to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

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.