21 ms·

Alcohol as a social technology to check the trustworthiness of others (2014)

• BrianHenryIE 6y ago
  In vino veritas
• semistrict 6y ago
  My first though was you're using the wrong drug.
• mcnichol 6y ago
  I knew a guy in the military who often stated: "Never trust a man you cannot have a drink with" I had always felt conflicted because alcoholism was a common thing there and often people were sorting these things out. This article was precisely his point. It has always stuck with me. Some of the most counter-intuitive advice from the least expected minds which has changed my views much later in life.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• qserasera 6y ago
  Perhaps the days of TMS from a distance are not too far ahead.
• katzgrau 6y ago
  I don't really buy this. True colors do tend to show when someone is being careless in general, especially when they're drinking. But someone who really wants to give you a false impression of themselves or their motives will probably manage to stay on point while drinking with you. To summarize, beware of false negatives. Alcohol in given quantities doesn't have the same effects on everyone, and if you're drinking with them, you may miss the red flags you set out looking for in the first place.
  • amirmaleki 6y ago
    In think the point of the excerpt was both sober and drunk states (whatever you call it neurologically) are needed to make a sound decision.
• wildrhythms 6y ago
  The tech industry is rife with drinking culture and alcoholism in general. I do not drink, and I frequently feel isolated as a result, both at business and social gatherings. 30+ year old colleagues will demand a reason for why I don't drink, as if I'm the one engaging in exclusionary behavior :(
  • zelly 6y ago
    In a few years that will be upgraded to cannabis smoking and you'll be gatekeeped out if you're not down with the herb.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I’ve never been implored to smoke marijuana by any people smoking marijuana. They are also far more pleasant to be around than drunk people, with zero chance of violent outbursts.
  • brightball 6y ago
    I do drink but never much. I’ve always found just having something in hand that looks like a drink will prevent most of what you describe though. Tonic water with lime on ice is popular to fit the “just so it looks like I’m drinking” need.
  • monadic2 6y ago
    I’ve had to push for non-alcoholic entertainment at every company I’ve worked at. I understand the value of happy hour wholeheartedly, but encouraging your employees to drink at work at your workplace is downright creepy.
    • microcolonel 6y ago
      > ...encouraging your employees to drink at work at your workplace is downright creepy. How is encouraging your employees to drink at your workplace creepy of all things?
      • 6y ago
• monadic2 6y ago
  Verification is a fool’s dream.
• carterschonwald 6y ago
  A lot of changes in behavior while drinking are, at low doses, social / cultural remission rather than via universal effect of the drug in question. The simpler answer is that people build relationships through shared interests and experiences. Getting brutally intoxicated is just a pretty boring one that some people reach for.
  • toastal 6y ago
    I found this curious when I lived in the UK. People didn't seem keen on talking to strangers at a coffee shop, but were at the pub. I had a date once that declined dinner with me as too serious but offered getting drinks instead. It was really confusing, but it seemed having drinks was a requirement for establish new social connections. I inquired if people thought that this was true and healthy for relationships, and it seemed the consensus was "yes, it's true; no, it's probably not healty, but it's not gonna change". It seemed very odd for it to be a social culture requirement. Then moving to Southeast Asia where the social events centered more on the food than the booze gave me a place where I felt more comfortable. There's no 'stiff upper lip', and strangers at lunch or in teh market are as jovial and friendly as those I'd met at the pub a few times I went.
    • baby 6y ago
      I’ve lived in London and in Asia, and there’s as much drinking in Asia if not more. I remember reading that south korea is the biggest consumer of alcohol per capita in the world
      • toastal 6y ago
        I'm in Thailand now. There's a lot of Chang and Leos tipped back all over, even casually on the stoop of 7-Eleven, but it's more about the sentiment of not needing to have a drink. The only time it's remarked is when people say it's odd for a Westerner to not go to the bars (which is annecdotal but indicative of how Western culture is perceived here). It was a bit different in Laos though where Beer Lao can sometimes be cheaper than water and is sort of a national pride and probably most well-known export.
