to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

my boyfriend keeps moaning at me to stop drinking cos i am a nightmare drunk. this is true but i don't think i am going to stop.

I suppose my life does revolve around alcohol, in that alcohol is everpresent in my non-work life... but I wouldn't say my life was ruled by alcohol.

I love pubs. I have absolutely no problem with going to the pub on my own (not any pub mind, it has to be one I like) and just sitting watching the world go by, reading the paper, whatever. Whether I could do without it... well, I could probably *exist* if I could never hear another record ever again, or walk down by the Thames, but I don't really fancy trying.

So then:

Destroy: Wetherspoons, Sam Smiths ('cept maybe the Angel), "gastropubs", Hoxton Bar & Kitchen...

Search: Heart & Hand in Brighton, Red Lion on Mundy Street, the George & Vulture, and the Betsey, natch.

RIP: The Green Tree in Edinburgh...

egads! Andrew, one of these destroys is *very* controversial!

I'm feeling crappily hungover at the moment, and I'm certainly wishing my life revolved a lot less around bouze. Maybe when I grow up.

My social life revolves around music. Because so much of music happens in pubs, bars and places where booze is consumed, I think they become linked. But I think it's far more about the music rather than the booze.

How much my life depends on alcomahol depends on the situation, really. But then I always have these experiments to see if I *can* get through uncomfortable situations sober (gigging is always my nightmare situation- combination of pressure and social situation). And I usually can do it, I just don't enjoy it as much. I've gone years without drinking a drop, I can stop when I want to, but usually start again when I want to, too, simply because life is less interesting without alcohol.

Socialising with strangers and sex are the two things I actually have the most trouble doing sober. I can talk to friends sober, in fact, that's a good judge of how close a friend someone is- how well I get on with them when sober. But talking to people I've just met, or people I don't know very well? Hate doing that sober.

And sex? I don't know why I have to be drunk or at least tipsy to have good sex. I think it's something to do with overcoming self loathing in order to feel *sexy* in the first place. Or someone of course could make the obvious crack that I've just been having sex with the wrong people?

Does this mean you're going back on the sauce after your year of sobriety is up, Chris? I swear to god, you and Jane have switched personalities. She used to be a teatotaller and now quaffs absinthe cocktails, and you used to be a beermonster and you've gone cold turkey. Very strange world we are living in.

Most social events for me do revolve around pub, either as place to gossip and chat, or place to go and see THE ROCK MUSIC, hurrah! I find the idea of being in a pub and not drinking rather horrific. I can do without but I prefer not to. Num num. Nothing beats the wuvvly contented feeling from CURRY AND BEER.

on the subject of which, any laaaaah-ndoners got good pub quiz recommendations? obv a good dollop of music triv, but gen triv OK too. is the legendary rock-hard all-music one in that pub on chalk farm road still going?

Cheshire Cheese, Fleet Street - lovely boozer, like stepping back in time and drinking in caves, I will most likely be there very soon.

The Champion, behind Oxford street - nice pub which can act as a great revitaliser after shopping on Oxford street

Princess Louise, Holborn - victorian gin palace, amazing toilets, I think this is a smiths pub, can't remember too clearly though

Me and another mate used to run a pop quiz in Brighton called Pretty Vacant. It was.... legendary. It also featured a regular before-he- was-famous appearance from Andrew out of Big Brother 1. Happy days...

The beer is absolutely fine. And the pleasure you get when actual change is handed back to you when you buy a round easily makes up for the mediocre quality of the product.

Have you tried the Sam Smiths beer-in-a-bottle? Is it much better than the draft?

if you want to step away from beer then it's gotta be a bloody Mary, it's a meal in a glass.

Such a ILNaNoWriMo site would be fine & dandy - someone get to work on this. My hubris demands that I share my ratty prose with the world.

One time we got drunk on our lunch break. Three people fell asleep at their desks (ONE FELL ON THE FLOOR!), everyone else was very loud. At the restaurant one of the guys broke a glass and we all ran out. The next day we had an emergency staff meeting.

Now that I live in a better bar town,.. well, yeah, alcohol is found at many a cornerstone in my life these days.. heh heh... ugh.

Didn't drink much, if at all, from 14-19. Resumed at a party in 1995 or so, and drank now and again from then until May 1998 at age 21, at my college's outdoor music festival a couple weeks before I graduated, when I got absolutely plastered, far beyond anything I'd ever done before, and spent five hours alternately vomiting and unconscious in a women's public toilet (no one knew where I was, so no one came to help me) until I staggered back to my dorm room at five or six in the morning.

(About five hours later, my father almost died in a fall. Not a good day.)

Since then, I've had but little to drink -- getting that ill took away most of the fun. I don't like the way alcohol makes me feel anymore, either -- it used to have a euphoriac effect on me, but now it just makes me feel queasy, jumpy and vaguely lightheaded. So I have a glass of wine or Chartreuse or a beer every few months or so, and that's basically it. I suppose I miss the glow -- it was especially nice to have 2-3 glasses of wine at a good concert -- but really, once you're legal, it's not that much fun anymore.

That ususally doesn't happen though, and I am the person to see if you want to find out what exactly happened on our evening out...

I'm Irish. I might as well accept that I am a good ol' fashioned habitual drinker.

360 degrees

Times have changed. I was encouraged to drink stout. Something about B vitamins. Nourishing and relaxing for nurser and nursee. Too bad this is no longer true.

These days even habitual coming home and watching Simpsons/Neighbours often involves the cracking open of the cask o'goon. I'm trying to cut back though...

Wait no, thats for another thread.

i missed the second last episode where they got out (they got out). also harold strangled paul. there was no alcohol revolving at the time

This may be largely true for my life as well but I can't work up any concern about it -- it doesn't feel to me like teh booze is being used in any consistent way to conceal or abet or bypass anyone's issues that can't be otherwise resolved -- so I don't mind it either for my sake or my friends'. Is the mere fact of frequent social drinking a worry? I mean, if you think it is, then obv it is for you, but I'm asking: are you concerned by the frequency alone, or do you, like Trayce, know what function it's performing and is it the MECHANICS of the sitch that bother you?

been drinking since i was 12, which makes it more than half of my life. recently i didn't get drunk for 3 weeks, this was the longest i had gone sober since 2003, when i stopped drinking for around 5 months. alcohol doesn't prevent me working and shit, i go in hungover plenty but deal with it fine and it's not a problem for my manager. it doesn't effect my relationship with anyone important to me in a negative way and in fact most of my best friends are my most fervent drinking buddies.

so, there's no necessity for me to stop - and i frequently go a weekend or two without getting drunk, so it's not like i can't go without it - but i really, really want to stop. in recent years my bouts of drinking haven't gotten more frequent, but they have became more heavy duty. i rarely get just a bit drunk, tending to drink until there's nothing left or until i fall asleep. also drinking 3 days on the trot has became more of a thing for me than it was before. alongside this i've felt a real increase in the negative influence of alcohol on my health, both mental and physical, although mainly the former. dark fucking moods that last days, and this is on top of an already pretty naturally bummed-out, depressive kind of psyche. on the physical side i get the shakes a lot worse now and the tachycardia and heart palpitations are ballin' out of control at times.

i don't really know what i want to say with this post, like i don't know if i'm looking for advice. the best advice would just be "stop getting drunk". it's just that i'm so hardwired to think of drinking as punctuation between working periods, to think of myself as a big drinker, and to think of getting drunk as the only form of recreation that a special occasion/night out/period of free time merits that i don't know what'll do. the aforementioned period of five months without drinking was a pretty shit period - was stuck in the darkest stage of a funk that lasted from puberty until about the age of 22, extended teenage angst maybe, but that particular stretch was a real period of anhedonia anyway, so not really suitable to use as a period to compare theoretical future sobriety with. i just sat in the house feeling glum and reading, sleeping or playing playstation.

bah, just want to vent i suppose, and would find it hard to vent to my friends, who are in the main older than me and are still drinking lots and some of them doing drugs still, or on the other hand aren't big enough drinkers to get this "quandary".

I can relate to the impulse that all free time should involve getting drunk. I'm currently going through some difficult stuff, and drinking seems (and I emphasise the word "seems") to be a good way of dealing with things- or at least not having to deal with things immediately. That, and taking up smoking again.

Sorry not to have more helpful thoughts to contribute- but I see where you're coming from, for what that's worth.

Jim I spent a lot of years in a mindset where all free time meant drinking as much as possible, and I got to the point you are at, ie just wanting to stop for various reasons. You already know from what you wrote that it's going to involve significant lifestyle change - you'll need to force yourself to break out of your comfort zone and find new things to enjoy sober. In the end what made me successful was literally leaving the country and finding a new social circle who weren't as into drinking. Maybe not a practical solution for you, but certainly it took a very large shift in mindset which would have been difficult to achieve had I stayed in the same city with the same social activities. Good luck.

i feel ya, jim--feels like a waste of a weekend when you don't get good + loaded at least one night. otoh, as i've gotten older i've learned to appreciate things such as not getting hangovers and being able to wake up early on a saturday or sunday. i def drink more than most people i know but have gotten good at avoiding that point of oblivion.

ha, wrt leaving the country: i've thought about it (though not just for that reason)! seems to me living in santiago de chile it would be a lot easier not to be a drunkard than it is in glasgow.

im conflicted over my drinking too. when i go out, i really go out though, and my capacity for drink is a bit frightening and i drink like someone is about to take the drink away from me any second. on the one hand, im relatively harmless when pissed and i havent had people saying to me that its a problem and i shold stop. although one friend who has been dry for the last 5 years did suggest it to me. there was a stage in my late 20's where it was ridiculously out of control, pretty much drinking to the state of getting a blackout all the time. looking back on it now, i was definitely depressed and angry and was using drink to take the edge off of everything.

ive gradually cut things out (drinking spirits, drinking in the day) but i find it v. difficult socially and mentally to stay off the drink when im out. drink does so much of the hard work for you. i went back to college last year so im kinda enthused and want to do well there so ive straightened out (a bit). so the all day benders are a rarity. compared to a couple of years ago where i was working in a dead end job with nothing to look forward to but getting fucked up on the weekend. having said that 2 weeks ago, i drank all day sunday and dont remember getting home. it feels almost a cliche to point it out but throw yourself into new activities that dont involve drinking. i started doing some amateur drama and its a good way to meet people and it doesnt feel artificially generated like in the pub. i know what your saying about a lot of identity is tied up in being a big drinker and maybe you think youll be a boring bastard if you give up the drink but you know thats not really true either. try and give a month or so off the booze and clear your head.

it is a problem in my life

it has caused or exacerbated problems in my life

I rarely drink, only in social situations really

and I'm a proud lightweight, two or so drinks and I'm good - don't get the appeal of getting blackout drunk and then throwing up all day the next day

see, the trick is you don't throw up

echoing franny glass, the way i quit drinking and then transitioned to 1-2 drinks every other weekend or so was through major lifestyle changes, mainly a relationship w/ someone who doesn't drink very much. the reason i drank in the first place was because i'm naturally a bit depressive and had issues on top of that so i was escape-drinking. anyway bad combo, i worked on said "issues", and now i just... don't want to get drunk ever, i don't like how it feels, it's super-boring.

good relationships are awesome of course. hopefully you have one or two good friends you could reconnect with who are into other things. i think you have to be really honest with yourself about why you want to stop drinking and explore the reasons you do so much of it in the first place because what "activities" you want to do instead could rise out of that. the physical energy it takes to drink and get drunk, that devil-may-care gusto, was part of its appeal for me and now i run instead--i get that same expenditure of energy but it's a lot healthier needless to say. i was never much of a social drinker but going out to clubs had this excitement to it. if there was dancing involved, even better. and now i'm getting into mixing, trying to create that energy myself without the artifice of alcohol.

anyway, i feel really good about changing wrt alcohol and if you really want to stop, you should do anything you can to let it happen, no matter how drastic. sounds like you've got to cut off some relationships and forge new ones, not easy but can be kind of refreshing tbh. good luck!

how do you avoid throwing up though

practice

god that sounded so self-helpy, sorry. in fewer words: it's worth changing if you don't like what's happening, and yes you can do it, etc. xp

re, brainwasher: dunno. alcohol doesn't make me puke, like ever. nor do i get hangovers unless i really do myself in. cigarettes seem to cause more morning after damage than booze.

or yeah, what she said

cigarettes seem to cause more morning after damage than booze.

smoke more.

i drink pretty rarely, except for the occasional glass of wine with dinner. it takes very little for me to get drunk.

We're going to have a guest in a bit here who is totally one of my besties but who also habitually drinks 12+ beers a night. I'm not really sure what to do. "G,night, pal...I know what you usually get up to so I'm sleeping with your car keys tonight." Or if this is even a problem at all? I mean it's clearly kind of a problem for him. It's really the elephant in the room.

lurk here, but i thought i'd weigh in as it's a problem i'm currently trying to address. like abbott's friend, i habitually drink somewhere between half to a full bottle of spirits (or the equivalent in anything else alcoholic) a night. when i don't, i don't sleep and suffer heavy anxiety/auditory hallucinations/nauseau etc. i've lost relationships, been jailed, dropped out of a phd program etc. etc.

maybe the best anecdote i heard about drinking was from a friend whose ma supervisor was a hardcore alcoholic and utter wasp. he passed out into in his dinner, his wife looked at him and then said to my friend 'alcoholism is so boring.'

it is boring, and so are the war stories, regardless of whether they're james frey's or fred exeley's. but i still love it, as much as i always have.

i recently went for an assessment at the local addiction/mental health centre and am going to be starting group therapy soon. the thing is, drinking is the crux of every single social relationship i have, whether with friends or family, so it's near impossible to imagine a life without it.

i guess all i'm saying, and which i'm sure you already know, is that it's good to address it, it can get bad.

