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It really feels like we’re experiencing a rebirth of puritanism. Yes, alcohol is worse for your health than no alcohol. That’s almost certainly true even for “

It really feels like we’re experiencing a rebirth of puritanism. Yes, alcohol is worse for your health than no alcohol. That’s almost certainly true even for “moderate” drinkers. People do it for pleasure. A “case against alcohol” that doesn’t address this very real benefit is unlikely to have any impact, except with people who have decided that pleasure itself is suspect at best.

thatcat 5y ago
Alcohol is a neurotoxin and causes brain damage. Drink it if you want, it's no better than illegal drugs people consume for pleasure though. At least some of those aren't neurotoxic...
- xvedejas 5y ago
  It is hardly clear that low amounts of alcohol (on the order of 1 drink/day) are deleterious. The body has a true ability for homeostasis, and almost anything in excess will lead to problems. Alcohol's threshold for excess is regrettably low, for sure, but I think it's nonzero.
  - thatcat 5y ago
    There is no lower limit for alcohol being neurotoxic, which my asian engineering teachers were always careful to remind us when teaching fermentation process design. Not noticing the minor amount it causes doesn't mean it isn't slowly happening.
    - xvedejas 5y ago
      This isn't about the drinker noticing, this is about measurable physiological outcomes. Longevity, for instance, is not clearly affected by low levels of alcohol consumption. Not to question your Engineering teachers; I wasn't there and don't know the context, but there isn't a strong scientific basis behind the assertion that "there is no lower limit for alcohol being neurotoxic".
      - thatcat 5y ago
        There is no threshold value below which alcohol causes 0 damage to neural tissue was their point, which does not imply it has a measurable effect on longevity or physiology or any metric. If you dilute the alcohol it has proportional damaging effect to the concentration. It's a theoretic truth not an experimentally measured one.
        lanstin 5y ago
        Your brain isn’t a static system. Being happy, active, socially connected can probably grow back/heal the damage as fast as it happens.
        thatcat 5y ago
        You're totally right it's worth it sometimes for other reasons to drink.
        xvedejas 5y ago
        But there is also a theoretical reason not to believe things are so linear. The body is designed to react to stress, and a minimal amount of stress can even be beneficial, because of the way the body reacts to it. At least in some cases this is unequivocal. - Muscles must be stressed and sustain damage ("microtrauma") before muscle growth occurs. - DNA must be damaged by UVB radiation in order for the body to create melanin. - Allergen immunotherapy works by exposing the body to larger and larger amounts of a substance which causes an allergic reaction. This process is clearly nonlinear and involves hysteresis! I'm not arguing that ethanol is beneficial to neuronal health, but rather that the body can maintain homeostasis under stress, to an extent, as it does in so many other systems. For alcohol, we know that drinkers develop a tolerance. Heavier drinkers are able to produce enzymes more quickly and in higher numbers, and greater amounts of alcohol can be eliminated at a time. (Sufficiently heavy drinkers are still sustaining higher levels of all concerned chemicals, of course). Ethanol exists naturally in the body, in small amounts (~3g/day), as a byproduct of fermentation in the digestive system. We're always producing a small amount of the enzymes which convert alcohol to acetaldehyde, and then acetaldehyde to acetic acid and acetyl-CoA, and so on. Is it such a stretch to imagine that the body has a feedback mechanism to deal with variations in these levels, and that that mechanism is effective at preventing neurotoxicity for small enough variation in these levels? At some point I think to argue there is no theoretic way the body regulates these low levels of ethanol, you'd just be arguing that living, itself, is neurotoxic.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Alcohol is a carcinogen, and when it comes to oral, esophageal and stomach cancer, no alcohol is better than 1 drink a day.
    - tbalsam 5y ago
      Agree, homeostasis is day to day maintenance, and even the body can't really do that in a full fashion. I wouldn't quite consider it more of a "true" homeostasis, which I'd also personally extend to DNA mitigation of damage and repair. I think, personally at least.
- readme 5y ago
  nah it's like pruning the dead branches from a shrub forgetting can be helpful
  - thatcat 5y ago
    Lol, facts. Hopefully it wasn't important though.
claytongulick 5y ago
One of the things that frustrates me with many of these "X causes Y number of <consequence>" types of arguments is that they rarely provide for any sort of control on the negative case. To your point, what would the numbers look like without alcohol? Perhaps there is a decrease in birth rate as people make more judicious choices? Perhaps people move to other, less healthy intoxicants? Perhaps suicide rate increases because people are less able to blow off steam and occasionally get stupid? Who knows? What we do know is that humans are genetically adapted to consuming ethanol, have been doing it for thousands of years [1], and seem to have a pretty fun time doing it. > It really feels like we’re experiencing a rebirth of puritanism Sometimes it seems like the issue is even broader to me. There seems to be a strange obsession recently with getting rid of anything that's generally enjoyable. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer#:~:text=A%203%2C900%2Dyear%2Dold%20Sumerian,using%20barley%20and%20other%20grains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer#:~:text=A%20....
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ruined 5y ago
most of the people i have seen who critique alcohol and alcoholic culture are very enthusiastic about other drugs they consider safer, healthier, and better. i wouldn't call this puritanism. the author reviewed in this article in fact caused quite a controversy advocating for cannabis, mdma, and lsd while employed by the uk government.
- lanstin 5y ago
  I take it you don’t live in the southern US. Or India. Or Russia.
axiolite 5y ago
> alcohol is worse for your health than no alcohol. The health benefits of red wine are well known. Alcohol also lowers the odds of stroke and improves your cholesterol: https://www.webmd.com/diet/alcohol-health-benefits#1 https://www.webmd.com/diet/alcohol-health-benefits#1
- dabbledash 5y ago
  Do they compare it against wine with the ethanol removed?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 1helloworld1 5y ago
  Did you actually read the article? Quoted directly from that article - "Unfortunately, there is no proof that alcohol actually causes better health".
  - axiolite 5y ago
    Your quote is inaccurate/out of context. Did you misunderstand it, or did you just fail to read past the first page?
- lanstin 5y ago
  And being chill is healthy. Being super rigid about a bit of alcohol in this culture is hard without also being uptight and possibly unsocial, both of which are healthy. Maybe compare Mormon partiers to regular partiers.
IshKebab 5y ago
I agree. I don't know why anyone would listen to this guy who confesses that he doesn't enjoy alcohol and calls it "an awful drug". "Man doesn't want people to do thing he doesn't enjoy; news at 10" It's a shame he wrote this blog because at least some of Nutt's proposals seem reasonable. > A Christian framework can be extremely helpful here. Oh ok, why did I even start reading this?
- lanstin 5y ago
  “Wine is proof that God loves us” is the teaching of my church.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
I quit alcohol because it seems very bad for my health. I'm fine with other drugs and very non puritanistic. I just don't like poisoning myself.
tbalsam 5y ago
I think it's a good point to bring out that people and the positive effects they experience doesn't weigh against it -- after all it's a coping mechanism, people are dissociating themselves out from ~something~. I've definitely noticed those changes under the influence of alcohol some. I'd say the cost to benefit on it is pretty horrific, with cancer, liver, etc all adding up together in the end. I think if someone were abusing Benzos or Ketamine it'd be far much cleaner than abusing alcohol. Note, please don't take this as advice or any kind of implicit approval for abusing any of the above. It's just, uh, nice to not have to lose your liver and such (and I know there are other side effects from abusing the others above, but it seems to be from rampant, constant use, I believe/have heard, at very high doses for Ketamine. Don't know as much about the Benzos side of things.)

