5 ms·

and these limits are set arbitrarily and are often even more detrimental. If you know the doc says you can have 14 but not 15, you now have a target to be "ok"

and these limits are set arbitrarily and are often even more detrimental. If you know the doc says you can have 14 but not 15, you now have a target to be "ok" when you show up to the doctor. If the gap between 14 and 15 is linear and not somehow logarithmic then you're telling me that consuming exactly two drinks a day will be fine, but that extra scotch you have on friday makes you an alcoholic. This term is thrown around loosely by people who have never actually met an alcoholic. Even a high functioning "weekend warrior" is noticeable. The total risk for serious liver damage drinking a 6 pack a day for over 10 years is only 18%. Of these people, around 13% develop into cirrhosis. No one has been able to explain why. For some people, especially women, the effects of alcohol are far more damaging. Much like BMI, population statistics are not as useful as what actually matters. Body mass per unit alcohol consumed. A smaller person drinking 15 drinks a week may develop health problems. A 180 pound male may or may not. Am I encouraging drinking that heavily because the risk is 18%? No not at all. I am simply stating that these "drink limits" are arbitrary and completely and entirely made up. Mediterraneans, regularly cited for their longevity, consume more than 15 drinks a week on a regular basis. HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers who rag on alcohol but promote the uninhibited abuse of THC and other dangerous mind altering drugs. It's an absurd bizzaro world.

shafyy 5y ago
> HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers who rag on alcohol but promote the uninhibited abuse of THC and other dangerous mind altering drugs. It's an absurd bizzaro world. Exactly! People have been drinking for millenia, and while alcohol doesn't make you healthier, it's also clear that drinking "normally" doesn't cause major health issues (unlike, smoking cigarettes for example). Sure, if you drink 2 bottles of wine a day, you're going to have a problem. Not so much with 2 glasses of wine a day. THC, microdosing and all that other stuff is relatively new and the long-term effecs are not well researched. Shorter term, it's clear that THC can cause issues like schizophrenia, especially with teenagers. I would expect much more long-term negative effects of mind altering drugs, just because they fuck with your brain.
- rtpg 5y ago
  This call to naturalism is absurd. The fact that people are drinking alcohol for millennia is not proof of it being healthy!! That makes no sense! While I generally agree about arbitrary cutoffs, 2 glasses of wine a day is a good indicator that you have alcohol in your system at least 1/3rd of your life! There are people who don’t get phased by this, but more likely people are just used to it and adapt (much like with coffee) The concept of a line being arbitrary is a thing but it’s not a crazy line (especially if you’re only drinking every other day that’s 4 glasses a day).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - metafunctor 5y ago
    Assuming one unit (10ml) stays in your system for one hour, a full bottle of wine per day would be 9 hours (a bit over 1/3 of the time). Two 175ml glasses of 12% wine would then be about 4 hours.
  - shafyy 5y ago
    If you read my comment carefully, I say exactly that. We know it's not healthy, but we also know that there are no crazy long-term effects if you keep it moderate. My comment is specifically about people saying alcohol is bad but then smoking weed all day or taking LSD and other drugs and think it's good for them.
    - bscphil 5y ago
      > We know it's not healthy, but we also know that there are no crazy long-term effects if you keep it moderate. I think this claim is unjustified, and that's what your parent comment is trying to point out. Is 14 drinks a week too much? Maybe not, but you aren't likely to find documentary proof of that by looking to the "millennia" of people who did it during an era where those who survived childhood could expect to live to be 60 or so and there was little to no understanding of modern medicine. If we were able to say with some certainty that 14 drinks a week will give you a 15% chance of getting a serious liver disease, possibly dying from it, I think most people would agree that 14 drinks a week is "dangerous". It's also dangerous at a level that would be near-impossible to discern for generations past.
schindlabua 5y ago
Weed cost me 5 years of my life that I'm never getting back. It's great if some people can form better habits than me but all the weed users I know (plenty) use it every day all day. The biggest detriment is opportunity cost, time you'd spend doing something exciting or productive is spent on watching your Netflix queue instead. Some people claim to get a lot of creative work done while stoned but those people probably haven't tried doing it sober for too long. If you're rolling an after lunch joint while out with friends that's substance abuse even if it's, like, not harmful at all, dude.
- hrh 5y ago
  It really is dependent on the person. I figured out at some point during the last decade that the only stimulant that works for me is THC. Caffeine won't do it. It doesn't matter what I do, if I eat healthy get 8 hours of sleep, exercise, etc, I can wake up and within 30 minutes of work feel so mentally and physically wiped that I have to sleep...rinse and repeat. I've managed to force myself to get through that repeatedly (it didn't really happen to the same extent as a kid - I guess life was more fun). But weed? Scared the hell out of me the first few times (over years, I'm in an illegal state, but of course it's as easy to get as donuts). You know the usual introspection, whoa dude thoughts, the slightly different perspective you see yourself and the world, and on the high, every time...incredible anxiety. But once I got past that, I could work for 8 hours like I used to, and like most people can. I was high 24/7 for about 4 or 5 years. I care about my health so I took different precautions (dealers, vapes, etc). However, I don't begin to smoke like some people (I'm not into pot culture), can't physically take those amounts. Changed my life. I was able to work through major issues like OCD, etc. Guess what? Nobody at work or school nor my family or friends that I've only told recently know that I was high. Couldn't tell at all, entirely functional (more functional than the past). The real save lately has been delta-8 (the way of the future). It (THC, drugs) is not for everyone and you should not abuse it too young (psychosis). Don't go buy weed off the street and get really high your first time, you might have the worst panic attack in your life. I agree we shouldn't just rave about drugs like they don't have an impact, but some of you guys don't obviously have that much experience with what you are talking about (not you). No offense, but that's part of the issue. How many decades have we lost and how many tens of thousands of lives have been lost because we are too prudish to test this stuff as it should be? The geniuses in my state, instead of grabbing the new industry were ready to ban delta-8 to protect the non-existent cannabis industry, or god, or something. It'll all be legal in 10 years anyway, why waste our time? I can't tell you how many small businesses I've visited in the last few months that would have out of business, and how many customers that might have been put in really bad mental spots. There's a Cowboys player, Randy Gregory, that's lost 4 or 5 years of his career to bans because he smokes pot because it helps his anxiety and bipolar issues. That's criminal. I drink, sometimes, too. edit: To save the Google, delta-8 is just a different form of THC, extracted from hemp produce federally legally due to the 2018 farm bill (magic). Of course there's also CBD from that (the original big industry) and lots of other things coming out Delta-10, etc. Most people don't get extreme anxiety on THC, but some do... someone is going to correct me if I'm wrong, but THC is psychoactive (CBD is not), so when people are microdosing this or shrooms or whatever they're getting different effects but similar end results. It plays with your perspective and chemistry in a way that alcohol does not, especially at higher doses.
chapium 5y ago
> HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers who rag on alcohol but promote the uninhibited abuse of THC and other dangerous mind altering drugs. It's an absurd bizzaro world. I've never seen this. Do you have an example article or comment that supports this? It should be easy to find since "HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers".
- helloworld11 5y ago
  I've seen it many times in posts relating to health, drug use or alcohol: a tendency to piss all over alcohol in particular (cigarettes as a close second) and those who use anything more than a tiny amount of it while hardly blinking at descriptions by others describing THC, LSD, MDMA and all sorts of other ad hoc mind altering drug mixes as a solution to assorted psychological situations. Many people here regularly describe consuming large amounts of THC in different forms, get applauded by others who do the same and then strongly criticize the notion of someone drinking more than some very moderate, arbitrarily defined amount of alcohol per week or X time frame. In the absence of concrete evidence showing explicitly why your drug of choice is superior to someone else drug of choice, it's hypocritical to shit on their preferences as moral weakness while you happily indulge your own substances.
  - palimpsests 5y ago
    There’s a lot of evidence in clinical trials with MDMA and psilocybin mushrooms (which have a lot of similarity to LSD) regarding efficacy for treating various psychological conditions when used in a safe and guided setting. Pretty sure we have nothing of the sort for alcohol. Just the opposite, in fact, like this article. I can’t speak for THC. I wouldn’t say that this evidence makes any substance more morally “superior” to any other, it all depends on the context of use.
sidlls 5y ago
Techies especially are a gullible lot, susceptible to new age nonsense, anti-vax style pseudoscience, and a glut of other anti-science things. At least in the Bay Area. It’s ridiculous to see how quickly they take to any fad.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Probably because they think for themselves instead of appointing someone else to do the critical thinking for them. They think the ones who are gullible are the ones that hear something on the news and repeat it as fact without ever thinking about it. Anti-science is anti-politics around science not anti-evidence. Things like questioning the Covid bat theory. Glad to see the news is coming around on the lab theory.
  - sidlls 5y ago
    It’s more like they think too highly of their own critical thinking skills and aren’t knowledgeable enough about the science to credibly judge the evidence, then pat themselves on the back for “independent thinking.”