I was a heavy drinker for 10 years, and quit drinking in 2002. Once you reach your late 20's the physical effects can really start to kick in. The way I did it was firstly to quit the crap job I had (needed to drink partly to relax after crappy days in the office, also many of my drinking pals were colleagues, and the place had a drinking culture), then secondly to move away from the city where I was living. These two steps had the effect that I was no longer surrounded by people who thought my behaviour was acceptable, so I had to sober up.

Stopped 8 years ago, because, basically, every question on every one of those questionnaires got a 'yes': waking up in hospital with my face bashed in and no memory of how (still), waking up in (very) strange peoples' beds, blackouts, missing work, fights - a black eye from my girlfriend on the day of my mother's funeral - so I stopped. Truthfully, it wasn't that difficult, and it's not that difficult hanging with drinkers: I never really get a thirst for it, and after a few drinks, they get so they forget you're not drinking and tell the story they first told you 5 minutes ago. Drinkers are basically self- centred and you're not conspicuous if you're not drinking because they're not paying attention really...

I get a bit panicked when people get really out of it: but drunks are really suggestible: implant a good idea -like 'go to bed', 'give me your car keys' and it will take over completely. Quite easy to manage usually.

Maybe the hardest thing is accepting that a lot of the things I used to blame on my drinking are actually me: I'm lazy, distractable, unproductive, sober as much as drunk. I've achieved some things that I probably wouldn't have managed if I was still a drinker, but I haven't written that great novel, or turned out to be any more intelligent or industrious. I'm also as prone to melancholy, but at least it doesn't result in a lost weekend and further consequences beyond feeling a bit shit.

You are secretly my twin, right? That last paragraph especially!

I used to LOVE drinking socially (really disliked - and still do - getting drunk at home, it makes me extremely depressed). The physical effects (late 20s, yeah) have recently made it pretty much no fun to drink. I don't get so giddy and have that much fun (possibly because my proper best friends are on the other side of the world so all my stupid jokes are met with polite smiles) and I really find it hard to sleep after drinking *anything*. So, happy to just have the one or two drinks on occasion.

THE hardest part of not drinking, even if it's something you've happily chosen, is fucking idiotic friends who cannot get over the fact that you want a soft drink when you're out. There are some that expend so much energy on trying to get you to have a drink that it becomes their mission. Get away from these people or make it clear that it'd be nice if they could respect that you want to take it easy for a bit.

It's going to sound like a lame excuse, but in my city there's really fuck all to do except go to bars or hang out (where there will be beers, obv).

I don't particularly like alcohol, especially as I get hangovers too easily these days. Good beer is nice, and maybe some scotch, but I'm not the kind of person who's going to have a beer with a meal or just for flavor, I never drink at home or alone. One or two drinks to loosen up is great, but I have a tendency to keep going because I drink everything very quickly (I'll run through three or four liters of water a day at work) and that translates to booze as well. I'm not comfortable being the guy ordering water by itself, for some reason, but I should learn to be.

One or two drinks to loosen up is great, but I have a tendency to keep going because I drink everything very quickly

same here. i'm not a big fan of beer, but i started drinking beer more as opposed to whisky or vodka because i tend to drink as a durational activity - quantity of liquid as opposed to quantity of alcohol.

Growing up as the son of a nearly lifelong alcoholic, I've always had an up-and-down relationship with alcohol. Because my dad was in a really bad place as a kid, I swore I would never drink alcohol ever. That lasted all through high school and 3/4s of the way through my first year of college. Then I gave in and became what I guess I'd call a "heavy social" drinker. Only drank when I went out with friends or to parties, but most weeks that was 3-4 nights a week. I never drank until I blacked out or lost complete control, but I did get heavily buzzed each time. That was pretty much my standard all through college and grad school, then tapered off after I got a real job and had less free time.

Now, I drink probably once every 2-3 weeks, and it has become rare that I even get "drunk". I would probably say I've been "heavily buzzed" or beyond maybe four times in the last full year. Even while unemployed. And I just cannot bring myself to drink alone, or when I'm just home relaxing with my wife (other than a glass of wine here and there with dinner). I'm guessing that part comes from watching my dad sit on the couch night after night after night, drinking until he passed out on the couch. I knew how unpleasant he was to be around, so I've probably built up this mental block about doing anything that might resemble that.

I drink a third of a bottle of wine a night -- it's part of the routine, like salad. Thanks to a combination of circumstances -- my ride and close friend moved away; aging liver -- I stick to two or three cocktails if I go out. Alcohol is just part of my life, and since I've been pretty expert at regulating it I can't imagine a day when it won't be.

i started drinking beer more as opposed to whisky or vodka because i tend to drink as a durational activity

I do like beer quite a bit, but I also think this is a big part of why I prefer it to the alternatives.

I've recently started on medication that I don't want to drink alcohol on (it's always recommended not to drink when on any medication but usually folk take that with a pinch of salt), and it's now been over 100 days since I had a drink. Not that I'm counting or anything, of course, but as a recent uni graduate, it's fair to say that I would go drinking two or three times a week, always getting somewhere between "a bit tipsy" and "fuck, that's tomorrow ruined." I'm not missing it because I feel better physically, mentally and emotionally - and apparently I'm looking good for it, losing weight and better skin - plus I'm saving a fair amount of money, but it is hard in some situations to maintain it. Like, on a night out with workmates who are all quite loud and heavy drinkers, I worry I'm seeming quiet and dull, but I've learned to throw myself into it more. What's really helped me is having close friends who don't mind going for dinner and a coffee instead of to the pub for an evening. I think when I come off the medication I'll probably go back to socially drinking, but never more than two or three in a night - at least, I say that now...

this is a great thread

i'm hung over at this very instant btw and it fucking sucks

huge hangover right now.

i can't really tell if my relationship with booze is good or bad, i guess a little of both. i drink regularly but i don't drink spirits, i do tend to get drunk as an escape and i often decide "i'm getting drunk tonight" and do so. every weekend is a piss up. i stopped drinking for 18 months or so when i first had health probs (unrelated to drinking, just general stuff) a few years back, but in a way when i started again it was v attractive as drinking means i no longer notice those same health probs. i guess that's both good and bad, good in that it's prob good to have an escape from feeling physically not right, but bad cos it is using booze to escape something.

i think largely tho i feel i've been dealt a tricky hand by life with the health stuff and i know when i didn't drink or go out i wasn't coping with it at all, mentally speaking, so right now i can't feel too negative.

i guess overall i feel okay about my drinking but i know i haven't got a perfect relationship with it.

I'm honest enough to say my drinking is not useful at this point - it comes and goes, sometimes I'm fine, lately I'm doing half to one bottle of wine a night like 5 nights a week. I manage - I'm never in trouble, sick or skipping work, but I'm always tired and slightly hung over.

I blame cigarettes. I really do. I smoke when I drink and I drink when I smoke, so. yadda yadda.

I only drink a couple of beers every few weeks or so now, if my parents take me out to dinner or something. It's a long way from drinking a bottle of Jim Beam every day (which is where I was in 2007, when I started posting here). A lot of my drunks ended in blackouts and I often got next-day phone calls from friends yielding disturbing information ("Were you hitting on my girlfriend...again?".

Somewhere around that time, I read in an article that men drink the most in their late 20s and start tapering off around 30. I decided that maybe nature would take its course and I'd end up following the group.

Soon thereafter, I got into a relationship/family with someone who doesn't drink. I didn't stop drinking right away, but it tapered off over the course of a year or so. It helped that her parents are alcoholics and watching these boomers get loaded and act like Stevie Nicks or John Wayne was a clear-as-a-bell warning sign.

where my wife's from, people's social lives revolve around dinner. so alcohol is involved but it's spread out over several hours and supplemented by lots of food. people don't really do that in london so much - have people over for dinner - which is pretty hard for her, since that used to be her main way of getting together with people. instead, people go to the pub here. which she's gotten into a little bit, though with a kid it's not very convenient. and it's expensive.

my social life definitely used to revolve around alcohol (among other things) but i don't drink much any more, mainly because i left the country and became a dad. but when i get together with people now, drinking is still a big part of things. but it's usually moderate. i can't remember the last time i got whanging, stumbling drunk. years and years ago. i've never had the problems mentioned by people on this thread, thank god. it's incredible to read some of this stuff.

jim i have some glaswegian friends and i think some of them are in a similar situation to you.

My social life almost entirely revolves around the pub, but the days of enormous drunken benders appear to be behind me. Slightly conflicted about this.

lately, too much. My friends are all graduate students and lately more than ever are making the most of that, with some manner of partying (usually nightclub, sometimes house) probably three times a week, and the odd pub visit for any reason that can be found. It's taking its toll on my wallet, my once svelte figure (okay I'm still hella skinny, but the developing belly displeases me and I'd like to nip it in the bud), my general health (I spend an awful lot of my time feeling not quite right, even when I've had a couple of days away from the booze), and my ideas of being a productive human being despite being unemployed. Far too easy to let days disappear into nights of watching TV / ILXing / partying again. I'm only awake and out and about now because I had to sign on this morning - had that peculiar thing where you wake up feeling oddly fine and realise that it's because you're actually still drunk, and now I'm in the midst of an even more peculiar thing where it's segueing into a hangover...

The thing that stopped me boozing like a champ was working in a pub, specifically, while working watching a previously spry wee dude go from irn-bru drinker to dead in the space of six months, the last month of which he was (a) barred, (b) stinking like shitey puke, (c) incomprehensible and (d) very, very fighty. Watching alcohol kill someone really takes the thrill away from getting drunk.

Also, haemorrhoids.

Last time I drank alcohol was about four years ago. So uh not at all. lol I know why: I am a terrible drinker. I immediately go for the drunk stupor.:-(

watching these boomers get loaded and act like Stevie Nicks or John Wayne was a clear-as-a-bell warning sign.

Even to a long time non-drinker that sounds a bit glam...

Further to 'My Booze Hell' as detailed above, I've never subscribed to the disease model of alcoholism - I was doing the drinking, not some malignant, alien, thing called 'alcoholism'. Even on the basic physical level, giving up smoking is a lot harder.

watching these boomers get loaded and act like Stevie Nicks or John Wayne was a clear-as-a-bell warning sign.

Even to a long time non-drinker that sounds a bit glam...
funny, i was thinking just the opposite. seeing older people who you respect (or should respect) make asses of themselves is deeply embarrassing (have lots of experience with family doing this) and very much nagl

i've never been a heavy drinker or a pub goer or a barfly, but i do enjoy 1-2 drinks daily and i would feel bereft if someone took this away from me. it's not really part of my social life, but it's seriously part of my personal winding-down ritual.

really though i don't even like getting drunk like DRUNK DRUNK. it's embarrassing.

okay so I see that two other people just quoted it but still: watching these boomers get loaded and act like Stevie Nicks or John Wayne !!!

that being said, a friend of mine is having a birthday party tonite with free booze and I haven't gone out in a long time so in a little over 12 hours I will probably be getting loaded and acting like lou reed

much of my life revolved around drinking up until about two years ago when i became a dad. It was worse when trying for a baby simply because we tried for so long. My drinking got out of control...i'd go to bars with friends and drive home...not good. When i had my son it just stopped really. I rarely have the desire for a drink now and usually these days when i have 4 im shitfaced. see the arguing thread. I will have the occasional beer and there will be occasions where i will have more than one, but no more driving. Once a year all my male friends and i play in a golf tournament in upstate new york and camp out for the weekend...thats the one time a year now we all act as fools.

Even to a long time non-drinker that sounds a bit glam...

It sounds a bit glam, but the reality is "acting like Stevie Nicks" = falling down the stairs and "acting like John Wayne" = yelling at your grandson over a game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

Like, I'm sure they imagined themselves to be much more glamorous than they were in their particular situations...

Would love to see a drinker act like this Stevie Nicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izgsz5uxuGA

Maybe the hardest thing is accepting that a lot of the things I used to blame on my drinking are actually me: I'm lazy, distractable, unproductive, sober as much as drunk.

this is so otm. however, i also use this to make an argument to myself that there isn't any reason to stop drinking, since other things are the problem.

i've recently cut down a bit due to sleep problems. new system for nights i'm alone is the one drink i just have to have when i get home from work, then two after 10. this is down from ~half bottle of gin every night over the summer, on top of whatever else while at the bar, club, etc. my positive reinforcement is that it's whiskey season and this is the only way i can afford to drink decent stuff anyway.

few things that are hard for me, beyond the usual escapism stuff: i really really LOVE the taste of alcohol, and i really like myself more when i'm drunk, but maybe the hardest, relating back to sonofstan's point above, is that i have romanticized the idea of being a drunk so much. like, maybe i could accomplish the things i want to accomplish and live the life i want live sober, but it would just be so much cooler and better if i did it drunk. realizing this is probably impossible is kind of a let down; thinking i probably can't do it sober drives me back to drinking.

"Maybe the hardest thing is accepting that a lot of the things I used to blame on my drinking are actually me: I'm lazy, distractable, unproductive, sober as much as drunk."

I quit recently for 3months and altho the above def was true there was also no doubt that i was just slightly less lazy, less distractable, and more productive but it wasn't like going from 0-10, more like 0-3. this bothered me because you figure "hey im giving up this awesome thing that is affecting me negatively, things are gonna be RAD from now on", but in reality the alcohol was only the first step towards this idealized life that you had envisioned for yourself.

I haven't been drunk in a year. That, having spent the majority of the aughts in rehabs, detox, halfway houses, and homeless. I never thought I would/could quit and then finally this time-to-grow-up/tired-of-this-shit impulse emerged and has kept me in good stead so far this year.

^^^^^
Good luck, mate.

my liver rotates in a sea of alcohol

okay so I see that two other people just quoted it but still: watching these boomers get loaded and act like Stevie Nicks or John Wayne !!!

