This is a common theme among my friends who previously drank heavily: They participate less in certain alcohol-centric groups, but they realize they aren't really missing them.
Moderate to heavy drinkers seem to get stuck in a rut where it feels like everyone drinks as much, or more, alcohol than they do. Yet once they break out of that rut, they realize that a lot of people have no problem having a good time without heavy drinking.
Alcohol is definitely a crutch for a lot of people.
However depending on the bar I went to, some of them were more pleasant if I was drinking. When I was sober, I really couldn't stand to be around a bunch of less-than-sober people (they were no longer funny or interesting). But I had the opposite experience with other crowds. Weird how that works out sometimes.
Now at my age (and without being a regular drinker), if I have one drink I'm ready to go to bed.
Not sure if related to this, but 100% of my best sexual experiences (as well as the first few experiences at all) were under the influence to some degree.
I used to feel bad for people who’d drink and get real angry and then learn they need to stop drinking, but I never considered that I might actually be paying an ongoing cost for my alcohol tolerance.
Not all cultures have this. Cultures ascribe widely different attributes to alcohol. That's for another post, though.
I'm convinced this isn't a free lunch. This space of less self-control we've carved out, comes at the cost of MORE demands when we're sober. I think your shell, and mine as well, was in part a product of a culture where we, like Dr. Jekyll, sought to split off some sides of ourselves.
Well are they necessarily wrong? There's that "friendship paradox". Most people probably drink with people who drink more than them on average, since people who drink a lot presumably have more "drink with" relationships.
But what I really love about drinking is socializing over drinks. No, I don't mean the physical effects of the alcohol. What I like about socializing over a drink or three is that you're almost entirely focused on your conversation partners. People aren't focused on a board game, activity, or food. A group out drinking has made a commitment to one another that they're going to socialize in raw form. I like that.
Much like cigarette users had to realize they are actively inhaling cancer smoke...
You kind of act like people that don't drink can't go out, have non-alcoholic drinks, and still focus on eachother...
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"
I'm sorry but I have to acknowledge that 1-3 glasses a night by yourself is a lot of drinking. I was the same way with weed. It didn't have any major affects on my life until I quit smoking and I realized my life was way better without it.
I'm some random idiot on the internet so feel free to ignore my take, but finding ways to relax without alcohol will make your life so much better.
When Corona made availability a bit harder I quit last year for several months. But to my surprise I wasn't more productive, wasn't more focused all I got was getting more moody and easier to distact.
I came to accept that weed is self medication against my ADD and depression that works better than I actually expected.
The only downside is the weight gain that comes with it.
As a kid I wondered what's happening with those drunk people I had a chance to see. So I read some books in library about alcohol (my mother was librarian, so that was my internet back then). It all just made sense and I decided that don't want to even try. I was asked to try alcohol by parents and relatives, I was ridiculed and insulted by classmates (drinking somehow was a sign of being cool for them), but I didn't care - I knew how it works, and I didn't want it in my life. The same goes for any other drug, of course.
The whole concept of using poisonous chemicals to alter your brain state was and still is very alien to me. I just don't get it. Willingly disrupt your body's functions on a cellular level hoping for something good, while all the scientific evidence points only to the bad? Still don't get it.
I do get the social benefits part, but I think it's hugely exaggerated. Yes, being drunk seems to be like removing your psychological self-defence, which builds trust, especially in a high-stake business relations. But it's not the only way to build trust, for sure, and definitely doesn't justify the damage alcohol does to the body.
As to why, however. It's no big mystery. It's "fun", or at least can be. If you don't feel it's "worth it", that perfectly fine, but we all have a range of what's "worth it" and what's not. Ranging from a Big Mac to cocaine.
*To be clear, I fall in the middle of that range. I don't advocate cocaine.
We all “know” the obvious reasons for not drinking. Anecdotally, I see plenty of unobvious health outcomes, like long term negative mental health outcomes from boozing (such as memory issues - I suspect there is a spectrum of memory issues before Korsakoff syndrome).