• rongenre 6y ago
  “If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.” ― Herodotus
  • zelphirkalt 6y ago
    That's such a little neat trick, it's great. Sometimes I think that some civilizations back then had figured out more about how to be a society at least in some respects, than we have today.
    • amirmaleki 6y ago
      Maybe we just rely too much on what we have achieved scientifically, and we have to embrace our guts and live out lives more freely.
      • zelphirkalt 6y ago
        We definitely rely on technological advances a lot. It might mask our social development status. To go further, I would say, that there is a mismatch between how much we advance technologically / scientifically and how much we advance with regard to how we live together in a society. There are so many things going wrong, which one might think have no place in these times, but reveal the savage greed of humanity. Surely in the past there was probably even more stuff going wrong, but today those things are catalyzed by globalization and technological means. Our greed in the small can affect the whole planet. Basically, I am not sure we are ready, in terms of social advancement, to responsibly handle the technology. By that I am not talking about this person or that person specifically, but about us as societies, democracies, and other forms.
        • admax88q 6y ago
          Its also quite possible were just looking at the past through rose coloured lenses. When reading about how past civilizations live you only read the condensed version, the highlights. Whereas when loving modern times every little flaw and problem is visible, you spend 24 hours a day living it, not just 10 minute on highlights.
• deeblering4 6y ago
  I can relate to this to a certain extent. Not sure if its cause or effect, but the people who I have had the latest nights with I probably do trust the most. Whether thats 100% alcohol related is debatable, but alcohol does help get social nights started.
• odomojuli 6y ago
  Ah yes, I am familiar with this tradition. It's called hazing.
• spicyramen 6y ago
  Millennials discover going out with your guy friends?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• anonymousiam 6y ago
  Maybe not exactly what the excerpt was getting at, but here's a variant: Instead of individuals using alcohol for this purpose, some fortune 500 companies use it too. At corporate "Team Building" offsite workshops, open bars are available to the sequestered employee groups. Those without the self control to abstain or exercise moderation are quickly identified as non-management material. The excerpt also reminded me of an H. Ross Perot story that I cannot seem to find anywhere online. Someone had approached him for VC and had a sound business plan. The person had had issues with alcohol in the past, and had sworn off it. Perot had learned this (probably from a PI), and at the moment they were going to sign a business deal, Perot insisted on closing the deal with a drink. The other party explained that he did not drink, but Perot was absolutely insistent and would not close the deal without a drink. So the guy left without a deal. The next day, Perot called him and closed the deal. Perot had been testing the resolve and reliability of the guy. The venture was a success and became a Fortune 100 company.
  • seunosewa 6y ago
    What is the name of the Fortune 100 company mentioned in your story?
    • anonymousiam 6y ago
      That's the problem. I have forgotten that detail of the story. I tried to find references to this story online, but Google has failed me. Maybe you'll have more luck. It seems like all of the search results come up either related to his presidential bid, or his obituary. I remember that the company in question is now a household name, but I don't remember exactly which one.
      • boringg 6y ago
        To be honest this sounds like an urban legend with questionable morality associated with it (baiting recovering alcoholic for money).
  • pengstrom 6y ago
• uxamanda 6y ago
  Not the main point of the article, but I found this quote interesting. "...police officers could significantly improve their ability to detect false statements if suspects were asked to give their alibis in reverse order." This is similar to a technique we use in user research – not to catch someone in a lie, but to help them remember what actually happened. If you ask someone "what is your morning routine like", they tend to forget a lot of details and gloss over things that were difficult / tedious. If you ask them to recount backwards from "how did you arrive here today", they will give you a clearer picture. Not sure it works in all cases, but I use it on myself when I really want to remember a sequence of events.
  • sukilot 6y ago
    It's also the best way to find where you lost something.
  • shrimpx 6y ago
    Intuitively, to me, it’s because it’s sorted “new to old” so the first events are fresher in memory and can be recalled vividly, making the most recent older event likely to be recalled vividly by association, etc. As opposed to starting with the oldest event which is dimmer in memory along with its associations. I think liars are easier to catch when they recite events in reverse because they visualized their lies in chronological order, like when memorizing a poem. They could become immune to the reverse trick if they practiced their lies in reverse.