― quique da snique (bernard snowy), Friday, October 29, 2010 12:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that being said, a friend of mine is having a birthday party tonite with free booze and I haven't gone out in a long time so in a little over 12 hours I will probably be getting loaded and acting like lou reed

― quique da snique (bernard snowy), Friday, October 29, 2010 12:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

update: I brought up the Stevie Nicks/John Wayne thing last night during a discussion of ppl's drunk parents, to which my friend replied: "Who do we all act like when we get drunk? Maybe Lou Reed?"
(look at these fuckin' hipsters)

Was in the pub for 9 1/2 hours yesterday :/

Hangover not too bad tho.

The trick w/ that is simply to not stop drinking.

"The harmful effects of heavy drinking were buffered when partners drank together vs. apart. Also, when both partners drank either heavy or light amounts, as long as they were similar amounts compared to their partner, it was better for the relationship than when one drank heavily and the other lightly."

Drink To Save Your Relationship

not wholly effective ime

better to both be alcoholic than just one of ye. What kind of finding is that? Codependant dependants

Not much of a surprise.

any tips on cutting back a bit?

i'm not too problematic in my behaviour or drinking, more just my existing health probs increasingly can't sustain regular boozing, and i have other stuff to do in my free time.

i don't really drink midweek but fridays and saturdays i get a major urge to do so. some sundays too.

I'm the same. I decided this year to make a concerted effort to stop alcohol being a necessary part of my life. I rarely ever drink in the week, but I decided I was sick of spending half my weekend either sozzled or hungover. I think my mindset has been that on Friday I can't wait to let loose, and this usually involves stopping by a shop and buying beers or vodkas, or going down the pub. I'm bored of waking up at 11am on a Saturday and spending the rest of the day feeling crappy, eating bad food, not having the motivation to get things done or get some exercise because I was smoking and drinking the night before. Actually, my main motive to not drink is to stop smoking (the two go hand in hand) and then feel more inclined to get more exercise.

Drinking on a Friday night has been a regular habit for me and my peer group since our late teens, however, and breaking the cycle is kind of tricky. It's finding something else to do on a Friday that everyone can get involved with and have fun doing, but doesn't involve being drunk. None of us want to turn into the kind of people who just stay in and watch TV on the weekends - I see that as just as dull and unimaginative (not to mention unhealthy and unsociable) as drinking in the pubs. Going to the cinema is okay, but not terribly sociable and fairly expensive. Board games? Card games? They're usually drinky activities on the whole - I don't see anyone not being tempted to break out a few tinnies in a poker game.

When the whistle goes at 5pm it's very hard to resist meeting up for a drink. The dilemma I find is whether to go out and drink soft drinks or whether to stay in (kinda depressing and boring, but a lot less likely to just cave and drink.)

Like you I don't intend quitting booze, and a few drunken nights a month would be fine, but I can't really physically take regular heavy sessions, and I sort of think it's keeping me in stasis as a person a bit too.

I tend to get up early regardless of drinking, and go running etc, I am going to the theatre a lot lately, so it should be feasible.

But still, as you say, solutions aren't easy in terms of reshaping your entire peer group.

Curious if anyone has had any success... ever.

The trick is to plan stuff during the day on Saturdays and Sundays - art, football, walks, some kind of course if there's something you're interested in, anything that takes a day. That's the incentive to go home there and then, or if you're going out the night before it tends to be to something more manageable like to see a film.

Being in a relationship means I increasingly yearn for the sort of big group drinking sessions that would go on three or four years ago but the range of non-alcohol based socialising that suddenly becomes more feasible is huge.

My problem is I can do that stuff with a hangover, I sort of force myself through everything as my having to cope with chronic illness has given me that ability. So I go running etc at 9am even if out till 3am. I tend to cram in stuff as well as big drinking sessions. It'd be the evenings where I'd need to plan more effectively. I sort of think to truly cut down on alcohol I'd have to be open to spending a lot more time on my own. Which is possibly fine, I like being alone, but tricky at first.

xpost I think being in a relationship would make it easier yes, but of course I see your side of it too.

I stay in and do things around the house on week-nights. It's the last thing I want to do on a weekend, even if I have stuff to do the next day (I usually do) - although yeah, having a plan for a Saturday morning is a good idea. I'm in a relationship, but that's never been a reason not to drink and see friends, for us. I'd go out and drink soft drinks if I didn't have to put up with drunk people. I find pubs to be really rather unpleasant (not to mention threatening) places to be if I'm not drinking, somehow. I feel like I'm missing out on not being like the loud stupid people around me if I'm sober and the whole experience is alienating, depressing - I'd rather stay in than go out and stay sober.

Alcohol is such an intrinsic thing for my friends and me - our relationships are largely founded on it, but it's only recently that I've started to take stock of that fact.

The other reason I want to stop drinking every weekend is down to cost; so finding activities to do in the evenings that don't cost too much is another thing.

I was drinking too much last year and I haven't been drunk since about Dec 20th. Going out and not getting drunk is actually pretty cool, I'd recommend it

I'm slowly drinking less as I get older. Now I'm in my late 30s I only get properly drunk a few times a year. This is a good thing for me as I am prone to acting like a wanker and/or having long blackout periods (during which I frequently get lost on nightbuses etc) when I'm drunk. It's still basically impossible for me to stop drinking when I get past tipsy so I try to either pace myself or just leave a bit earlier.

The only downside of this is my tolerance is going down which means I get to the dangerzone more quickly.

lg it sounds like your goal should be to slow down within your sessions? like alternating a pint with a pint of water and stuff so you can hang out for the duration without getting completely loaded.

that actually might make sense. i think cos i am into beer i tend to drink v high abv beers, cos i like the taste i guess. probably would make a big diff to avoid this.

i'm quite good at changing my lifestyle lately but i think realism has to come into it. maybe gonna start off with one weekend booze-free a month, i haven't had a weekend off alcohol in years, genuinely.

having long blackout periods (during which I frequently get lost on nightbuses etc)

You don't say? Hangovers and after-effects are getting worse as I get older, which is annoying.

The funny thing is hangovers have got better as I've got older. When I was a teenager I got really nasty hangovers even if I wasn't that drunk. Now the only way I get a proper hangover is if I go out midweek and have to get up and go to work. As long as I get some sleep I'm basically fine unless I get totally smashed.

movie nights or meals at friends' houses have replaced the pub for me this past year or so. easier not to drink if you're of a mind not to, cheap, sociable. i still sleep in on saturdays mind.

in the last 9 months i have been hitting the red wine hard.
for 6 months it was a bottle a night (plus more if i'm honest), but despite the fact that i discovered i really really like red wine, i have decided i seriously need to cut back.
main reason = the fact i am back at work, so having to face early mornings post booze is not a welcome start to the day.
also, the waistline was expanding a little too much for comfort.
so, going to try and see how life without the emo numbing effects of booze for a few nights a week is bearable.

xpost : re age/hangover : used to suffer dreadfully in my late 20s/30s, but now they are nowhere near as bad.

The funny thing is hangovers have got better as I've got older.

I actually think it's because I'm not drinking as much or as regularly as I used to

... that the hangovers are worse that is

'my life revolves because of alochol'

There's probably some element of denial in my "a few times a year" above. At least "a few" is doing a lot of work. But it is a smaller few than it used to be.

Going to the cinema is okay, but not terribly sociable and fairly expensive.

price of a couple of pints

I'd rather watch a film at home than go to the cinema, at least in the evenings.

Yes, you can get totally bladdered at home and you can't in a cinema

cinema is essentially like watching a big TV with a rubbish movie on

my answer to the original question is "rehab" but i accept i'm an outlier

Seems to be a big part of my life because beer is one of my hobbies. I go to a lot of events, special tappings, buy a lot of limited releases. I probably only drink maybe 3 times a week though? Some weeks it is more. Unfortunately beer is often not compatible with my other major hobby, running. Have to find a balance.

same prob for me, it's why it's so hard to cut down. love trying new beers and going out to do that.

beer isn't a "hobby" of mine, but being in places where drinking is a big part of it - music venues etc - is. I think I'm just going to have to get used to going out and not drinking.

Seems like still going out but just drinking less is such an obvious answer that it must have been suggested by more than one person on this revive, c'mon.

An obvious answer that doesn't really work for a lot of people (myself included). If we had healthy attitudes to drinking we wouldn't be on this thread :)

yeah, it works on paper, but i just end up drinking the same amount anyway. I wish they'd invent a flavoured non-alcoholic drink that wasn't full of sugar. A savoury drink that you could sip like a beer would be nice (but not 0% beer cos that's ricockulous).

sometimes i think i drink when i'm out because it's the only way to make drunk people bearable.

Yeah of course. Sorry. Prob thought it because gawker wrote up a website from Scotland that tries to dissuade women from drinking by aging their faces and showing "what alcohol will do to you." Which was followed by a long discussion about how Americans don't understand the level of excessive drink culture blah blah blah.

xp tomato juice!

drink expensive whisky, neat. learn to sip it, it's looks the business, nobody wants you in a round.

tried it, it's amazing how quick you unlearn to sip it

tomato juice is good, but you can drink enough of it very easily.

whisky is a good call. it's still drinking though.

oui mais lentement et doucement sm

My friends and I homebrew/are beer geeky and I crack a beer while making dinner every night (and inevitably have a couple more after). In addition, every social occasion in my group of friends is accompanied by alcohol. I don't think it's had a detrimental effect on my day-to-day necessarily. Although over December, I basically went on a bender due to having lots of time off of work, and old friends being 'back in town', then leading up to NYE and a trip to Denver where an old friend and I got tanked every night.

It was fun, but been cutting back a lot lately. Started running/eating better, and I sleep better and have better days. And I feel like I earn the drinking on the weekends a bit more. I recall some NYT editorial about drinking wherein the columnist said sobriety after a period of heavy bingeing was like a 'subtle new drug', and I would definitely echo that.

Still weird that even the most innocuous social situations seem to need to be joined with alcohol. And that none of my peers can resist the pressure. Living in a house with 3 other guys, it seems that when one of us crack a brew, the rest follow. (we're all 24ish, so I think we'll outgrow this?)

Alcohol is an integral part of my life. A couple glasses of red wine with dinner are essential; once a week I'll mix a martini or have a scotch before dinner. On the other hand, I don't go out to get drunk anymore for two reasons: I simply don't stay out as late anymore (age); and I drive myself more than I used to. It's usually a couple of cocktails or beers.

Also, upon reflection, I was mired in the expat circle of alcoholism when I lived in China post-college. We would go out and drink heavily 4-5 nights a week. Minimal professional responsibilities, and ease of access/cheap cost reinforced this tendency and I'd say the drinking was even more embedded into socializing than it is here in the US.

Glad I'm not going to turn into a ruddy-faced, pocked-up, balding, jaded old goon like the manny career alcoholics I met there. I shudder to think about what effect all the (probably) formaldehyde-laden beer I drank will eventually have on me.

Whisky i think i will drink for the rest of my life. My great-grandparents were bourbon drinkers 'til the day they died, which was over a century after they were born. Plus it's lighter than beer, and if i stick to whisky i will never throw up no matter how much i drink.

I can't remember the last time i've had anything to drink tho, which is part of a New Years resolution where i also severely cut back on smoking. When i was 22 or whatever i would drink every day, cos when you are 22 you can do that and it won't kill you the day after.

I really don't like going to bars, I'm pretty anti-social alot of times and I'm cheap, so my idea of partying down is buying a bottle and hanging out at home.

Drinking is a huge part of American culture and it's kind of sad and the older i get the sadder it seems. I think alot of the value comes from using it as a social signifier, proclaiming to the world that you are cool and like to party and are some rad Dionysian poet in some way. In think in some weird way it has the same function that keeping your lawn mowed when you are a 40-something suburban dad does. Only it's also bad for your body. And it may get you laid.

I bar-tended for a while a couple years ago and it was alot of fun and i had more luck picking up girls than in 10 years of playing music.

I think alot of the value comes from using it as a social signifier, proclaiming to the world that you are cool and like to party and are some rad Dionysian poet in some way.

so so otm, and every way of drinking and engaging in drink is over-coded with meaning, from the status of grown-up drinks and Mad Men atavism thru the student party ethos to the beer buddies scene to the two-fingers at society thru barflyism right down to the public excess of the street-drinker writing their nihilism and despair super-large thru public degradation

alcohol in the west is irremovably wrapped around our social existence, to the point where not drinking is in itself a huge statement

think my ideal drinking would be three drinks per night--a beer or glass of wine w/dinner, a stronger beer or cocktail after dinner cleanup, and a whiskey leading up to bedtime. most nights i'm slightly over that :/

My drinking was curtailed by (a) working in a bar where I saw more than one regular customer degenerate from teetotal to shambling, foul smelling jakie to dead person, which really took the shine off the boozing and, later by (b) having kids, which made hangovers a million times harder to handle. If you have not kids, but do have relentlessly energetic friends, arrange for them to drag you out of the house for physical exercise at 8 on a Saturday morning. It isn't so much having something planned, it's having somethig planned that other people are expecting you to be and and which will, if you are hungover, make you feel horrible. This is what kids do.

still doesn't work for me. i get up at 8 anyway and then the exercise makes me feel good and by 4pm i'm ready for a pint.

By the time i was 30 i had realized that most of my friends were highly functioning alcoholics.

still doesn't work for me. i get up at 8 anyway and then the exercise makes me feel good and by 4pm i'm ready for a pint.

― Heterocyclic ring ring (LocalGarda), Wednesday, 16 January 2013 16:47 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aw bloody hell, I could kill a nice Leffe about now.

i just moan at the kids tbh

I just let them down

Maybe get the energetic pal to ask you if he can bounce up and down on your chest while another energetic pal shits himself and has you wipe his or her arse clean.