Also anecdotally, drinking seems to lead to all your social group being drinkers or alcoholics. I unfortunately know very few who don’t occasionally drink to excess (New Zealand has a strong drinking culture).
Not trying to convince you to change your mind, but you seem to be missing some information: I'd wager that for the vast, vast majority of people, "drinking alcohol" in a typical way rarely means "being drunk." At least in US culture, those things are only synonymous for certain specific groups, like people to whom drinking is novel (think college students) or alcoholics. Your mileage may vary, of course, and lots of this is my perception, but "benefits of drinking" and "benefits of being drunk" are definitely not the same conversations.
Discussing that one country has more helthy heroin mass-consumption culture than another country hopefully sounds odd to everyone.
However, not all drugs are poisonous in the same way alchohol is. Caffeine is a drug and in moderate quantities is probably pretty good for you. Weed is probably far less toxic than booze if used in small amounts by adults that don't have certain genetic markers for schizophrenia. Mushrooms aren't toxic at all. There are tons of psychoactive drugs used for medicine and fun that arguably cause more harm than good.
Anyway, people have a natural impulse to alter their consciousness, be it through extremely harmful ways like booze and coke, or through less harmful ways like mushrooms or meditation. I don't see it ending anytime soon.
My impression is the USA has the worst drinking culture. Many other places in the world have much better ones. UK pubs, Japanese izakayas.
I had a pretty negative view of drinking growing up in the USA with MADD's messaging etc. Even though my parents drank socially it just seemed not worth.
Then I moved abroad and my outlook changed
Here's an interesting talk on some of the possible benefits to society of drinking
https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-...
note: I am not suggesting you should go drink. Rather, I'm only passing on my experience. I didn't drink until I moved abroad in my mid 30s. I still generally don't drink in the USA but I've had some great times drinking abroad.
I experienced those "benefits" outside the USA but rarely inside.
https://www.themonsoonproject.org/a-sobering-look-at-south-k...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoesik
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/features/2016/2/7/the-country-...
So in the ancestral environment they fermented grain (first by accident, then on purpose) which became a means of preserving the calories from competitor organisms. This phenomenon probably co-evolved with agriculture and predates written records.
Note that in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh (agricultural) and Enkidu (a 'wild man' which would imply he came from a pre-agricultural, foraging people) were to fight but they gave Enkidu beer and a woman. This probably indicates that beer was something the agriculturalists had and the 'wild men' did not.
The reason people are annoyed by it isn't because they don't understand it, it's because he's condescending and self-righteous, it's moralizing.
People make all sorts of things their identity and that's fine, but there's some sort of lack of curiosity that makes them a little less interesting imo. A candy bar isn't good for you, but people enjoy them on occasion. That's true of a lot of things in life.
The majority (but not all) people I've known in this category have been mormons, obviously people can do as they wish, but it's often other beliefs driving this with after the fact reasoning applied vs. some epistemically consistent model.
I had a programming as a hobby since age of 6 and non-controlling parents, so I was good.
Caffeine I don't care much. I love culture of coffee, and enjoy good coffee. The latest metastudy I read on coffee concluded that there is no detrimental effects, unless excessive consumption or special conditions. Seems safe to me. I also tried 3 months off the coffee completely and it was incredibly easy switch - no issues at all.
I doubt that, given that you never tried it, nor drugs. No shame in not knowing, though.
Benefits are definitely exaggerated, the addicts, when not on the thing, or on the way to their next hit of the thing, love to apologize for the thing.
I'll be frank with my motivation to drink, it was to kill myself, and self-expression of that I'm so miserable that I'm killing myself. And getting drunk felt good. I think if you never yearned for that, that's healthy. I wonder if we could raise an entire generation in a way that everybody feels that way.
By knowing I mean "understanding". I.e. I understood the concept of addiction and realized that I'll probably "like" alcohol too.