  • gooseus 6y ago
    You can also use a similar trick when editing your writing, read your work backwards and you're more likely to catch errors you would otherwise have skimmed over by reading forward.
• jdkee 6y ago
  Now do it for mushrooms.
• codetrotter 6y ago
  A HN submission of cached contents of an article, that was cached by a HN indexing system because it was previously posted in the past. This shows that HNdex is doing its job in helping people discover posts that they hadn’t seen. It must also be some sort of milestone in the history of HN perhaps, as https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=hndex.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=hndex.org currently shows that this is the first post to HN from HNdex aside from the Show HN about HNdex itself. A couple of things that this makes me wonder is: - Will the cached article itself eventually also be cached and show up when you make the following search on HNdex for example? https://hndex.org/?q=alcohol+social+trustworthiness https://hndex.org/?q=alcohol+social+trustworthiness I’m thinking that the author of HNdex probably already thought of excluding HNdex pages from HNdex itself. - Is this a new era of HN, where more third-party sites pop up in order to explore and interact with HN in novel ways? I am aware of a few other third-party sites that offer some sort of interaction with HN. But the others that I can think of immediately have been alternate front ends that mostly didn’t do anything radically different. HNdex on the other hand is really something different. - Since the caches work with things like Google+, and since it has cached articles that have since gone 404’d, it must mean that HNdex is the result of a personal project that has been ongoing for quite a while. Or they extracted the data from other archive sources. Either way, I wonder if any of the other people on HN also have HN-related projects that they either made for their own use and didn’t (yet) set up a public version of, or are working on currently.
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    Also it might help reading in places with limited network (bandwidth or blocks)
    • mschuster91 6y ago
      If anything HN itself is one of the most readable sites on the web. I'm literally at a beach at the moment and since Germany is rock bottom of Europe when it comes to 4G rollout outside the cities, the only actually usable websites are HN and Reddit via a custom client. Everything else is dog slow.
• mjfl 6y ago
  If someone is an angry drunk but able to control their emotions when sober, isn't it sort of cruel to get them drunk to expose this part of them?
  • baby 6y ago
    Just don’t get trashed.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      So perform the action that reduces the ability to control yourself, but don’t perform the action so much that you lose control of the ability to control yourself?
      • baby 6y ago
        bingo. This is not just an alcohol thing. Lots of companies have a "be yourself" but not too much.
  • kayodelycaon 6y ago
    Pretty much. I’m bipolar and since starting medication, I can’t mess with psychoactive substances without drastic consequences. A single shot of scotch after 18 months of sobriety took out several of my meds for an hour and I spent 4 days wanting to eat a shotgun. I also can’t have caffeine or stimulants because they both trigger mania and give me panic attacks. I’m also allergic to milk. In my experience, any upscale restaurants that claim to handle allergies still have cross-contamination. Socializing with people is extremely awkward.
• sibmike 6y ago
  Sociopaths can pass this "trustworthiness" test at any time of the day even if they are wasted. More likely, they run the test on you.
• supportlocal4h 6y ago
  I've heard it expressed in Japan that coworkers who were unwilling to drink in the obligatory after-work bar visit were untrustworthy. They were taking advantage of their coworkers. The drunk coworkers would share unguarded thoughts while the sober one wouldn't. All taking and never giving was unscrupulous. Years ago, it was almost a requirement to participate. One rationale was that being drunk excused someone who spoke their mind. As speaking your mind to your boss was not allowed in sober company, but sometimes critically important to the success of a company, you had to at least pretend to be drunk and go along with everybody else's pretense. That's oversimplifying it, but you get the idea.
  • austincheney 6y ago
    If you require an excuse to exercise honesty there is every indication the climate is probably toxic, potentially abusive, and certainly coercive.