Or shits herself. Just trying to find ways to make what worked for me work for you.

came in, thought it was girl probs thread, left /grampa simpson

Any advice on a liver detox? Alcohol wreaks havoc on my kidneys after too much consumption. Part of it may be that I'm dehydrated.

If your liver is hammered from overconsumption it's 99% a condition called steatosis - each liver cell accumulates a fat globule inside which seriously impairs its processing capability. Essentially human foie gras. Unfortunately the remedy is no alcohol for six weeks. But the alternative is inflammation (steatohepatitis) followed by angry immune cells depositing collagen fibres everywhere, which can never be removed, making the liver go hard (cirrhosis) at which point you need a new one.
So yeah, google steatosis of the liver - although it's essential to realise you only get that by chronic high consumption (e.g. 6 drinks a day for several months). But the big plus is it's reversible if you can hack the six weeks without booze.

thanks MatthewK, very helpful

drink expensive whisky, neat. learn to sip it, it's looks the business, nobody wants you in a round.

― lemmy's rabbles (darraghmac)

tried it, it's amazing how quick you unlearn to sip it

― non-elitist melted poo (Noodle Vague)

NV otm

I used to teach this stuff - basically alcohol gets broken down to acetaldehyde which is a very nasty irritant, then processed further into safe things. If the liver get overloaded then lots of acetaldehyde hangs around and makes you feel gross, inflaming tissues etc.

Essentially human foie gras.

Harsh but fair. But harsh.

Aimless otm

If you don't have six weeks, two weeks of [a very low calorie diet](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/84/2/304.long) may do the trick, as the body preferentially pulls fat from the liver before it reduces peripheral fat.

chronic high consumption

*relaxes*

(e.g. 6 drinks a day for several months)

*sorry u fuckin what?*

I (barely) knew a guy who died with alcoholic cirrhosis at age 42. His nightly routine was 5-6 six-packs of beer, IIRC.

That'll do it

A case a day you might as well be buying the hard stuff. And the piss volumes alone. And the time commitment. Jesus.

He drank in his backyard (reportedly filled with bags of empties). Shift the lawn chair over a bit each day for a new pissoir.

Addiction produces fuck-tons of perseverance and commitment.

"12 ounces of piss" he says as he sways over the toilet

This thread turned into the Lifestyle Channel just now

If you don't have six weeks, two weeks of [a very low calorie diet](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/84/2/304.long) may do the trick, as the body preferentially pulls fat from the liver before it reduces peripheral fat.

To answer the thread question: not at all. For a while now I've been thinking that I SHOULD drink more than I do now; right now my average is 1-2 alcoholic beverages per month.

Wish I could say the same. I drink every day, beer when I get home, couple of glasses of wine over dinner, maybe another afterwards. More on the weekend. It's crept up over the years.

I've been thinking that I SHOULD drink more

According to the advertising, your life will become more vibrant, happier and involve more beautiful women in skimpy clothes if you do. It hasn't worked for me so far, but maybe, like you, I just drink insufficient amounts to make the transformation.

My last drink was in February of last year. I quit drinking partly to help support someone in my family who was struggling and wanted to quit, necessitating a dry household, and also because I've seen enough alcoholism in my family.

I drink a lot less than I used to, out of sheer "I'm in my late 40s and this shit's too hard to bounce back from anymore". Also I have a partner and stepkids. We'll drink around them but you cant be maggoted around a bunch of children.

(I still drink on the reg tho, and really should pull back more)

Always try to do fun things less, adult people.
That's how you hold off death! Spoilers he gets you in the end.

Yeah. But dying early of cirrhosis of the liver is not a fun way to go.

I like drinking, on balance it's a positive in my life, but I also need to cut down a bit for health reasons.

As my old Da always says "something's gotta kill you".

Hes in his 70s now so he's doin orright.

I've been trying to dial it down for a while. It sometimes feels Sisyphean when the very special part of me decides that a bender is the right choice because FUKKKIIIIITT!!! TALL CANS IN THE AIR RAISED HIGH but if I look at my habits 10 years or even 5 back it does appear that a there has been a cumulative effect and I'm less shitty for it.

I wish I could say that! Ive dialled right back but I'm feeling sicker/older/sorer than ever. It is possibly for other reasons tho.

i hit the "shit's too hard to bounce back from anymore" wall around age 26–27, now I barely drink

Counterpoint

Moderate and heavy drinkers had 2-fold higher odds of living to age 85 without cognitive impairment relative to non-drinkers.

Well there you go if I don't die I might be still pretty good at crosswords while I'm in hospice care

Or the causation that's in the correlation is that the clever ones tend to drink more

In 2012 I spent a couple of months in the "automatic purchase and consumption of vodka" zone, until I happened (there were no decisions at this point in my life, stuff just *happened*) to drop some powdered shroom capsules at the onset of the daily blackout. The next morning, the urge to drink was gone. And without that urge, physical withdrawal symptoms are nothing more than a mild gastroenteritis, so I managed to quit easily.

I also wrecked my place and shat in the sink that night but overall my life has improved I think.

I only drink once a week now, 4-5 drinks total. Alcohol seems to massively exacerbate my depression as I've gotten older (along with a hangover at any more than 2 beers), the not-fun of coming home and reading depressive stuff and listening to sad music and the next day started to outweigh what fun there was the night-of.

I'd quit completely if not for the social component - not that any of my friends would care if I didn't drink but I can't fathom how any couple has sex for the first time dead sober and weed doesn't have that conversational glow of a group of people in the 2-4 drinks range.

Quitting completely also feels like it cuts off a part of life I enjoy, I don't want to shut the door on those (now rare) nights of just talking drunk shit at the bar with strangers.

I started binge drinking at 12 and have drank heavily for 21 years since then. At the moment I'm really happy with my consumption, at last. I get shittered sometimes, I get drunk during the week every once in a while. I drink a decent amount most weekends but sometimes not that much, or only on one or two nights.

This contrasts with say my mid/late 20s when I was living alone and probably drunk at least 4 nights a week and often would go on 3 or 4 day drunks (facilitated by working a 6 days on, 4 days off work schedule). That was too much.

I have a decent not spectacular whiskey shelf, now drink wine with meals if out, quarterly sessions with work or w/e might see me drunk but nothing major these days

When I was younger I used to drink more, but almost always in relative moderation. I have never been able to go above 5 pints without becoming drunk and often ill. Three pints used to be my typical consumption. Nowadays I drink only 2 pints (sometimes only 1), as I like the effect up to that point but not the negative effects when I drink more than that. I only drink at weekends, so 1 or two pints on Saturday, the same on Sunday, as I am scared of the risk to my health of drinking more frequently. But recently I have thought it might be nice to become one of those people who is a more regular fixture at the pub. I do enjoy the lift to my mood that 1 or 2 pints give me, and I dislike being bored and gloomy all the time during the week.

I'm lucky with alcohol; don't normally get much of a hangover & somehow I've never felt any real craving for it while sober. I don't monitor or think about my intake and it varies a lot but probably averages about twice a week, normally a couple of beers with some weeknight venture. never really got into drinking at home. I've still indulged in plenty of reckless and self-destructive drunk behaviour mind, and that triumphant feeling you get when you're a bit drunk is such a seductive high, but I've got other vices to fall back on

I unapologetically love drinking. Alcoholic beverages are tasty, they pair nicely with food, and they enhance camaraderie. They provide a little layer of insulation from the harshness of world, which is, in moderation, quite a nice feeling. Bar culture is rich and evocative; wine and beer and spirits have interesting histories and social roles.

So I drink often, but not a huge amount at a time. That is, I will generally have two or three drinks almost every evening, and at pretty much every restaurant meal. What I've never been a fan of is the big weekendy college-type binge. The 8, 9, 10-drink spree that you don't remember much about and isn't much fun and feels terrible in the morning.

So even though I drink almost every day, it's been many years since I've felt solidly drunk. Not least because drinking steadily for 30 years leads to formidable tolerance. If I undertook to get really drunk, it would take a LOT.

I haven't ever come across much information about how steady-yet-modest drinking (spread throughout the week) compares with the same amount consumed all on Friday night, in terms of how much it's wrecking my body. In any case, I periodically take a week or two off every now and then, whether to demonstrate that I can, or to push the reset button on my bloodstream just a little.

I feel instinctively that something that lightens your mood and makes you feel less stressed and more relaxed is quite likely somewhat beneficial to your health. Also, there's the whole antioxidants, glass-of-red-wine-a-day, Mediterranean diet thing, but that could be spurious and maybe it's the stress relief and alteration of mood that's important. On the other side of the coin, the liver, and body generally, do have to keep getting rid of it, so there's the question of how much intake (and how frequent, as you say) before physical damage cancels out any benefits.

going to pub for a few drinks >>>>>>>>>> drinking >>>>>>>>>> going to pub

one of my local boozers was the scene of a recent vehicular homicide in the car-park, and is not the most friendly type of place. The other was recently the scene of a paedo-hunter type citizens arrest, and is a shithole with a ropey landlord. So I'd put supping in the garden>>> going to the pub!

But the banter, the crack, the warmth and bonhomie.

Irish privilege but I can't imagine having only one world class local. Even at home you've your choice of five or six spots each of which is a classic

I've got one, but it's not really world class tbh. However there were no pubs where I grew up, I blame that John Calvin.

i have something of a problem

but pub bonhomie is the only life i know

any "efforts" i've made to cut down have always felt like they resulted in failure. i dunno, there was a time in my life where i did e every week and i used to think "how will i give up" and then i just got older and did it less often.

similarly with alcohol i reckon, although i binge drink a lot, my consumption is dropping a little. i stay in one day out of thurs/friday/saturday/sunday more often than ever, a small decrease, but the trend is there to see.

i don't really drink monday/tuesday/wednesday - occasionally a glass of wine but i'm fairly disciplined. my friendship group makes it difficult to cut down sometimes, not for a second that it's not my choice or whatever, just if i hang out with my friends there'll be drinking, and equally if i am thinking of staying in there can be a lot of pressure, text messages etc, to come out and get wasted. everyone is away this weekend and i'm p excited about how easy it'll be to stay home and do healthy things.

problem for me is i have a chronic illness, alcohol frees me from its effects, temporarily, even though it prob makes them worse, slowly, over time. it's a v hard thing to battle - if i stay in when i feel bad i'm just staying in feeling bad, if i go out i can completely forget the physical symptoms for a time.

Ye Mad Puffin otm.

Alcohol forms an integral part of my life. II mix cocktails a couple times a week. Wine with dinner is like water; it's impossible NOT to have it, usually a couple glasses. When I eat out for lunch on Saturdays, I'll have wine with the food or a cocktail. For dinner out, forget it: cocktails and wine. Aging has fucked with my metabolism enough that I know when I've had enough and as a result hangovers are rare.

I'm too much a creature of routine, too besotted with self-control to pass a limit. I told a friend last week that these days when I drink with lunch and smoke a cigarette, I get sad – I have nothing to look forward to later in the day!

OTM on my losing the inability to binge drink for pool parties and all day activities. I just returned from a six-day beach vacation and, barring two glasses of white wine, I drank no alcohol during the day – again, if I'm drunk at 2 p.m. what is there to look forward to?

what sometimes scares me is i reckon i'm getting even better at the longer sessions, like out at 2pm and then it's 4am and you're sat quietly discussing something trying to find somewhere else to go.

once you're drunk looking forwards ceases to be an issue in my experience :)

not claiming to be sober in those situations, just the illusory sobriety that comes

xpost

yeah that

satori or somethink

I get sad – I have nothing to look forward to later in the day!

That's exactly how I feel when walking home from the pub on a Sunday night. Nothing to look forward to until Friday (I don't go to the pub on a Friday, but I do go out for a meal).

I went out quite recently with some friends and got absolutely blasted, 20s-style and the hangover the next day reminded me of how long it had been since I did something like that. I think it's the same with a lot of behaviour from when you're younger, you just find yourself doing things less and less until you realise you've stopped.

I'm not sure I even drink less than I used to (although on balance probably), but the mode of drinking has changed quite a lot. Probably a side-effect of being married and therefore going out involves drinking wine/cocktails more than it used to (and a whisky before bed is still one of the greatest pleasures) but being properly drunk or having an extended session happens less and less as I get older. My life doesn't revolve around alcohol, but my social life probably still does - as it does for most people I suspect.

Still, the idea of being on holiday and not drinking every single evening is just weird to me.

Like we now have what is essentially a fully-stocked cocktail cabinet in the front room and most of it never gets touched.

the joyous logic of booze is that once you've drunk yrself into isolation what else is there to do but carry on?

read Kingsley Amis' writing on drinking?

Still, the idea of being on holiday and not drinking every single evening is just weird to me.

alas, I haven't had a holiday in 6 years now, but probably the rising price of booze might save me from oblivion :p

Still, the idea of being on holiday and not drinking every single evening is just weird to me.

oh for sure. holidays are lethal.

read Kingsley Amis' writing on drinking?

great book.

used to be a daily drinker to a greater or lesser degree but i barely drink at all now

the anti-depressants i'm taking at the moment make drinking a lot less fun - if regular drinking feels like putting the output of your senses through a fuzz pedal and playing a glorious windmilling pete townshend power-chord, then drinking on anti-depressants feels like fumbling a jazz chord and getting drenched in pints of piss hurled by an angry audience

I didn't start drinking with any regularity until much later in life, some time in my early 30s. In fact, I do recall actually thinking at some point, "hmm, I really should be drinking more." (I blame the kids, but I also embraced it as a hobby, especially as collecting CDs/DVDs became pointless). So I set about learning all I could about beers and spirits (still more or less in the dark about wine), learning personal limits (I've never been drunk to excess, and rarely to the point of discomfort - I wonder if this is part and parcel with starting older?) and how to mix great cocktails for enthusiastic friends. Of my core group of friends, I don't think any of them has or ever had a drinking problem, though they drank plenty growing up and at least one has problems in the family and another, who owns restaurants/bars/clubs, has seen the worst of everything and knows how to take it easy. Still, just as I was getting up to speed many of them started to cut back. The women, as part of fitness regiments, and the men, too, to some extent, because their spouses were drinking less. So now several of them follow the mostly/only-the-weekends model, or only on vacation model. Me, I'll have a beer or two most/many nights, shifting to wine/cocktails/spirits in the colder months. Since I have no problems in the family or among friends, since I'm healthy and don't drink to excess, I can always justify drinking. But I can also go several days without a drink just fine, though what's the point of that?