Sorry to hear you had to experience that. I think there is a theory in psychology that explicitly asks this question - how to let people reach their maximum potential in wellbeing and flourish (which, of course, also means not wanting to kill themselves). It's a Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and it's a main theory in motivation, is very mature (70+ years and 1000+ studies and experiments) and all modern parenting/educational/sports systems take roots in SDT. For me it was a worlview changing theory, so I'd recommend to familiriaze with it.
I've asked people with relevant knowledge a number of times if that is a known effect of that other drug or if they had found a similar case, but apparently I'm just an anecdote, so excuse me if I don't share which drug it was. It could made more harm than good. Since there are ongoing studies on all kind of forbidden substances, it will surface eventually if it has merits beyond a casual interaction.
The experience also made alcohol useless, but I was a heavier user of weed at the time. A year later the buzz for both weed and alcohol returned, but I'd had enough time to ditch them as an habits, so no weed and only low-grad alcohol, always socially.
Overall, I'm very happy with the change. I see weed defended with good reasoning (not as bad as alcohol, creativity-inducing, anxiety relief, etc.) but over a certain threshold dosage, it's a net negative for most people and the nice effects quickly fade in a couple of months of heavy use.
The "neurons that fire together wire together" notion seems to hold in a lot of situations, but I don't know enough about the drug to know if it would be specific to treating alcoholism.
I found that the moderate tone of this article spoke to me more than I've found hyperbolic articles tend to do -- much appreciated.
I still miss getting shitfaced with co-workers, but I managed to accomplish everything I could while drinking during the last 20 years.
It guess it was fun, but I realize now I didn't need to go out every (or every other) day, and not for 8 hours at a time.
I'll have a beer sometimes if out at dinner, but never more than 1 or 2. Majority of the time I don't even have that. This year I've had 2 beers total and that's it. Don't miss it at all.
Which also might sound strange to the uninitiated: we rebelled against straight edge people.
Here’s one for free: Surround yourself with people you like. Be the friend to them that you’d want for yourself.
That’s all the social wisdom you need.
This can be exceedingly difficult in many areas. If you're in a big city it's probably no problem, but elsewhere it can be challenging or impossible to find people you really enjoy sober.
I don't mean that I can't get on with just about anyone while sober. But I find I'm 'faking it' and simply giving them the idea I'm having a good time. People who I'm genuinely excited to spend time with are few and far between.
James Thurber
— Dorothy Parker
RIP my wallet if I spent $60 on like a cup of alcohol.
The one thing (and I tried many) that has worked for me is The Sinclair Method (TSM). After doing it for a couple of years, now I can still drinking socially without worrying about blowing up the night.
It's not a new thing, but if you are in a similar situation and looking for answers, I can high recommend looking into it.
I just firmly and with certainty decided to stop. Alcoholics call it rock bottom but I think it’s just knowing that you don’t want to do it ever again. That certainly has been with me for years and I see no reason it should ever leave me.
Get there and you’re done.
Not being a heavy drinker back then, plus being your standard computer nerd, I was of course uncomfortable. I felt shame, but I couldn't figure out why it was justified. I also felt resentment because I had done nothing wrong. Years later, I've discovered the shame was never justified, the guy was just a douche (for whatever reason), and I was quite happy my whole life without ever getting piss drunk. I did get buzzed at least three times in my life, so I don't know what it would take to make me really drunk. Guess I'll never know though, because I quit drinking after meeting my wife because she doesn't like to drink. But I'm fine with it.
I do wonder if society would be more civil if there was no pressure to drink. I don't think non-drinkers should judge people who drink, and drinkers certainly should not judge people who don't drink. But it is an awkward truth that alcohol is often associated with misbehaviour or worse, and I'm not sure how society deals with that and also avoids going down the path of the US prohibition era and the backlash that is Al Capone. I've lost faith in society's ability to engage in nuance and not be judgmental. Bleh.
And I sometimes wonder if drinking has a noticable effect on population growth.
I feel a sense of euphoria when I drink. I also have a bell curve where drinking enough removes a layer of fear which allows me to do things I couldn't previously do while still retaining my coordination. For instance when I was younger and lived in Santa Cruz, I'd often bomb hills skateboarding. On the nights I was 3-4 beers in, I'd have no problem whatsoever. If I drank less than that or more than that, I'd be a meat crayon.