    • TomMarius 6y ago
      As if that wasn't already clear from the whole "die at your workplace" thing
    • Xixi 6y ago
      I'm sure many Japanese salarymen would agree with your description. I used to work in a small familial company in Osaka where you didn't need an excuse to "exercise honesty", but from I gather it was the exception more than the rule. So far of all the places I worked at it was probably the one I enjoyed the most in terms of atmosphere and relation with coworkers, alas the work was not particularly interesting. I still pay my former coworkers a visit from time to time.
      • innocenat 6y ago
        Well, it's Osaka. A lot of Japanese wouldn't consider Osaka to be a part of Japan lol.
        • 6y ago
• ilaksh 6y ago
  Alcohol as a way for alcohol companies to get rich at the expense of young people's health and sometimes lives. I actually think there is kind of a conspiracy around alcohol. Because the effect of alcohol is to reduce your cognitive function, and that often causes normal people to become drunk since they have an impaired decision making ability about stopping. Drunk people sometimes make mistakes that interfere with their lives. But if you become drunk and make mistakes multiple times, which I assert is actually a completely normal consequence of regular drinking for everyone, then people will literally say that it was not the alcohol that caused the problem, but that you have defective genetics (are an alcoholic) if you decide to stop drinking. So I think they idea of alcoholism as a genetic disease is actually a really effective propaganda by the alcohol industry. No one can really safely consume significant amounts of alcohol regularly without making mistakes. Some people are more susceptible, but that doesn't mean that they are genetically flawed or that other people can't easily run into problems also.
  • sukilot 6y ago
    Alcohol has been been a popular favorite for millenia.
    • vlunkr 6y ago
      That doesn't excuse anything. Tobacco has been around forever too, yet most people will agree that tobacco companies have done some pretty horrible things.
  • bjo590 6y ago
    > you have defective genetics (are an alcoholic) if you decide to stop drinking Is it a commonly held belief that alcoholics are genetically inferior to non-alcoholics? I personally associate addiction problems with a poor environment (low social support, overly stressed, depression) or early childhood trauma more than genetics. However, I'm just one person with my own conceptions. I'm curious if it's seen as a genetic flaw.
    • mnm1 6y ago
• zelly 6y ago
  What this article doesn't tell you is that this is only historical practice among people making deals with their own money--entrepreneurs--or higher-up executives or partners in a law firm etc. As someone who works for a living for someone else, you are doing yourself no favors by getting drunk around your peers or bosses. As an employee you are trading your labor for money. You aren't necessarily going to be putting anything at stake personally, so whether or not there exists trust between you and your peers matters very little (regardless of MBAisms or management platitudes about teams). As an employee, getting drunk around your peers or being around drunk peers can only lead to negative consequences. The facade people put up is good. You don't want to know what's behind that; you didn't pick these people, you're not marrying these people, you're working with them on a temporary basis then moving on. Also, employees shouldn't talk about politics or religion at work for the same reason.
  • vosper 6y ago
    > The facade people put up is good. You don't want to know what's behind that; you didn't pick these people, you're not marrying these people, you're working with them on a temporary basis then moving on. This strikes me as a touch too misanthropic. I went to school on a temporary basis with a whole load of people, who just happened to be my age. It was the same at university - people who happened to pick the same courses as I did. I never chose any of these people, yet I'm lucky enough to have made some wonderful friends, and I think that if I never took the risk to get to know anyone properly (not much risk, IMO - most people aren't putting up a facade that hides some horrible reality, at least not in my experience) my life would be much poorer. Maybe give your colleagues another chance?
    • zelly 6y ago
      School is a different domain. It's more similar to the case of entrepreneurs getting drunk together to make sure they can trust each other. As a young person in school, the subject of your interactions with your peers is friendship and relationship itself. You are making a conscious investment of your time, you are putting something at stake, and therefore knowing if that person is hiding a different side of themselves is relevant. Making friends is good. This isn't about not making friends. This is about how to keep your job. Your boss gives you a job but your coworkers can take it away. Don't listen to advice that is meant for high level businessmen when you're not one. Don't mix worlds, don't find opportunities to create enemies, don't try to turn your workplace into your social life.