My fave drinking story came from Frank Sinatra (not directly, and I'm paraphrasing massively). Someone went up to Sinatra and said, Frank, you are a legendary drinker, people are always buying you drinks, how do you hold your liquor? And he explained in response: I go to a party and someone says Frank, let me buy you a drink. So I get a drink, take a few sips, set it down. Then a few minutes later someone sees me with no drink and says Frank, let me buy you a drink! So I get another drink, take a few sips, and set it down. People always see me with a drink in hand, but they don't realize I'm only taking a couple of sips of each drink.

In my case I like playing bartender. I'll sip on a couple of beers while I mix drinks, which keeps me too busy to drink too much. By the end of the night I'm nicely buzzed but not too beyond the pale to neaten up.

My fave drinking story came from Frank Sinatra (not directly, and I'm paraphrasing massively). Someone went up to Sinatra and said, Frank, you are a legendary drinker, people are always buying you drinks, how do you hold your liquor? And he explained in response: I go to a party and someone says Frank, let me buy you a drink. So I get a drink, take a few sips, set it down. Then a few minutes later someone sees me with no drink and says Frank, let me buy you a drink! So I get another drink, take a few sips, and set it down. People always see me with a drink in hand, but they don't realize I'm only taking a couple of sips of each drink.

not to troll your story but this reads a bit like something on clickhole. it makes it sound like he deliberately hides the first drink so that he's offered another, just so he can get bought drinks by everyone, drinks he revels in leaving unfinished.

That would be funny, too!

i guess so - maybe he wanted people to get the satisfaction of buying him a drink? or perhaps he was just a sociopath.

He's in cahoots with the bartender.

I mean, I'm sure he was a functioning alcoholic. It reminds me of a time I interviewed Paul Westerberg, and he sort of defensively claimed the Replacements would start out a set drunk and sloppy, but by the end of the night they'd sweated off most of the alcohol and were often pretty solid, but by then everyone had left. Maaaaayve, but they still drank a shit ton to excess.

I first read that Sinatra story in The Way You Wear Your Hat about twenty years ago. It sounds true, just like I also believe he was carried out of many a bar often.

I've been off the sauce completely since mid-March and at this point I really can't see going back. I had fallen into a Homer Simpson-esque existence of pounding back a few after work/during dinner/before bed. Every once in a while I'd let myself dry out for a few weeks, but would soon fall back into the same pattern.

My main reasons for quitting:

1.) I had just started going through physical therapy and I realized that I still smelled of booze at my 7:30 a.m. appointments. Additionally, alcohol in the system made me less motivated to do my daily exercises.
2.) My kids got one bout of cold/flu after the other this winter. After a couple months of this, I had lost the energy to take care of my sick kids while drinking as well.
3.) I've been stuck at about 70 lbs overweight for the entire 2010s. Booze was a huge part of my caloric intake and usually led to me binging on junk food as well. Without the booze, it's been easier to reign those other impulses in. I'm still fat but I'm beginning to see results.

As for beer – I've almost completely lost my taste for it. Even on this beach trip I mentioned a few posts ago I said I'm having a beer because it's hot and It's What You Do and was so bloated after half a pint that I poured it down the drain.

beautiful metaphors gazzarra xxxxp

16 or 17 to 29, revolved bigly; 30 to today, less than zero. The incompatibility of hangovers and a career change was the deciding factor; it was pretty clear immediately you couldn't be running out of a classroom every 10 minutes, so the decision made it itself. That, and I'd lost interest in going to clubs to see bands. Stopping was easy.

Mozeltov hows life

Another angle is that my entire life p much pivoted around relationships - personal and professional- that were to a large extent sealed or advanced to the critical point of intimacy or w/e under the shared influence and experience of alcohol.

Teetotality is well and good but the odds of me being a destitute virgin skyrocket tbph NB I'm Irish YMMV

I've never really had hangovers except after a really big night, and never got headaches in any case, so there never much deterrent there. But the thing that basically killed weeknight drinking for me, even moderately, was when I started waking up four hours into the night and not being able to get back to sleep. I wasn't going to voluntarily put myself through that for anything.

same thing used to happen to me! 4am on the dot, suddenly wide awake, feeling godawful and unable to get back to sleep

yeah I'd noticed that too as I got older. used to be able to sleep 'til football came on, now it's like three solid hours of blackout + a series of 30 minute naps

alcohol is a regular part of my life but no more than coffee or weed (cf booze --- coffee --- weed). it is much easier to skip the end-of-the-day drink than it is to skip a coffee in the morning.

i'll have a drink every night when i get home. i'll open a beer while i'm cooking or getting my boys ready for bed and then finish it with dinner. if i have guests over or if it's a weekend i might have 2-3 over the course of an evening. if weed is involved, i find it much, much easier to limit my alcohol intake to just a couple drinks. i have a regular friday night meetup w/ some close friends and we'll cook food and pass a few joints throughout the night but only share one or two 750ml bottles of beer between us.

tbh as much as i love alcohol if i just had a tasty effervescent drink w/o alcohol that would be just fine. having kombucha around i could easily skip alcohol or just keep it to one drink a day.

I told a friend last week that these days when I drink with lunch and smoke a cigarette, I get sad – I have nothing to look forward to later in the day!

OTM on my losing the inability to binge drink for pool parties and all day activities. I just returned from a six-day beach vacation and, barring two glasses of white wine, I drank no alcohol during the day – again, if I'm drunk at 2 p.m. what is there to look forward to?

Exactly. Wine/smoking/novel has unfortunately become my daily relaxation routine, and that plus normal tiredness is what sends me to sleep every night. I usually don't start the process until 8-9, sometimes even 10-11pm depending on work events.

I think I've forgotten how to drink socially though. Drinking at bars just reminds me that it's cheaper and more comfortable at home. Along with several of my neighbors I've perfected the stoop hang, in which ppl sit outside and chat with whomever walks by, and everyone stays out as long (or as little) as they want. It's so perfect that it's spoiled me for anything else.

Bringing a book to a bar in the middle of the day to have lunch + chatting with the bartender = one of my favorite things

However, customers and some bartenders are inclined to give me suspicious glances when I read. As if staring and thumbing your phone wasn't weird!

I am very cheap thrifty & alcohol, especially out, is expensive, so I rarely drink unless someone else is picking up the tab. I don't care about it enough to bother otherwise.

Oh god yeah, reading in pubs is wonderful and something I would never give up. You can't really have more than a couple of drinks in that situation though, and it's more of a winter thing. You need the right pubs around you as well.

Chatting with the bartender or dinner at the bar in general is great.

ppl sit outside and chat with whomever walks by

Oh, man, we generally have a standing (sitting) neighbor night in which 20 people or so, give or take, hold court at the end of the block every Friday once summer silly season of camps and stuff is over, grown ups drinking and kids running around like loons. At first I thought the adults were relatively modest drinkers, and then I realized that they'd (the dudes at least) likely already been drinking a while before I got there and by the time my household showed up they were sort of in a lull. And then, much later, once most people had gone back home, the hardcore start diving right back in again. Everyone is twice my size, like proper midwest ogres, so I guess it just takes a bit longer before they get all wobbly.

Communal home drinking is the best! Our only complications are 1)open containers are illegal in public so technically we could all get tickets every time (occasionally someone does--putting your drink in an innocuous cup or glass is key), and 2) that a couple of non-social, non-smoking neighbors object to the smoke. I am not unfeeling--we moved our usual place to further from their windows--but it's inevitable that everyone's outdoor space is minimal and shared and them's the breaks. Close your windows. Also if you want to complain about us, please refrain from screaming at your child in the hallways every day because community is a two-way street.

It would be nice to have a porch or a yard, undoubtedly.

I will read in bars, and will even work a crossword puzzle. But in orbit & JinC are also right that hanging on the stoop/porch/whatever and chatting with neighbors and passersby is also Most Chill.

Further, when I smoke pot I sometimes don't drink at all, to feel it on its own. That said, sometimes I'll have a beer as a centering/calming mechanism if I get anxious or feel unmoored while high. My body knows exactly what to do with beer, so that anchoring familiarity helps.

my favorite places to drink:

a front porch
a back porch
a kitchen
a bar

That said, sometimes I'll have a beer as a centering/calming mechanism if I get anxious or feel unmoored while high. My body knows exactly what to do with beer, so that anchoring familiarity helps.

yea agreed

i live in a community that is very much tied together by front porches, it is part of what makes this neighborhood so much nicer than other areas where i've lived

I love to drink in airports

Don't get me wrong. Airport drinking is barely defensible. It is definitely the worst place to drink, except for on the plane itself. Worse than a hotel bar. But I have grown to love it.

oh me too

Everyone is twice my size, like proper midwest ogres

<3 my Dutch and Swedish people

Me three! Getting to the airport early before a trip starts for a martini is one of life's civilizing pleasures.

Mostly, maybe, the way it feels like nobody can judge you for starting at 9:30 AM because it's 2230 where you're from and all you have to do for the next 10.7 hours is comply with the seatbelt sign

it really is nice, I got United Club passes once and it was like a revelation. even if it was just free light beer, still was great

being hungover on a plane is awful though

Tomboto OTM. I was just typing exactly that: Airports are great for drinking partly because it's a no-judgment zone. Everyone is going somewhere, you're never going to see any of them again, and no one knows what time zone you came from or which you're going to. Also no one knows whether you're terrified of flying, or whether your flight boards in three minutes, or whatever. The tyranny of airline travel is universally acknowledged, so no one will ever judge your response to it.

So if you're observed chugging down three bourbon & ginger ales at 10:30 AM on a Wednesday while wearing a business suit? No problemo. Whatever you need, dude.

The only downside is the prices are excessive. But if you're a business traveler and you play your cards right, you can expense it.

i stopped smoking in january after 30+ years so i can't really drink. or at least i don't want to because i know it will just make me want to smoke. i think i had two glasses of wine in the month of july. i kinda like it. makes me feel like an adult. i reckon if i keep with the not smoking for another couple of years i would lose that association. but i drank to get drunk for almost my entire adult life and smoked all through that so its a pretty strong association. i can't smoke pot either because again it just makes me want to smoke cigs and pot stresses me out. my goal is to be one of those people who just occasionally goes out to dinner and orders one fancy cocktail for fun. healthy!

i have been eating small amounts of mushrooms this summer for stress. they work! but i can't do it every day. i don't trip or anything. i can work and talk to people and all that. but they do provide a little mood lift/stress relief. still considering whether i want to go the pharma route for stress/anxiety. mushrooms seem pretty healthy. but they don't sell them at walgreens. i've also been using the nicotine lozenges as needed since january. they don't provide the medicinal benefits of a cigarette though and i still sometimes feel like i'm gonna lose it.

(i also cut back on drinking a lot since my wife stopped completely about 6 years ago. that definitely made it easier to go without this year. i do like being at the point where i don't care if people smoke and drink around me. it's a very liberating feeling.)

but carry on drinking, all you people!

being hungover on a plane is awful though

but being drunk on a plane is a+++++

being hungover on a plane is awful though

Shakes On A Plane.

Never been a daily drinker, was never much for having a single beer or glass of wine or two. I've always binged, usually isolated to weekends. Since becoming self-employed though that has definitely extended into weekdays. When I'm busy with work I don't drink at all. I don't even think about it or crave or miss it. But once I crack that first one I generally don't stop until I'm a stumbling mess, especially if I mix in some weed. Luckily for everyone involved I don't get angry or violent or horribly embarrassing, (or so I've been assured). It's much better now that I live where I can walk or easily get a ride share.

I've also never really kept booze around the house. It's always been something I go out to do, whether with people or occasionally alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrM39m22jH4

XP I'm not so sure that's true. I prefer to be mostly sober through security, tipsy at boarding so I can then get mildly drunk on the plane and sleep. I've been hammered on a plane a few times and it's terrible.

Just went to SF on Virgin America and their back-of-seat screen-thingy-doodle has a way you can order drinks whenever you want (as opposed to just when the cart comes by).

You can even send a drink to another person, via seat number. Were I not Very Married I would be trying to figure out how to use that for romantic advantage.

I've done it on ILX.

Ha, someone bought me a drink on Southwest earlier this week, just to be nice! They had coupons to use up.

tastes bad and i don't like the high

Don't get me wrong. Airport drinking is barely defensible. It is definitely the worst place to drink, except for on the plane itself. Worse than a hotel bar. But I have grown to love it.

― El Tomboto, Thursday, August 10, 2017 11:45 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a good hotel bar, that even locals will occasionally go to but consider pricey, is a joy

bad hotel bars are one of the worst things in existence

I think you're right, i may have to reconsider. Hotel bars are worse than airports, on average.

Drinking & dining at the bar in certain kinds of asian (thai / ramen / vietnamese) restaurants often has a hotel bar feeling for me

before bh died i had no involvement with the local pub thing and rarely drank.
bh died, and now i know everyone at the local, and i drink a lot more.
and i have no problems with it.
i am now basically Norm from Cheers, i walk into my local and i know i will have a few hours of chat and banter that will make me smile.
is this a problem ?
quite possibly.
but give me this over the alternative of being at home and lonely.