On a general note, be happy alcohol does nothing for you. It's one of the most addictive, vile, and damaging drugs that exists. The withdrawl for alcoholics is worse than heroin, and one of the most deadly. The people I've met in my life that are addicted to it have a really hard time.
People who enjoy THC describe it to me as similar to how they enjoy caffeine, which makes some sense to me having a dopamine supplement daily. Most of what I enjoy about alcohol is tasting it. As far as psychoactive effects, I find it calming but not as much as you do. It doesn’t generally make me sleepy unless I’m already headed that way. It just makes me feel less at odds with things in the world. Which is good for my psyche, as long as I don’t drink too much… which is when I remember feeling at odds with things in the world.
Single malt scotch, on the other hand, has a very different effect - gives me energy, makes me more sociable, lifts my spirit. Red wine affects me differently from white wine, cocktails also have a different effect (can’t have sugar with alcohol!). Basically, at least for some people different kinds of alcohol have a very different effect.
For me the benefit was dulling the frantic nature of my mind, especially at night. Instead of thinking or worrying about everything under the sun, I was able to not ... have those brainwaves snapping until 3 am.
It is of course a cycle, since the negative effect of alcohol exacerbates that latent anxiety. I'd dull it and it would pop back up the next night.
I guess, the relaxing effect is what the casual drinkers are after. Loose tongue, less inhibitions in interactions, less anxiety. It works... but briefly, it's too easy to cross into drnking-for-the-sake-of-drinking zone. All leading to feeling tired and dehydrated one way or another.
As it's figuratively said, at some point even the finest wine begins drinking itself, that is its alcohol content overpowers anything else that made it 'fine'.
I guess, in youth the drinking is mostly for bonding, in adulthood it's also for coping and habit, god forbid, dependence... Well, it does make one sleepy too.
Looking back, one thing for sure is early youth social drinking is very much unnecessary and can cause more trouble than good.
A nice piece on the subject of alcohol and anxiety:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/staying-sane-inside-...
I never was a heavy drinker. I mostly stopped for religious purposes and out of personal conviction when I was 20.
On the personal conviction part, I always say that I prefer being in control of my faculties. Fast response times (esp when driving), situational awareness, control over what I say and do.
I don't know about other people: when I'm tipsy I'll do or say something, then a few seconds later I would say to myself "this isn't something I would have said/done". That alone has been enough to dissuade me.
I drink "on occasion with an annual quota". I find that to be a great personal goal because when in a situation where alcohol is offered to me, I almost always abstain.
Then again, I don't drink coffee as I jokingly say that caffeine is a drug (I don't judge anyone, it's something I say when asked why I don't drink it). I drink things with a significant amount of caffeine when offered and it's the only alternative, like cola.
How much do you drink?
For an average 175lbs male to feel buzzed, he would need to drink 2 pints of beer (or close 1 1 liter) on relatively empty stomach quickly.
To feel drunk, it would require at least double that amount if not more.
These days, a single sip of wine when my wife is having a glass of wine with dinner. When I was younger, I'd have a glass or two of wine, or a pint of beer. But I always concluded that I'd feel better without the alcohol, so I cut back to the minimal amount.
In case anyone here needs inspiration on where its normal not to drink alcohol
(Those communities arent about psychadelics, nor are they a replacement or addicting, its just the only common theme I see amongst various communities that will also not be into alcohol)
I've found that for some its less about the alcohol and more about the ritual and the way it makes you feel. pouring that glass of wine after work or sipping the fancy cocktail before your meal in a restaurant.
It's the ritual people crave and having something unusual to taste. I find alcohol has very little to do with it and if your not able to switch your after work wine for low or non alcoholic I would guess there's a bigger problem there that is being self medicated by the numbing effects of alcohol!
I've never had anyone call me out for not drinking.