• rootsudo 6y ago
  Alcohol is disgusting, I don't get why it's so popular to willingly intoxicate yourself for peer acceptance.
  • foghornleghorn 6y ago
    You make us technical types look bad.
  • zelly 6y ago
    Delusion. It's a child's mindset. As kids they saw their parents and older kids drink alcohol and associated it with an exclusive privilege of maturity. They never grew out of that. They also delude themselves into thinking that they are uniquely immune to the negative effects of the poison they put down their throats.
  • pete762 6y ago
    Maybe because for most people intoxicating themselves around others who are intoxicated is an inherently pleasurable experience? You really think basically all cultures in the world have been drinking for the past 10000 years out of peer pressure?
    • rootsudo 6y ago
      Pretty sure it's because water was naturally hard to get and keep clean, meanwhile the body adopted ethanol since it's fermented and therefore killed many unhealthy pathogens. Water history and alcohol history have pretty interesting histories. I just dislike the taste of alcohol and I don't see how it's pleasurable.
• chepin 6y ago
  "Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.” JAMES CRUMLEY
  • baby 6y ago
    I mean... Trump is known not to drink alcohol.
  • vore 6y ago
    I really don't like this quote: it reinforces this weird idea of what a "real man" is and that a real man should get drunk from time to time. If someone doesn't want to drink or get drunk, so be it: don't lord it over them like they haven't performed some rite of passage, and it's especially disrespectful towards people who have had bad experiences with alcohol.
    • unethical_ban 6y ago
      There is a lot to be said for the effects of drunkenness and the effect on honesty it has.
    • partyboat1586 6y ago
      It applies to both men and women even if the writer didn't intend it.
    • antepodius 6y ago
      The GP proposes a supposedly useful heuristic. If it's useful, people using it will benefit (on average). Do you think people would not benefit from this heuristic, correctly applied? Or are you against the quote because of wider social implications? I.e. do you the the quote is incorrect in a pragmatic sense, or just morally wrong?
• sircastor 6y ago
  I don’t drink, and I’ve often read and worried about this culture of coworkers and peers who won’t trust you, and leave you out of social functions because of your choice. I’ve never encountered it though, and people seem to accept at face value that I don’t drink, and I’ve never felt left out. Even if the activity was a bar, I’ve always been invited along. Maybe I’m just lucky, or the companies I’ve worked at have a different sort of people at them, but I’m grateful for it.
  • vincnetas 6y ago
    Good thing that you're not in ex soviet zone. Not drinking there when someone offers is sign of weakness and personal offence to the one who offered to drink. Unless you have a proovable medical condition, but then everybody just feels pity for you. And what are you doing in this "dacha" anyway then :) For reference see movie "Peculiarities of the National Hunt". Spoiler, it has nothing to do with hunting. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114055/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114055/
    • 082349872349872 6y ago
      From the comments on a satire of french hunters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuGcoOJKXT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuGcoOJKXT8 Q. What's the difference between a beer and a hunter? A. You can find a beer without alcohol. In my village, not drinking is uncommon, but wouldn't get one ostracised. Drinking without food, or drinking out of plastic, on the other hand... PS. "Но лучше с коллективом выпить по чуть-чуть / И будет ХА. РА. ШО." Есть и перчик и рассол. Поехали! :)
• baby 6y ago
  It’s interesting because I have a hard time trusting people who don’t drink. And I often will not get along with someone until I at least get a drink with them. It’s not great as I know some people who categorically do not drink.
  • throwaway98797 6y ago
    I find 3 hours of coffee split between 2-3 occasions equals one night of moderate drinking from a relationship building perspective.
• fjfaase 6y ago
  I never got drunk because I cannot stand the taste of alcohol. I can drink at most half a glass of wine or beer. (Similarly, I can also not stand the taste of some artificial sweeteners. I am probably not a supertaster, because I do like grapefruit very much. I also have a problem with many 'synthetic' smells and cannot stand smoke.) I never realized that this had an effect on my social life, by not joining in with getting drunk with others (especially in my younger years). In my current social circles, excessive consumption of alcohol is not the norm.