A nightcap at even the most corporate hotel bar is yet another of life's quiet joys.

i had absolutely no interest in bars once you couldn't smoke inside them.

if you could still smoke inside on the east coast i would smoke and drink much more. thanks bloomberg

When I learned about Laphroiag 10 it greatly improved my overall hotel bar experience tbf

the great bourbon renaissance/marketing push got booker's into a lot of hotel bars and that is cool with me

my dad (rip) was a bells whiskey man day to day, but laphroiag was his special day groove.

mmm booker's

mmm laphroiag

mmm phenols

Wrong

laphroaig tastes like tcp

and not in a good way

the great bourbon renaissance/marketing push got booker's into a lot of hotel bars and that is cool with me

Fuckers recently doubled the price of a bottle.

yeah, that part not good. I should have marked that tip "expense account only"

OK, I was wondering if the drink price was still completely nonsensical at this hotel restaurant, and it is:
http://prod-admin1.denihan.atex.cniweb.net:8080/fileserver/file/12306/filename/Primehouse%20Wine%20List%204.20.2017.pdf

Angels Envy 25
Basil Hayden 14
Bookers 12
Bulleit 12
Colonel E.H. Taylor 14
Knob Creek 12
Maker’s Mark 14
Noah’s Mill 16
Willett, ‘Pot Still Reserve’ 24
Woodford Reserve 16

So uh, Bulleit and Bookers are the same price despite one being twice as much per bottle, and Maker's costs more than either?

all the prices are gouging, but the pricing makes absolutely no sense when you gauge the different drinks against each other

oh yeah and jack daniels is $13

lol

i've done it enough times but i think i am done ordering a whiskey neat in a bar, it hurts to pay that much for something that i can have so easily at home. if i'm going to pay $15 for a drink i want some labor going into that drink

Menu prices have very little to do with what each thing costs in a retail setting.

and even less with what things cost at wholesale, but my life has revolved around alcohol enough to know this list is batshit crazy

laphroaig tastes like tcp

― for sale: clown shoes, never worn (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, August 10, 2017 2:02 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and not in a good way

― for sale: clown shoes, never worn (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, August 10, 2017 2:02 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's the phenols. it literally has the same compounds in it as tcp and that explains the aromatic similarity

Only times I order whiskey at a bar are when there's something really special or hard to find on the menu at a (relatively) reasonable price. That list is wacky. $25 for Angels Envy? All that shit on there is pretty standard at almost any store save the Taylor, so if anything that one should be more expensive.

Anyway, this is how you price whiskey:

http://www.longmanandeagle.com/whiskey/

ha I bounce between there and Reno whenever I visit my sister

Hitchens was right about this: once you dabble in Macallan, it's hard to try anything else.

Basil Hayden 14
Bookers 12
Bulleit 12
Colonel E.H. Taylor 14
Knob Creek 12
Maker’s Mark 14
Noah’s Mill 16
Willett, ‘Pot Still Reserve’ 24
Woodford Reserve 16

So uh, Bulleit and Bookers are the same price despite one being twice as much per bottle, and Maker's costs more than either?

― mh, Thursday, August 10, 2017 9:11 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is dollars?! Criminal.

I really try not to drink often these days and I feel so much better having adopted that, but I still enjoy my Belgian dubbels, trippels, and quads like there ain't no tomorrow.

so the average response in this thread: I can't drink too often because I'll go too far; or, I drank too often, therefore I drink little to nothing now. This depresses me. I make no judgment on anyone.

http://i.imgur.com/7afqZIe.jpg

xp Have a Belgian beer place like a block from my house and I feel that. Generally keep it as a kind of treat though, cuz damn does a tab there get expensive.

I pretty much drink until drunk nearly every Friday and Saturday night, though have a good handle on limits and am in control. Also one night during the week, generally Wednesday. Still a huge part of my social life (single, early 30s), but I'm getting to the point where the hangovers are outweighing the pleasures. Something might need to change soon. I'm in good physical shape though. Feel like a big part of me working out has been to keep this lifestyle feasible and not be a total wreck, but mentally it's getting rough. Been such a routine for so long, not sure where to go from here.

w/ me Alfred it's more that after I increased my anti-anxiety med dosage to 150 mg I began realizing that at the old dosage, alcohol and the meds didn't really have issues co-existing, but now the two definitely don't play nice if I have more than say, three drinks. sometimes the rebound anxiety is excruciating.

lol at the tab comment circa, yeah the problem with enjoying such treats = they ain't cheap

I suspect my daily / weekly intake probably moves the median in a less depressing direction, Alfred, although my doctor wouldn't agree.

Laphroaig made me wonder why iodine doesn't have more culinary uses.

Sheesh @ the laphroiag haters

I think I have a well-rounded palate for booze as long as it's not too sweet. There's a pizza restaurant near us that seems like it might just be a way for the owner(s) to write off a ridiculous amaro collection on their taxes, and I've enjoyed some of the truly odd ones. I will go for many, many types of whisky. I am also fond of anisettes. This is a long way of saying that the list of what I like is longer than the list of what I find worthless and/or disgusting. What I can't deal with:

- "session" IPAs; just make a goddamn pale ale, or call it a Light IPA, you jackasses
- white rum, silver tequila, moonshine, or any of that clear bullshit that's obviously better after some barrel school
- the vast, vast majority of wine, I used to like this stuff but really, grapes? I can't anymore.
- fancy vodka, why
- soda beverages in my drink - tonic, cola, or sprite, who cares, stop
- limoncello, jesus

we have a tequila bar here now that's mostly great ambiance/music place instead of a tasting bar but the menu is half tequila, half bottled beer

i'm making my way through anejos

I wish I could remember where in New Orleans I saw Lagavulin for $11 a few weeks ago, after never seeing it for less than $19 in any other bar.

wow people must have forgotten Ron Swanson already

I might be into peaty scotch laphroaig-style these days, but I have had quite the aversion in the past

my only alcohol/life balance issue is, now that I have my life relatively balanced, is not being good at keeping up with water and food when I go out. I very seldom drink to regret, although with age I'm noticing memory is more grey when I've been out socializing and drinking. I think part of it is a lack of anxiety making me hyper-focused on awkward moments and replaying them the next day, and just genuinely relaxing instead, though!

I've been taking a small amount of kratom before getting on the plane and all of a sudden I don't get the interminable headaches that were an inevitability of flying the previous few years.

Me three! Getting to the airport early before a trip starts for a martini is one of life's civilizing pleasures.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, August 10, 2017 12:48 PM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i approve of the general concept, but bless you for finding a good martini at the airport.

I drink when I meet up with friends or go see shows, otherwise it's a beer or glass of whiskey a couple evenings per week. Don't always want to drink when out as 3 drinks is the point where a day-long hangover becomes a 50/50 shot, depending on how carefully I look after myself (if I'm biking home I usually end up dehydrated without realizing it). I have a family wedding to go to with all my rowdy cousins and I'm dreading the day after, I haven't been truly drunk in ages.

honestly, airports are more likely to have someone doing things literally by a book, using shot measuring and mixing via checklist than some restaurants offering cocktails but having some guy who knows how to poorly eyeball a shot and use a soda gun who says "what?" if you ask for a manhattan

I went with friends to a suburban restaurant that was supposed to be pretty good by local standards. Ordered food in the bar area, and I was ordering some flavored margarita (hah) off the menu guessing their bar acumen was iffy, my friend asked for a negroni because I mentioned it was a good summer drink.

waitress had never heard of campari, neither had the bartender, and they didn't have it

if you drink a plethora of things you quickly can sniff out via a glance at the bar and menu selection whether it's a real bartending situation or a mixers/liquor plus exactly what is on the menu situation

because I have ordered drinks at a bunch of places

- "session" IPAs; just make a goddamn pale ale, or call it a Light IPA, you jackasses

Used to think this, have come around a bit. 1) I've started to have some really good session beers, so people must be getting better at making them and 2) I'd always argue with my wife, why drink Bud or Coors or any other shit beer? Why bother? And her argument is (fair) that if you hit the good craft stuff over the course of a game or something you'll end up sick or on the floor. Session beers allow you to keep drinking without ending up on your ass.

- white rum, silver tequila, moonshine, or any of that clear bullshit that's obviously better after some barrel school

Barrels definitely change and improve stuff, but there is nothing wrong with silver tequila, aka blanco tequila, aka still the product of 100% pure agave, a plant that takes 7 years to mature in only a couple specific environments. Even reposado or anejo, it's really not aged that long. White whiskey can go fuck itself, though, fuck you white whiskey makers for being so desperate to get something on the shelf while your other stuff sits in barrels that you've convinced people your bullshit bathtub booze is worthwhile.

- the vast, vast majority of wine, I used to like this stuff but really, grapes? I can't anymore.

Yeah, I'm not picky about reds, but really don't like whites.

- fancy vodka, why

Vodka can be made by anyone, anywhere, with almost anything. I once heard vodka described as an elaborate joke the rest of the world played on America.

- soda beverages in my drink - tonic, cola, or sprite, who cares, stop

I'm cool with this, not fucking sprite or anything, but a good G&T is sublime, and can't beat stuff like Campari mixed with mineral water for a refreshing summer sipper.

- limoncello, jesus

Yeah, fuck this melted popsicle shit.

OE with the cold-when-blue sensor or gtfo

otm

The insipid wateriness of session ales is part of what made me come back around to plain old Coors, 'Gansett, Natty Boh, etc. I'd rather have a purpose-built 4% lager than waste my time finding the unicorn that is a successful attempt to shove a square IPA peg into a round all-day-drinking hole.

That, and the record hot summers, and realizing if I'm going to pay $5 and like my Tecate when I go out for tacos that have radishes in them, why not just pay $6 and have more fun on my patio?

stiegl radler baby

3/4 of the craft beers from Texas are summer beers, I'm never lacking for light + tasty.

Psh, shandys. Stiegl Radler is like 2.5 alcohol, barely beer and fruit juice. It's not a step up from flavored malt beverage, but ... nah.

This thread has turned into every other ilx thread about what ilxors think is a 'good' drink or a 'bad' drink. Pity.

some drinks in moderation are good, and we are all bad

Aimless... he drinks a bitter tonic

I am an aficionado of thread topics even more than an aficionado of alcoholic drinks. As a drinker, I am unreasonably forbearing. As an ilxor, I am uncompromising.

Radlers and Shandys seem like Orangina to me, in that they are better when made at home from the basic ingredients (lager and OJ, or lager and lemonade, etc, or OJ and soda water, if you need me to explain the Orangina connection). No way I'm paying extra for that stuff in a can when I have all the necessary ingredients at home as part of my basic grocery bill.

Aimless wrecking shop, new display name results

Bars frown on me bringing my own supplies, though.

Does Bartles and Jaymes still exist? Zima's back, and flavored malt beverages are doing well. Time for a full on revival of bad drinks, countered by a more contemporary dedication to good drinking.

tbh the bitter truth embodied in thread title is at some point, there is just drinking

I understand the bar camaraderie idea, and the local where you drink shots and sip your beer and socialize like a living room that's more than furniture and maybe a tv. Sneering at malt beverages is like sneering at single malt scotch or well-crafted beer or whatever else -- even if you're optimizing an idyll flavor profile, or seeking out rare liquor, every few people are going to have a tiny drink that gives you no intoxication -- we like some level of intoxication. And we might say it is cleaner or well-honed, or even a different experience due to economic disconnect but you like to drink.

i guess so - maybe he wanted people to get the satisfaction of buying him a drink? or perhaps he was just a sociopath.

If you want white whiskey, you need to get some real stuff 'apple pie'. Make sure it burns blue. Put it in the freezer and have fun.

"Session beer" is a British term I believe, although not an especially old one, probably reflects the fact that we start drinking several hours earlier in the day than you do and if you're settling in for a good long session in the pub then you don't want to kill yourself too early on. It's at least partly a marketing team, a session beer will sell to people who wouldn't buy something sold a light beer.

For most of my adult life, beer in the sub-4% range in Britain has (with some honorable exceptions) been pisswater. One of the best things about the whole craft beer thing has been a proliferation of beers at around 3.5% that actually taste of something.

Oh god yeah, reading in pubs is wonderful and something I would never give up. You can't really have more than a couple of drinks in that situation though, and it's more of a winter thing. You need the right pubs around you as well.

i generally agree about it being a winter thing, but i've gone to my local on one or two hot sundays recently, days when there's nobody around or i don't want to do much other than be alone, and sat in their beer garden reading and sipping a pint - there's a peace there you can't always find at home.

Going offthread even more, but I do miss the days when you could go into any pub and get a pint of mild on tap.

I choose my pub reading carefully because some bartenders/bar patrons interpret a book propped up against the condiment caddy differently. Some, correctly, understand a book to mean "I will be cordial about refill requests but would otherwise prefer to be left in companionable silence."

Others view it as a potential conversation starter. I normally dread the question "Watcha readin'?". The asker either doesn't really care (in which case I may as well answer "midget-based erotica"), or (perhaps worse), the asker IS very interested in the author or the topic. In which case they are likely to want to discuss it. Look, pal, if I wanted to discuss Faulkner with people, I would have stayed in graduate school.

a pint of mild on tap

I think up North you maybe still can. I went in a pub across the road from Macclesfield station a few years ago and they had Banks's Mild on tap. It appeared to be a standard option, not a guest ale or something like that. I see Banks's is now owned by Marston's, and if I recall this was a Marston's pub, old-fashioned, plain, not geared to ale enthusiasts.

I used to drink Banks's Mild sometimes when I was a teenager but tbh I think that was more down to it being 99p a pint vs £1.40 for Best Bitter than anything else. Kinda want a pint of it now you mentioned it just to see what I think of it as a more experienced beer drinker.

I had a pint of it in that pub I just mentioned. It was okay. I like mild anyway, one of my favourite kinds of beer. I see now from the Marston's Wikipedia page that mild is more of a Midlands than Northern thing, Macclesfield being more or less on the cusp of the two.

re: britishes drinking earlier.