thatcat 5y ago

Alcohol is a neurotoxin and causes brain damage. Drink it if you want, it's no better than illegal drugs people consume for pleasure though. At least some of those aren't neurotoxic...

xvedejas 5y ago
It is hardly clear that low amounts of alcohol (on the order of 1 drink/day) are deleterious. The body has a true ability for homeostasis, and almost anything in excess will lead to problems. Alcohol's threshold for excess is regrettably low, for sure, but I think it's nonzero.
- thatcat 5y ago
  There is no lower limit for alcohol being neurotoxic, which my asian engineering teachers were always careful to remind us when teaching fermentation process design. Not noticing the minor amount it causes doesn't mean it isn't slowly happening.
  - xvedejas 5y ago
    This isn't about the drinker noticing, this is about measurable physiological outcomes. Longevity, for instance, is not clearly affected by low levels of alcohol consumption. Not to question your Engineering teachers; I wasn't there and don't know the context, but there isn't a strong scientific basis behind the assertion that "there is no lower limit for alcohol being neurotoxic".
    - thatcat 5y ago
      There is no threshold value below which alcohol causes 0 damage to neural tissue was their point, which does not imply it has a measurable effect on longevity or physiology or any metric. If you dilute the alcohol it has proportional damaging effect to the concentration. It's a theoretic truth not an experimentally measured one.
      - lanstin 5y ago
        Your brain isn’t a static system. Being happy, active, socially connected can probably grow back/heal the damage as fast as it happens.
        thatcat 5y ago
        You're totally right it's worth it sometimes for other reasons to drink.
      - xvedejas 5y ago
        But there is also a theoretical reason not to believe things are so linear. The body is designed to react to stress, and a minimal amount of stress can even be beneficial, because of the way the body reacts to it. At least in some cases this is unequivocal. - Muscles must be stressed and sustain damage ("microtrauma") before muscle growth occurs. - DNA must be damaged by UVB radiation in order for the body to create melanin. - Allergen immunotherapy works by exposing the body to larger and larger amounts of a substance which causes an allergic reaction. This process is clearly nonlinear and involves hysteresis! I'm not arguing that ethanol is beneficial to neuronal health, but rather that the body can maintain homeostasis under stress, to an extent, as it does in so many other systems. For alcohol, we know that drinkers develop a tolerance. Heavier drinkers are able to produce enzymes more quickly and in higher numbers, and greater amounts of alcohol can be eliminated at a time. (Sufficiently heavy drinkers are still sustaining higher levels of all concerned chemicals, of course). Ethanol exists naturally in the body, in small amounts (~3g/day), as a byproduct of fermentation in the digestive system. We're always producing a small amount of the enzymes which convert alcohol to acetaldehyde, and then acetaldehyde to acetic acid and acetyl-CoA, and so on. Is it such a stretch to imagine that the body has a feedback mechanism to deal with variations in these levels, and that that mechanism is effective at preventing neurotoxicity for small enough variation in these levels? At some point I think to argue there is no theoretic way the body regulates these low levels of ethanol, you'd just be arguing that living, itself, is neurotoxic.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Alcohol is a carcinogen, and when it comes to oral, esophageal and stomach cancer, no alcohol is better than 1 drink a day.
  - tbalsam 5y ago
    Agree, homeostasis is day to day maintenance, and even the body can't really do that in a full fashion. I wouldn't quite consider it more of a "true" homeostasis, which I'd also personally extend to DNA mitigation of damage and repair. I think, personally at least.
readme 5y ago
nah it's like pruning the dead branches from a shrub forgetting can be helpful
- thatcat 5y ago
  Lol, facts. Hopefully it wasn't important though.