• keenmaster 6y ago
  Drinking is as old as time, but what I feel is more modern is this silly gamification of "getting real." There is a problem if you have to drink to get real. Get real when you're sober. Have long, winding conversations about anything and everything when you have your faculties together. Tell it like it is because that's what you do, but soften the blow using your brain not beer.
  • sneak 6y ago
    It might be that the drinking is a social cover that permits everyone to “get real” at once, and that the drug that is alcohol is actually irrelevant in the social sense, much like how a fire alarm is more a signal of permission for a group to begin evacuating without social judgement or other cues.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • baby 6y ago
    While I have no problem doing this, most people actually can’t do it without alcohol I found.
    • keenmaster 6y ago
      This is an interesting take which leads to a conundrum: how does the non-drinker "get real" with the drinker who usually just gets real in mutual drinking scenarios?
      • throwaway98797 6y ago
        Can’t fix everything. I’ve had success getting people to open up during coffee talks by asking probing questions. The key is to truly care about the person when you ask. Often requires sharing of your own struggles.
• roenxi 6y ago
  It is an interesting theory; but I don't think it holds up very well on close inspection. For one thing, human 'trust' is mostly about raw familiarity. If trust were linked to actual trustworthiness, politics would be completely different and "any publicity is good publicity" wouldn't be a proverb. Motivated untrustworthy people generally have great success getting people to trust them, drinking involved or otherwise. In addition, trust even being an assessable characteristic is debatable, people's reliability is very dependent on context and circumstance. Nobody is trustworthy in a divorce court, for example. "causes people to get along more freely and easily" makes a lot of sense, but the utility drunken parties for assessing trustworthiness seems weak.
• aaron695 6y ago
  If you missed the link, this was discussed in 2014. I thought this deleted comment was interesting from that discussion - Why not drinking is a sign of conservatism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7798391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7798391
• whycombagator 6y ago
  Where I work lots of people have bottles of liquor on their desks, even some sprint retros or meetings are done with a bottle on the table. There are endless happy hours & days of the week where we get served alcohol on premise. Team outings cannot happen without alcohol being involved. Take two sets of people: those who drink & those who do not - guess which set gets promoted/large raises/etc.
  • throwaway98797 6y ago
    Which set is happier? Honest question.
• barce 6y ago
  Yeah, let's just ignore the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world that don't drink and assume they're untrustworthy. What a sophomoric article! الله اكبر
  • frequentnapper 6y ago
    Isn't it also sophomoric to not drink because of some superstition originated by a guy 1400 years ago that a being in the sky will burn you for all eternity because of it?
    • antepodius 6y ago
      The origin and socially acceptable justification for an algorithm says little about the algorithm itself.
• alecfreud 6y ago
  if you want to improve trust and communication in the workplace, encourage positive & healthy social relationships among employees, so they are comfortable enough to speak their mind. drugging people into an uninhibited state so they speak their intoxicated thoughts is not a long term solution.
• unchocked 6y ago
  Try LSD.
• jonnydubowsky 6y ago
  "Also, in most cultures it’s considered bad form to shock the heads of new acquaintances with huge magnets".
• juskrey 6y ago
  The usual thing in Russia for doing business. Easy to spot an idiot when he is drunk. Someone who is not drinking is perceived as someone who has an issue to hide.
• snvzz 6y ago
  As a non-drinker, I have to say, pressuring people to drink is toxic and a major societal problem.
  • bencollier49 6y ago
    Why? Speaking as devil's advocate.
    • mft_ 6y ago
      Not OP, but: 1) Pressuring (as opposed to discussing, persuading) anybody to do anything they’ve really got their mind set against is usually fairly toxic behaviour, especially if there are likely to be distinct downsides to that behaviour. Edge cases might be acceptable but generally it’s toxic. 2) It’s a widespread problem due to the widespread adoption of drinking and/or binge drinking practices in many societal groups. (I speak as a drinker, who I have to admit has sometimes wondered “what’s wrong with you?” when someone is strictly teetotal.)
