to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

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.