I've personally never felt the pull of restrictions like "no drinking except on weekends" or "no drinking before X:XX" or "no drinking alone."

A drink is just as alcoholic - and just as desirable - at 5:01 PM as it was at 4:59. Or, for that matter, 11:59 AM.

It makes as much sense as saying you can only have sex on weekends, or only at night, or only with someone else.

Wasn't there something about the pubs closing too early or something, so people getting a head start? Or did that get reversed?

In my adult life, I've seesawed from drinking pretty much every night to teetotalerism. I've been in the 'lucky if I get through an entire six pack in a month' phase for a while, but I kinda feel like alcohol may become a more central part of my life in days to come.

Josh, I always heard that the session thing was from Britishes worker shifts (possibly during wartime manufacturing efforts) where you needed a beer you could drink before going back to work. But that could be spurious; I dunno.

Josh - I think the story is they started licensing hours during WWI to improve worker productivity by shutting pubs at 10:30pm, and also closing during the day between (I think) 3pm and 7pm. This stayed after the war finished and at some point 10:30pm got changed to 11pm except on Sundays. Then the afternoon closing went in the 80s apart from Sundays, which was changed in 1995 (I know that one is correct). So yeah the received wisdom is that Brits chug so much beer down so they can get drunk before the early closing time.

Licensing laws were relaxed some time after 2000 but a lot of pubs still close at 11.

I love stuff like this btw

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/presidential-drinking-habits-washington-jefferson

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-the-pilgrims-wore-beer-goggles/

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/152901/rabbi-wolpes-picks-revisiting-prohibition

There's some book I read years ago about drinking that I loved but I cannot remember the title or the author for the life of me right now. I think it had a cider recipe in the back. It was by a woman.

Didn't it used to be customary to have Friday lunch down the pub with your officemates?

Oh, "The Joy of Drinking" by Barbara Holland. It's good. She's dead now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/09/the-author-who-brought-us-the-joy-of-drinking-a-tribute/63259/

xp still is at some places I've worked. Not where I am now unfortunately not that I would get into any trouble if I did go for a pint, we do very occasionally.

Lincoln excepted, our teetotaler presidents have been disasters.

Didn't it used to be customary to have Friday lunch down the pub with your officemates?

Still reasonably widespread.

My current office quite often puts beers out late on Fridays, which they have just sent an email out about but I work from home on Fridays so no free beer for me. I just made a coffee anyway so I'll live.

was thinking of this thread as i went out for "a drink" for a colleague's leaving do - went on to another pub which had a free beer as a recruiter was hosting some kind of networking event for people who do my job, colleagues left so i met a bunch of other people, stayed till latest possible time. dying today.

a free bar rather than a free beer - multiple free beers.

"The Joy of Drinking" by Barbara Holland. It's good. She's dead now.

Teetotalers be like: "SEE? Drinking kills!"

My life does not revolve around alcohol at all. It probably did for a couple of years in my teens but I grew out of it rather quickly.

I was a teetotaler for much of my twenties then became a social drinker.

Exercise and other, boring responsibilities limit the times I can drink. I try to drink a couple of beers or small amounts of whisky once a week, though. I tend to do it to enjoy the taste and social bonding aspect of it.

Those are the things most celebrated in Holland's book, IIRC.

I also found this piece fascinating, despite the author:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/02/15/drinking-games

prob not new for many of you but this is in the spirit of the kingsley amis book, a v enjoyable piece:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/a-few-too-many

That's a good one. There's a decent book I've read on that topic too, which is easy to remember because its title is THE WRATH OF GRAPES

I love "carpenters in the forehead"

yeah that is amazing indeed.

My contact in Calcutta said buttermilk [as a hangover cure]. “You can also pour it over your head,” he added. “Very soothing.”

^^^my favorite

I prefer to pour kerosene on my head, put on Al Stewart, and pull out my lighter.

feel like drinkin' alone is better than listening to billy joel track-by-track

Is it any wonder Billy likes to imbibe?

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/08/a-study-says-heavy-drinking-is-now-a-public-health-crisis.html

Mookie otm

I divide the cash in my wallet into denominations that can or cannot be used to buy a pint

re: mild ale, I was back in the midlands this week for a couple of days and popped in to one of the pubs I used to go to as a teenager while I was in town, but alas they only sell Banks's Amber Ale nowadays, no mild.

for whatever reason I think that story I just linked to might be the tipping point that makes me strictly a social drinker who tries to stick to seven or fewer drinks per week. we'll see how that turns out.

Could also have posted this to the Billy Joel listening thread

https://healthfoodsoul.com/spiritual-consequences-alcohol-consumption/

In the words of writer and health enthusiast, Jason Christoff – “In alchemy, alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its’ use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies (why do you think we call certain alcoholic beverages “SPIRITS?”). That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often black out, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul (we were sent here with) leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected to a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self-serving illogical rampage. Our bodies are cars for spirits. If one leaves, another can take the car for a ride. Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity.”

Can that be used as a legal defense?

"Sorry, your honor, my body was possessed by another entity at the time."

As a matter of fact your honour, I believe he was called jack daniels

Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity

in my case it's usually slimer from ghostbusters

guilty lol

There are lots of alcohol threads, jeez. Anyway, I read this WaPo essay and it really bugged me:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/giving-up-alcohol-made-our-lives-better--and-turned-us-into-terrible-guests/2019/02/08/7169dab6-2b1e-11e9-b011-d8500644dc98_story.html

Not the general gist of it (if you don't want to drink alcohol, fine), but sort of what's missing from the piece. That is, how much drinking is Drinking? The author gives all these symptoms -"Without alcohol, everything got better. Indigestion? Gone. Sleep? Vastly improved. Skin? Amazingly clear and better hydrated. Mood? Stable and light" - and while she relates it to the potentiated symptoms associated with menopause, I thought, man, alcohol has never been a problem for me, or given me any problems, probably because ... I don't drink too much of it? Sometimes I have a drink or two a day, sometimes I go several days without drinks, but I would never excise it because it's never been a problem, which is sort of tautological: it doesn't give me any problems because I'm not a problem drinker. I drink plenty of beer and bourbon and other things, just not all at once, in huge amounts. Seems a pretty sensible strategy, if you're going to drink at all.

Though it did get me thinking back to my high school (or earlier?) health teacher. If you drink regularly, is that in and of itself a problem, no matter the quantity? Could I imagine my life without alcohol? I guess, but only in the same way I could imagine my life without bread, or sugar: I think it would be worse! I don't know, this essay just rubbed me the wrong way. Her husband, for example, stopped drinking and lost 18 pounds and lessened the amount of blood pressure meds he needed. If drinking cause you to gain 20 pounds and gives you high blood pressure, among other things, then yeah, maybe that's the difference between drinking and Drinking.

Well, yeah. I don't wish to be glib about this, but: If drinking a lot causes you problems, don't drink a lot. If you can't drink at all without it becoming a problem, then... don't drink at all, I guess.

The discussion becomes unhelpfully polarized when we don't recognize that moderate - even enthusiastic
- enjoyment is an option.

I get really down when I see someone rich and famous having trouble with the bottle, or with drugs for that matter, because I think that having lots of money should open options for fun that go way beyond the stuff a schmuck like me can buy, such that the basic stuff no longer comes to mind. like, shouldn't there be bodily pleasures concomitant with crazy cash, that aren't just excesses of the basic stuff that everyone already likes? like, it makes me feel bad not only for the imaginations of the rich, but for how limited our imaginations and powers of pleasure are as a species.

there is part of me that thinks alcohol is a social ill and one of the worst drugs ever but otherwise yeah

Well, there's always this old lushes' tale, which I assume is an urban legend:

https://japanophile.livejournal.com/259667.html

xp

I'm starting to feel like the odd one out for having a healthy relationship to drinking. I really enjoy a beer or a cocktail, maybe 2 (!) on a weekend, but have basically no desire to go beyond that, or to feel wasted/out-of-control.

But the vast majority of our friends have stopped drinking, and the ones that haven't still go way too hard. Feels like there are very few friends we can just have a casual drink with on a Friday night.

That essay just makes me really think that Minnesota (and other midwestern states) really need to legalize recreational pot.

I would love to quit drinking but it would require a heroic level of self control because i love beer and it’s available at every social event

Seems really insidious, like smartphones

I mean, all states should legalize weed. I'm not a big fan, though – it doesn't rival the occasional night of Eastern European-style drinking.

2xp

Weed gives me anxiety

Exactly. Heightened perception of music doesn't make up for it. I also get awful weed hangovers.

my life is a weed hangover

and yeah weed doesn't do the same thing as alcohol, obv

what is a weed hangover

No such luck on my end.

I had my first drink since March 2017 last month. Two Johnny Walker Blacks at a work function for my wife. It was fine. The alcohol tasted worse than it used to back when I drank daily. Had a mild hangover the next day, which was a big surprise with such little alcohol. Haven't had a drop since, but I think enjoying one every 20 months or so will be fine.

In the meantime, with reflection I've really come to realize that in addition to my reasons that I outlined before, I really was not as good of a husband or father when I was regularly using alcohol. Not like, a raging monster, but in ways that were too subtle for me to notice at the time. Brought it up with my wife the other night and she was like "yeah, you were kind of a dick."

the weed thing was pointed directly to some issues outlined in the essay which I would think plagues a lot of aging chilly people in the midwestern states.

They did manage to get a reference to hummus in. I was looking for that.

if drinking made me angry or dickish I'd probably just quit

the idea of just giving it up for a month to see what happens healthwise is pretty good. but even that is difficult to do; it's just so freely available at everything you do

what is a weed hangover

― frogbs, Tuesday, February 12, 2019 11:57 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe i smoke too much

I honestly never heard of such a thing

You wake up the next morning and still feel like complete shit. Takes another 24h to get it out of your system. In my experience, at least.

if drinking made me angry or dickish I'd probably just quit

That's how it was kind of insidious for me. It took some distance and self-reflection to even realize I was being a dick.

None at all. I prefer weed.

Someone just gave me a bunch of edibles (chocolate and gummies). I have never had a commercially produced one so am excited.

Weed gives me anxiety

if there's anything hanging over from the bowl i smoked last night it is usually a pleasant soft feeling, doesn't make stray beams of daylight feel like knives like alcohol does

hangovers from alcohol (which i get now if i drink... more than a beer) permanently changed my relationship to alcohol. alcohol also responsible for an abyssal deepening in my depression/anxiety but it took *years* to be conscious of it

Someone just gave me a bunch of edibles (chocolate and gummies). I have never had a commercially produced one so am excited.

I haven't smoked weed regularly since, gah, college. But I do recall there was a saturation point where it just didn't seem fun or appealing unless I took some time off. Ditto booze, I think it's good to take a break every now and then if only to hit a reset button.

I rarely get hangovers from alcohol. I just turn into an asshole. :-(

People eat and drink things for certain reasons and benefits that works for them. It's good that this essayist has discovered it in their 50s. She should learn to make complex non-alcoholic cocktails and not to make plans with friends that she can't make conversation with unless loaded.

The edibles were explained to me about whether it was an up or down. So complicated. I don't get hangovers either but I drink loads of water and get analytical about abvs.

Seems really insidious, like smartphones

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, 12 February 2019 18:45 (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

stop this at once trís

I don't think alcohol has made me any worse of a person. which is to say, I can be an ass totally sober, and haven't noticed myself becoming more of an ass after a couple of drinks.

I also have a couple of friends who vacillate between abstaining and drinking to excess. Well, maybe excess is not the right word. Certainly drinking a lot more than I do. But I can think of very few situations where I would waive off a drink or two, any more than I would decline a cookie. I definitely know a few people who I sense drank a whole lot more than I did when they were younger. I really didn't drink much at all when I was younger. Maybe that is a big difference?

used to get anxiety some times w weed. think it just brought out what was already there, repressed. once I became more comfortable in my own skin plus lived in a place where it's legal, that went away. but yeah try some indica.

think the big thing with that is to just make sure you're in a situation where you don't have any responsibilities

xpost But what is loaded? What is, per my revive, drinking? I'm not sure I've ever drank to excess. Or if so, so infrequently or so rarely that I can't think of the last time it happened. And I don't think I've ever considered myself loaded. There seems to be this huge span between not drinking at all and drinking to excess. Perhaps for some, one drink is excessive, for others, a dozen. I think everyone agrees on what we mean by excess, but different people take different routes to get there.

My life, not at all. The steadiness of my hands, however...

Alcohol used to drag me further down the doldrums when I was younger and that has indeed cleared up over time but I've yet to undergo that same metamorphosis with weed.

it's kinda crazy watching old movies where hard drinks are offered to anyone at anytime, as a polite formality. US society def got more puritan about alcohol in past 40-50 yrs. or was everyone back in the old days just a lush.
which is to say, society-as-a-whole's outlook on alcohol can have a huge effect on how you view it in your own life. eg Josh, don't think you'd even be having these questions if it were pre 1980s.

I probably drink a lot more than most people. We are basically this ---> "Jacques (Pépin) chuckles that people freak out when he tells them he and his wife Gloria drink two bottles over dinner. “Well yes,” he details, “I start cooking at 4:00 in the afternoon and I open a bottle of white wine and by the time we eat at 7:00, we’ve finished that bottle of white wine and we open a bottle of red wine.” Jacques concludes this by saying he’s recently decided to exclusively buy magnums of wine. “So when my doctor asks, I will say, ‘Oh, I only drink one bottle."