    • nomoreservices 6y ago
      Also not OP, but I can think of a number of reasons: 1. Awareness that alcoholism runs in the family, so better play it safe and not drink 2. Association between alcohol and past trauma e.g. alcoholic abusive parent 3. Past relationship that ended due to ex-partner's alcohol problem 4. Religious conviction
    • vore 6y ago
      Alcohol has psychological effects and peer pressuring people into experiencing them seems pretty not cool.
      • snvzz 6y ago
        Alcohol is toxic, kills brain cells and damages pretty much everything in your body, and is highly addictive to top it off. The only reason it is legal mostly everywhere is how easy it is to make and how ingrained it is in society. It is much more damaging and much more addictive than most outlawed drugs. To top it off, it interacts badly with almost everything else.
• olcor 6y ago
  Personally I have a very simple rule. I don't drink alcohol, and I don't need to have a reason for it. I tend not to give any single reason if anyone asks me about it; just any excuse on top of my head. Most of the time it suffices. The times it doesn't, I give up and let them think whatever they deem fit. I have no issues against alcohol and people who drink. If people want to judge me on my teetotalism, it's up to them, but their judgement is not going to have any effect on my choice. I made mine and I'm going to stick to it. I've found that Stoicism helps a lot in dealing with this. The choice to drink is in your hands. Other people's thoughts are theirs, and different people will think differently. You can only control whether you drink or not, so leave the judgement (if any) to others and don't think too much about it.
  • auganov 6y ago
    If someone asks me I'll answer fully and honestly. I don't like all recreational drug use, think it's a waste of time and potentially dangerous to yourself and others. Then I'll share a bunch of statistics about how alcohol is responsible for 3.5% of all cancer deaths. And how even small levels of consumption increase the risk. I'm not going to stop anyone from doing this, but if they're asking my opinion already then I'll let them know I think it's a bad idea.
  • Pilottwave 6y ago
    While you dont have to explain yourself for not drinking. I am intrigued as to why you chose this no drinking rule for yourself. Care to share?
    • fyfy18 6y ago
      Not OP, but my story is I was living in a Middle Eastern country for a few years - although you could get alcohol at hotels it was expensive and there was basically no selection (usually only Carlsberg on tap, and similar beers in bottles). So I didn't bother drinking when I was there. It made me realise that I could have fun and socialise without alcohol. When I came back to Europe I tried drinking a few times, but I didn't really like it. As I hadn't been drinking, even one beer would make me feel so bad and dehydrated the next day (certain non-alcoholic beers do the same, so I don't think it is necessarily the alcohol). My wife was in the same situation, and then got pregnant so she also wasn't drinking. In the end I drifted away from my old friends who I would drink with, and made new friends who were happy to do things other than drinking. Admittedly it does make certain social situations a bit awkward (my co-working space has a weekly beer night, although I'm usually not the only one who doesn't drink), but overall I don't miss drinking. Looking back the only reason I drank before was due to peer pressure; I never felt having a cold beer after work was a very effective relaxation technique.
• strogonoff 6y ago
  See also: dares as a psychopath test[0]. The article touches on alcohol, too: Hintjens’ The Psychopath Code claims psychopaths avoid getting drunk—or high—with others present. [0] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/05/05/dares-costly-signals-and-psychopaths/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/05/05/dares-costly-signals-a...
  • swagasaurus-rex 6y ago
    very interesting. From the article: > Dares, in other words, are a psychopath test. They allow the opportunity to scrutinize people’s displays of social emotions on demand, rather than having to wait for an aversive event to happen. Perhaps raising the stakes is a great social indicator at seeing how people handle intense situations.
    • jacobush 6y ago
      I also liked how the article compared made it clear humans and psychopaths have co-evolved like parasites and hosts.
• olcorisafag 6y ago
  you are gay
• olcorisafag 6y ago
  loser
• scandox 6y ago
  The most convincing reason I have seen for drinking is the one given by Aldous Huxley in The Devils of Loudun: to escape our "sweaty selves". In short to achieve a small escape from the constant experience of being ourselves. A somewhat similar take though more strategic it is said the ancient Persians either debated drunk and decided sober or debated sober and decided drunk.