I'm able to stop drinking at any time, this includes half way or even two sips into a new drink. If I feel it's gone or going too far I stop. If someone insists on including me in the round after I've said no the drink doesn't get drunk. This was the hardest thing for me to learn but I've never been called out on it!
I also never drink if I'm in any form of bad mood and I won't drive if i've had even a sip of alcohol.
I'm lucky to be able to follow these 'rules' as I've gotten older I've found alcohol affects my blood sugar quite severely so it's a helpful incentive as it's very scary when it happens!
The non and low alcohol selections now are brilliant. enough variety to have that ritual or make a fancy mocktail! Best part is sipping on them during meetings during the summer!
Apple's Health app just tracks total time spent asleep which ignores my heart rate. My heart rate is always much higher if I've drank alcohol or ate something too close to bedtime, which AutoSleep uses to determine that my sleep quality is lower.
Much like the author, it was not too hard to go to social events that I wanted to attend; but work functions and outings where I only knew maybe one person became much more painful to get through. I also realized that a bit part of my socialization in college and afterward was reliant on having some alcohol in my system to lower my typically introverted inhibitions. It was during this year that I felt like I really learned how to be social and extroverted without the crutch of some form of alcohol.
Now, even years after the marathon, I don't drink nearly as much as I used to. I may have a drink or two when I see friends or when out to dinner, but I feel no need to have more than two on any occasion.
I was recently at a cocktail bar for a party. I think the cheapest cocktail was $17, but most were between $20-$30. And most people had at least two.
Meanwhile a lot of these places have cheap food (to encourage you to drink more), so I'm there in the corner scoffing my $4 pizza and $3 diet coke. Heh heh heh, suckers...
The (really good, fairly pricey, good service) cocktail bars that I have gone to in SF and NYC charge less than $17 for their normal cocktails (and the only one I've seen that had a $30 price tag was because it used Remy Martin XO)
I thought I would miss the social aspect, but I don’t. I’ve gone out with some friends and the places had mock tails or NA beer so it was just normal hanging out. Of course not being drunk I called it a night after an hour or so, but that’s probably sane and healthy.
The recent meta studies of the health effects of alcohol indicate that the health number of drinks per day is zero. Maybe you can have one or two a WEEK without negative health effects. Anyone who drinks more than that is needlessly lowering their lifespan and increasing risk of heart attack and cancer.
It seems rare for people to claim that their homeland doesn't have a heavy drinking culture. Reading through these comments, you see it claimed of the United States, New Zealand, Ukraine, South Korea.
In general, I can only remember hearing of Italy having "healthy" drinking culture. What are the others? I also wonder the extent to which the British empire spread the drinking culture of the British isles to much of the rest of the world (e.g., USA, Australia, New Zealand etc).
One thing I've eventually realized is that I am not comfortable around a lot of ordinary people. I was using alcohol to try and force myself to be around people. Now I would say there's no reason to do that, it's a sign that you're in the wrong place.
It seems like a key to overcoming is recognizing negative effects and having a strong desire to avoid them… but I can’t talk much about it because I have almost the opposite of an addiction problem in the inability to form habits regardless of the vice or activity. Besides perhaps a concerted effort to correct the beginnings of a weight problem I’ve never had to try to “give up” anything but more like just forgotten about doing the thing for extended periods.
How long did it take to cross the US?
And how were the other 2 times different? Different routes?
What bike did you use?
It's not the reason why I never any alcohol, but it's a tradition I say I cultivate.
What really opened my eyes was when I broke my hand in 2022 and spent a month unable to type effectively.
I’m happy to drink much less since the summer.
None of this has taken the slightest effort or even any consideration to be honest. Neither is this easy sobriety a consequence of some sort of well-managed successful life (au contraire - it's a mess).
Perhaps some of us just have naturally temperate temperaments.
Keep it up!
Stay on the path!
You can do it!
Still an interesting read, especially since the author needed to 'cope' with being sober in a different way than you usually hear.
Author got severe migraines from consuming alcohol and stopped for that obvious reason.
I am glad OP isn’t medically endangering themselves any further.