claytongulick 5y ago

One of the things that frustrates me with many of these "X causes Y number of <consequence>" types of arguments is that they rarely provide for any sort of control on the negative case. To your point, what would the numbers look like without alcohol? Perhaps there is a decrease in birth rate as people make more judicious choices? Perhaps people move to other, less healthy intoxicants? Perhaps suicide rate increases because people are less able to blow off steam and occasionally get stupid? Who knows? What we do know is that humans are genetically adapted to consuming ethanol, have been doing it for thousands of years [1], and seem to have a pretty fun time doing it. > It really feels like we’re experiencing a rebirth of puritanism Sometimes it seems like the issue is even broader to me. There seems to be a strange obsession recently with getting rid of anything that's generally enjoyable. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer#:~:text=A%203%2C900%2Dyear%2Dold%20Sumerian,using%20barley%20and%20other%20grains https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer#:~:text=A%20....

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ruined 5y ago

most of the people i have seen who critique alcohol and alcoholic culture are very enthusiastic about other drugs they consider safer, healthier, and better. i wouldn't call this puritanism. the author reviewed in this article in fact caused quite a controversy advocating for cannabis, mdma, and lsd while employed by the uk government.

lanstin 5y ago
I take it you don’t live in the southern US. Or India. Or Russia.

axiolite 5y ago

> alcohol is worse for your health than no alcohol. The health benefits of red wine are well known. Alcohol also lowers the odds of stroke and improves your cholesterol: https://www.webmd.com/diet/alcohol-health-benefits#1 https://www.webmd.com/diet/alcohol-health-benefits#1

dabbledash 5y ago
Do they compare it against wine with the ethanol removed?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
1helloworld1 5y ago
Did you actually read the article? Quoted directly from that article - "Unfortunately, there is no proof that alcohol actually causes better health".
- axiolite 5y ago
  Your quote is inaccurate/out of context. Did you misunderstand it, or did you just fail to read past the first page?
lanstin 5y ago
And being chill is healthy. Being super rigid about a bit of alcohol in this culture is hard without also being uptight and possibly unsocial, both of which are healthy. Maybe compare Mormon partiers to regular partiers.

IshKebab 5y ago

I agree. I don't know why anyone would listen to this guy who confesses that he doesn't enjoy alcohol and calls it "an awful drug". "Man doesn't want people to do thing he doesn't enjoy; news at 10" It's a shame he wrote this blog because at least some of Nutt's proposals seem reasonable. > A Christian framework can be extremely helpful here. Oh ok, why did I even start reading this?

lanstin 5y ago
“Wine is proof that God loves us” is the teaching of my church.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

I quit alcohol because it seems very bad for my health. I'm fine with other drugs and very non puritanistic. I just don't like poisoning myself.

tbalsam 5y ago

I think it's a good point to bring out that people and the positive effects they experience doesn't weigh against it -- after all it's a coping mechanism, people are dissociating themselves out from ~something~. I've definitely noticed those changes under the influence of alcohol some. I'd say the cost to benefit on it is pretty horrific, with cancer, liver, etc all adding up together in the end. I think if someone were abusing Benzos or Ketamine it'd be far much cleaner than abusing alcohol. Note, please don't take this as advice or any kind of implicit approval for abusing any of the above. It's just, uh, nice to not have to lose your liver and such (and I know there are other side effects from abusing the others above, but it seems to be from rampant, constant use, I believe/have heard, at very high doses for Ketamine. Don't know as much about the Benzos side of things.)