• Rainymood 6y ago
  >Not only is getting drunk pleasant As someone with asian genes I have this thing called the asian flush [1]. As far as I understand it my body breaks down alcohol too fast resulting in all the waste products flooding my body. Basically, I'm allergic to alcohol. Alcohol makes me feel like shit, my heart starts beating in my chest, my head goes red, I get huge headaches. I always thought: why do people like this so much? Then I found out I'm allergic to alcohol. It kind of sucks because so much socialising in today's world is based on alcohol. It took me 25 years but I've finally managed to accept the fact that I literally just can not drink alcohol. It took me 25 years to be brave enough to stand up to the social pressure of drinking. Geez. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction
  • dfee 6y ago
    > It kind of sucks because so much socialising in today's world is based on alcohol. No, that was the pre-COVID world. You’re on a level playing field now (at least for a few more months anyway).
    • naruciakk 6y ago
      Joke's on you, when people are not able to socialize in a pub, they are going to socialize in the park, with previously bought beer or wine ;)
    • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      You've obviously never gotten drunk with an online friend. Not to mention that there has been an increased interest in home cocktail making since folks started staying home, sharing the creations online. There is more than one way to socialize with alcohol.
      • dfee 6y ago
        Yeah, never. I have $1500 worth of alcohol in my house, had my first drink 19 years ago, have close friends who a) own bars, b) own vineyards, c) own breweries and d) are execs at major international spirits companies, but yeah: never drank with a buddy while video chatting. Alternative idea: maybe my remark wasn’t to be taken as black/white, but instead was exploring social engagement in 2020.
• agumonkey 6y ago
  I only skimmed the article but the paranoid tone reminded me of some idea I had regarding alcohol: As an adult the constraints of social life are really heavy and indeed we have to fake / lie / hide constantly. drinking alcohol is not spying technique, it's a lubricant to restore your intuition and natural self without care Also, even without the social burden, existential crisis lead to paralysis often, alcohol or other drug can make you feel creative and random again, a bit like a child.
• jgilias 6y ago
  Stalin is known to have deliberately gotten the high ranking party members drunk while staying mostly sober himself exactly for this purpose.
  • pete762 6y ago
    Which is exactly why sober people in a drinking group are inherently suspicious.
• viztor 6y ago
  This isn't something new. Psychologies has concluded it's easier people friends with those who they 'commit crimes' (doing something evil) together. Consuming alcohol is just one of those, only it's way too popular.
• als0 6y ago
  This is in the same category as drugging people. Law enforcement should not go there...
• minerjoe 6y ago
  A native elder once told me, "You can't trust a drinker, the're already lying to themselves that drinking poison is OK."
• m3kw9 6y ago
  All the > symbols makes me think I’m reading an email.
• m3kw9 6y ago
  With Covid I wonder if alcohol are done over zoom?
• mgamache 6y ago
  in vino veritas
• foolinaround 6y ago
  when people ask me at a bar why I don't drink, i have given this answer "I dont need to drink to say or do dumb things" we laugh about it, and then we move on to other topics...
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Since alcohol use is present in most rapes, abuse, hazing, auto fatalities, ... Maybe we chose the wrong social hack
  • emsy 6y ago
    100% of car crashes involve cars. Clearly cars should be banned.
• LoSboccacc 6y ago
  alcohol increase aggressiveness and self indulgence, not directly truthfulness, and it's sad to see frat boy culture getting glorified on shaky psychological myths.
• WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  For folks who act a lot differently while inebriated, the accepted belief (way back when) was that alcohol changed their personality. I figured out that the alcohol released the suppression on those personality traits. In my case, it made me quiet (for once). History: Drinker from 8-24. Quit because I started feeling sick from it. That's my history w/ intoxicants in general. Sidebar: I don't care if someone's buzzed. It's just a state, like being tired or caffeinated. However, it seems common for drinkers to have a moment of embarrassment around non-drinkers but I kind of wish they didn't.