I don't really experience the most commonly described symptoms of hangovers (headaches etc), mostly I just need extra sleep and experience a vague sense of unease/paranoia the following day. I wish I liked weed but it just puts me to sleep, which I already do too much of

xpost But what is loaded? What is, per my revive, drinking? I'm not sure I've ever drank to excess. Or if so, so infrequently or so rarely that I can't think of the last time it happened. And I don't think I've ever considered myself loaded. There seems to be this huge span between not drinking at all and drinking to excess. Perhaps for some, one drink is excessive, for others, a dozen. I think everyone agrees on what we mean by excess, but different people take different routes to get there.

yeah this is kinda my question too - the article above mentions drinking as part of a "daily routine" which I think is sort of excessive in itself. even though I drink more than I should I think the # of times my BAC gets above, say, .12 is maybe...I dunno, once or twice a year?

lots of xps to pomenitul re. that japanese article which yeah sounds like nonsense since it takes a long time to roast a pig & no one wants to sit in a restaurant that long

& uh plenty of common folks fuck animals, it's not really something that's just available to the rich

basically I wish rich people were more like Des Esseintes & less like, I dunno, Mel Gibson. like, you can afford real decadence, why does it just have to be booze & the drugs everyone can buy?

Perhaps those Des Esseintes do exist, tucked away in some self-designed Sadian dungeon.

But you're right, most of the time it seems like they go for the same shit as the rest of us, more or less. Cf. the king of Thailand:

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/10/14/11/thai-crown-prince-2-0.jpg

xpost And what is a daily "routine," and is that the problem? If I have one drink, every day, and that is part of my "daily routine," is that better or worse than not drinking at all during the week and having seven drinks on Saturday?

My wife's grandma had a martini a day from basically the 1940s until close to her death (of lung cancer, in her mid-'80s, and that was from decades of smoking, which she quit 30 years earlier, because it's fucking bad for you.) But I knew her well enough that she *needed* that one martini, and if she didn't get it she'd be angry. And if she had *two*, she'd also be angry. So for her, two (stiff) drinks was a problem, but one drink was not a problem - unless she didn't have it. So is that a problem?

It's not a problem unless it's a problem for you.

I should add that we do a ton of socializing without drinking and it's fine. It's usually (ok always) based around food and 'conversation' is not an issue. It's just nice to go to a bar sometimes too.

Well, there's a problem for me and a problem for someone else, which are different and maybe different standards but definitely interrelated.

remember this fun infographic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/?utm_term=.81b63e6947d6

maybe it's because of where I'm from (Wisconsin) but I feel like I barely know anyone in those first seven deciles. granted I guess you choose your own circles but still. then there's that tenth decile...I can't imagine consuming anything even close to that in a week, even when I'm on a long carefree vacation I take it easier than that. makes me feel a lot better about my own habits (pretty firmly in No.9 if I'm being honest)

"Without alcohol, everything got better. Indigestion? Gone. Sleep? Vastly improved. Skin? Amazingly clear and better hydrated. Mood? Stable and light"

I cut back from 3 nights a week to once a week to once a month, the only change I've noticed is that I don't listen to saddo music nearly as much. No more Jason Isbell/Townes Van Zandt in the rotation for me.

In my unscientific Wisconsin survey, Madison people drink less and/or start abstaining earlier. Milwaukee people drink waaaaay more, until they eventually hit the wall and go sober (but not until their 40s or later?).

i've written this on ilx before i think but: my relationship to weed changed massively approximately three years ago, what once made me giggly and incoherent and paranoid is now something i use to diminish my anxiety and something i reach for before i do anything remotely contemplative like write. (i'm guessing this could be classified as a dependency but it doesn't really hurt me in any perceivable way so.) i can't pinpoint what changed, just that one day, in the midst of a terrible breakup, i went over to a friend's house and got stoned while watching ghost adventures and it was the first time i had felt ok (read: not bottomlessly sad) in weeks

for a while it also felt like it opened me up to parts of my mind that i hadn't been acquainted with before

now of course i am too well-acquainted with my mind

It’s sort of weird that alcohol is such a big part of our cultre when for—idk the numbers—but A LOT of people, it’s a life ruiner.

I get a really weird side effect from it...my right knee gets all tingly, which lasts for like 24 hours afterwards. it's not really bothersome but I don't really like it

xpost And it's innately bad for you! But so is BBQ.

By “weird” I mean just that. Obviously, i’m not advocating prohibition or anything.

I do wonder about one friend who stopped drinking because he was using it to overcome social anxiety and it wasn't healthy. Now he's in a happy relationship with someone who drinks a lot, and is doing the same -- I guess it's ok, because it's happy drinking? We'll see.

I got stuck on this passage in the article:

I worried he would get resentful. But it didn’t happen. Instead, he lost 18 pounds, stopped snoring, began studying a foreign language, and reduced both his reflux and blood-pressure drugs.

This isn't an article about one change in daily routine or even about alcohol, it's an article about coming to the realization that the unexamined life leads to some long-term habits that have completely lost meaning and have unintended consequences. If I woke up every morning and did a bunch of exercises next to my bed only to realize a decade later that there's a giant divot in the floor where the friction of my exercise has almost worn a hole in the floor, the first reaction isn't "wow, all exercise is bad!"

Maybe their health is better for their total abstinence from alcohol, but the drinking they're talking about seems like a routine with negative effects. Make it not a routine, I guess?

I'm such a lightweight these days that alcohol almost invariably just turns me into a sweepy baby. Gone are the days until raging until 5AM, crashing out briefly, then hauling my ragged carcass off to work. Long long gone are those days.

In my unscientific Wisconsin survey, Madison people drink less and/or start abstaining earlier. Milwaukee people drink waaaaay more, until they eventually hit the wall and go sober (but not until their 40s or later?).

And Lodi people drink more than both combined

The problem is that life is too painful so people need these little anesthetics—alcohol or tv or video games or for rock stars casual sex

the semi-rural midwest and drinking is definitely... something

if it's the weekend and you're drinking, then.. you're *drinking*

some friends-of-friends are from northwest iowa and we'd hang with some other friends who were from rural wisconsin and I'd just end up wandering off because it's pretty constant

began studying a foreign language

Hate to break it to the authors, but people in France (to choose just one example) drink a lot of wine. And every damn one of them speaks a foreign language.

life is too goddamn boring, is the problem

I mean, my dad's family went teetotaller two generations back and I grew up listening to him build a new set of kitchen cabinets or noodling around with amateur woodworking

yeah that passage feels disingenuous, like if I stopped drinking I wouldn't just suddenly want to learn a foreign language or whatever, I'd still just waste that time somehow because I've got 2 kids and a million responsibilities, I'm not looking for more shit to do rn

re weed hangovers--i've definitely experienced this from edibles (which i generally prefer to smoking) but can't say it's happened to me just from smoking.

i'm one of those assholes who did Dry January this year for the first time and gotta say, I wasn't impressed. was kinda expecting to feel amazing and maybe see my gut flatten a bit. neither really happened. i'm also typically a fun, happy drunk according to friends so i don't see myself cutting it out any time soon.

I don't think it would change my life at all, I would just be drinking more Klarbrunn and tea when hanging out with my wife (as we did when I briefly stopped drinking for medical reasons, and as we're trying to do a few nights a week for general health). But some people drink way too much! Or at least use it as a primary hobby.

I think the difference re: the article and drinking is that some people who drink heavily are working their asses off and have no release valve. Like, the people I know who are working ridiculous hours and then have excess energy on the weekend because they just can't wind down -- and either don't have kids, or other obligations that take energy -- so they're doing marathons up until their 40s? Well, the people who fucking hate running are out barhopping or sitting around fishing and drinking and the drinking takes up both energy and time in a way they find pleasing, but can become troublesome if you're doing more of that than regular life.

If you have a non-physically demanding job and have excess physical energy, a few drinks with dinner and a nightcap is the way some people are bleeding it off.

btw it's worth clicking through from that article's author blurb to the two book summaries they linked

yea I've gone dry for a few weeks and I don't really feel or look notably better. I mean not as far as I can tell

not having a hangover at 7 AM when you have to deal with small children is pretty good though

oH, i did way too much looking into that author when I read that essay. xpost

it's as expected.

if there's anyone else I can expect to think "hmm, who is writing this, and why?" it's probably you :)

I have one a night usually , or none, during the week, and usually around 6 per session when I get out on the weekend. My other rule is that I stop when it gets dark outside. Which means I start early!

I am very, very predictable. And now I am opening a bottle of wine. xpost

drink heavily

I still think this is the crux of the article. There's drinking, and then there's *drinking heavily*, which is a different thing entirely. Like, there's eating, and then there's eating too much. And so on. The action is not the problem the excess is. Everything in moderation. (Except perhaps reading, you can't really read too much.)

Dry January

I think if you are a reasonable drinker, and *don't* regularly drink to excess, then what difference does it make, really? Cutting out alcohol for a month shouldn't be a shock to the system, anymore than, say, cutting out red meat for a month. But for further example, we had a neighbor night dinner a couple of weeks ago, and one couple was doing some fad diet. Whole 30? Whatever the fuck it was called, they were cutting out a lot of things, and alcohol was one of them. The guy, he made reference a couple of times to "all the drinking over the holidays" and stuff, as if it was so much drinking that yeah, of course, it made sense to take a break. And he kind of caught me squinting, I guess, because he quickly added "it's not like I'm an alcoholic or anything!" Which I totally get and totally believe. He's not an alcoholic ... he just drinks a lot, and certainly a lot more than me, to the extent that taking a break from drinking is a Big Deal. But in my case, drinking is so not a Big Deal, that I don't see the point in taking a break.

Like I said I didn't drink much at all before the age of, say, 30 or so, and rarely if ever to excess, and the same goes for pot. I had no problem with people around me smoking, but I avoided it entirely (even when I was in a touring band, which, phew, let me say, that was tough!). But I never had a problem with the concept and even said I could imagine myself starting when I was in my 40s. Certainly I can see the appeal, vs. drinking, though to be honest the one or two times I've tried edibles the effect was mostly negligible, or, if noticeable at all, not terribly unlike drinking, whose dosage (as such) I find a lot easier to follow.

I will admit I got sick to death of people saying what a difference it made listening to music high. I always thought, huh, I love music and listen to it all the time and don't feel like I'm missing anything, why would I want to fuck around with that? If I started smoking pot I would do so either to relax (like alcohol) or to focus concentration, if I was working on a project or something.

lol It would be awesome to print up a shirt that said "Dry January" on the front and "Drink Heavily" on the back.

Listening to music while high is boring. I used to quilt while high and I was like a machine. I could knock out 3 quilts in a week.

Could I imagine my life without alcohol? I guess, but only in the same way I could imagine my life without bread, or sugar: I think it would be worse!

not to single you out, i'm just using this as a jumping-off point, but i find this a little depressing! i mean i feel the same way. i cut out soda and juice almost completely (i have maybe a root beer once per year, and OJ occasionally if i'm sick) and don't really miss them. i guess it could be said that they're worse than alcohol in some ways, since they're consumed at greater quantities and at a great cost especially to kids, but it's weird to think that choosing not to drink alcohol whatsoever would make my life worse. there are certainly social aspects to it that come into play, and cultural, and of course one can't live on water and coffee and tea all the time.

seeing alcoholism in my family makes it more tempting to just quit completely.

I don't know what show I was watching with friends and they (who are around 50 yrs old) commented on how people used to talk so much about "dieting" and people don't do that anymore. I was like, are you kidding? That's all people talk about. Except now they don't want the bad connotations of saying the word "diet" or even "atkins" so they say they are cleansing, or doing keto, paleo, eating clean.

I think the point of not doing something for a month isn't necessarily a grand gesture of abstinence, but partially an effort to define the place of the thing that you are abstaining from in your life.

I mean, you could have two drinks every Friday night and none the rest of the week, but what if that first Friday no longer feels like Friday? And depending on how much of a creature of habit you are, how are you going to react to a week without a Friday?

This is how Rome fell, people

drinking soda only feels good for the small window of time when it's actually on your tongue

a few good beers can keep you happy for hours

xpost, this is funny because I *only* drink water, coffee and tea. (and alcohol).

i had some water when i woke up, then made a coffee, and now i'm about to make a tea.

Oh, I wasn't thinking of sugary drinks, like soda and juice, I was talking about the idea of cutting out *dessert*.

I guess I think of it as more zero sum than I should. I don't think my life would be *worse* without alcohol, but it definitely wouldn't be *better*. I don't see how it could be, since it's not a problem now. I'd save some money I guess? But really at best life would be the same, only minus the alcohol, which would be ... a kind of worse. Because something was taken away, for no real purpose. Important note: I have no history of alcoholism anywhere near my family, or among my friends (afaict).

yeah water, cof, tea is basically all i need out of beverages especially if water includes seltzer

I only drink water, tea and coffee (and alcohol). I could go without tea and alcohol, but not without coffee.

I have dessert like.. a few times a year

now, take away my occasional salty/spicy snacks and I'm angry

water, beer (go weeks-long stretches without), and a Dr Pepper once every month or two. water is great, I feel like an asshole demanding more from the world than that lol.

I am kind of a water pusher but I don't understand in her essay where she feels pressured to drink. You are 50 years old. C'mon. And her friend that she adores sucks for not sussing out refreshments ahead of time. But I understand that it's hard to come up with essay topics.

yeah it's something she just did every day for decades and it seems super weird not to so she feels judged?

many midwesterners are fucking weird and, even if they drink regularly and aren't particularly religious/moral, think drinking is bad and anyone who abstains is affecting a morally superior position

if she's a minnesotan she's stuck halfway between catholic/lutheran morality and it's a hellscape of weird judgment and passive-aggressiveness

Dry January

I think if you are a reasonable drinker, and *don't* regularly drink to excess, then what difference does it make, really? Cutting out alcohol for a month shouldn't be a shock to the system,

mm well tbh i do tend to go pretty hard pretty regularly

I have dessert like.. a few times a year

now, take away my occasional salty/spicy snacks and I'm angry

never had em

oh my god dot's pretzels are the truth

I checked and apparently they only carry them at Ace Hardware here? idk