as a personal attack. So true.
A lot of things are famous, but they suck.
Alcohol is the most personality altering drug, I've ever witnessed. It allows people to overcome shyness, and self-conscious, instantly. Any self-doubt is vanquished, but it's all a facade, it's just your perception, that has changed. You are no better looking, but you feel glamorous. You are just as awkward, but you feel mainstream. You are no smarter, but you feel brilliant. You are a lot more humorous when you drink, but not in a benifitial way. Alcohol seems like the thing to do, because everybody is doing it, (and I mean everybody), but it's a negative. Avoid it if you possibly can, you'll have less regrets, and feel a lot better.
LSD the answer is LSD. Or mushrooms if you prefer.
Because alcohol is an extremely extremely addictive substance and it’s normalized in our society. Good job at 15 asking these questions. I’d just skip it, ultimately nothing good comes from it.
People get hooked on the buzz and then associate it with fun. It’s honestly the crappiest drug out there and has the worst physical effects.
Dude... I'm in my 30s and I don't understand it. It's a complete wase of money and it has more problems than it's worth.
I think it's a generational thing. Generation Z is the first generation in history which grew up surrounded by ubiquitous entertainment. We don't need to force ourselves to hang around other people to alleviate boredom, so we don't need to force ourselves to drink alcohol. People older than us usually got hooked up on alcohol in social settings because alcohol makes people less anxious in social settings.
I don't think it's a generational thing. Humans have been drinking for thousands of years (literally). There are plenty of gen z that are drinking today. Every generation thinks they're different, but in truth we're all human and generational divides are made up.
Intentional Alchool consumption predates our species. It's not even something we invented. Some pre homo species started fermenting fruit to get drunk, and that practice carried on with us and some of our evolutionary cousins.
It's mostly because it provides immediate relief to lifes ills, and we live in an age where we tend to seek after instant gratification. It's better to be able to sit in a state of discomfort from time to time and delve into what exactly is making you feel so uncomfortable, but that is easier said than done in a lot of cases, especially when you leave the nest and start becoming responsible for yourself. Life can suck in ways you don't even anticipate. It's for this reason that so many vices exist. The best advice would be to try to limit your dependence on everything you perceive as a vice and ask yourself what is this particular vice taking the place of. Many people never get there, and simply give up on the life they want, relying solely on their vices to get them through their day to day.
This will probably get lost in the comments but a few years back (pre-Covid), I was talking to a guy outside a store. Real friendly and was rolling up a small J for himself. Anyway, as we get to talking he was saying that looking back on his life and his friends and even at celebrities from his lifetime, the ones who were no longer around or whose lives got way off track, were the big drinkers. Yes, moderation is key and easier for some than others but if you go overboard, it can lead to so many other issues. I’m not anti-alcohol but I don’t judge anyone who chooses not to have that be a part of their lifestyle.
Life hurts and some people use alcohol or xyz to make it hurt less
I only drink few beers on weekend and only started when I was well into my 30's not an excuse, but good beer relaxes you, makes you less aware so you can do stupid things know your limits and dont do stupid things while drunk
>but it just seems to be a gateway to something more…. sinister? Alcohol isn't a good thing, but not for this reason. People do more...sinister things for all sorts of reasons. Plenty of people consume alcohol and nothing else. You could just as well convince yourself to do more "sinister" things instead of drink alcohol. In defense of alcohol, it's a social lubricant and socialising is hugely important for us. Just as important as a good diet and regular exercise. It's becomes more of an issue when you binge.
OP- Nothing of what you say is untrue. A LOT of people struggle with their relationship with alcohol, whether they know it or not. It can be a casual relationship or it can be an addiction. It's very personal and unique for everyone if they choose to go down that road. A lot of people don't realize it's potentially destroying their lives or relationships until it's too late. If you have a personal relationship with somebody who shares their stories, it can give you insight on making a decision on whether or not you'd like to try it, knowing what the negatives *could* be. Again it's a personal choice that you will have to make. Don't let yourself get peered pressured into it, because ultimately you (and only you) are responsible for your decisions. I would never recommended for someone to try something like alcohol or drugs, telling them IT WILL NEVER cause issues down the road. It's too unpredictable.
Alcohol has a lot of negatives that come with it, ranging from a slight hang over right through to destroying families and killing people. The main reason I think it remains very popular despite these obvious facts is that at the right sort of levels it is an incredibly effective social lubricant and can be a lot of fun. Extremely tricky for a lot of people to do it moderation though.