shafyy 5y ago

> HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers who rag on alcohol but promote the uninhibited abuse of THC and other dangerous mind altering drugs. It's an absurd bizzaro world. Exactly! People have been drinking for millenia, and while alcohol doesn't make you healthier, it's also clear that drinking "normally" doesn't cause major health issues (unlike, smoking cigarettes for example). Sure, if you drink 2 bottles of wine a day, you're going to have a problem. Not so much with 2 glasses of wine a day. THC, microdosing and all that other stuff is relatively new and the long-term effecs are not well researched. Shorter term, it's clear that THC can cause issues like schizophrenia, especially with teenagers. I would expect much more long-term negative effects of mind altering drugs, just because they fuck with your brain.

rtpg 5y ago
This call to naturalism is absurd. The fact that people are drinking alcohol for millennia is not proof of it being healthy!! That makes no sense! While I generally agree about arbitrary cutoffs, 2 glasses of wine a day is a good indicator that you have alcohol in your system at least 1/3rd of your life! There are people who don’t get phased by this, but more likely people are just used to it and adapt (much like with coffee) The concept of a line being arbitrary is a thing but it’s not a crazy line (especially if you’re only drinking every other day that’s 4 glasses a day).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- metafunctor 5y ago
  Assuming one unit (10ml) stays in your system for one hour, a full bottle of wine per day would be 9 hours (a bit over 1/3 of the time). Two 175ml glasses of 12% wine would then be about 4 hours.
- shafyy 5y ago
  If you read my comment carefully, I say exactly that. We know it's not healthy, but we also know that there are no crazy long-term effects if you keep it moderate. My comment is specifically about people saying alcohol is bad but then smoking weed all day or taking LSD and other drugs and think it's good for them.
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > We know it's not healthy, but we also know that there are no crazy long-term effects if you keep it moderate. I think this claim is unjustified, and that's what your parent comment is trying to point out. Is 14 drinks a week too much? Maybe not, but you aren't likely to find documentary proof of that by looking to the "millennia" of people who did it during an era where those who survived childhood could expect to live to be 60 or so and there was little to no understanding of modern medicine. If we were able to say with some certainty that 14 drinks a week will give you a 15% chance of getting a serious liver disease, possibly dying from it, I think most people would agree that 14 drinks a week is "dangerous". It's also dangerous at a level that would be near-impossible to discern for generations past.

schindlabua 5y ago

Weed cost me 5 years of my life that I'm never getting back. It's great if some people can form better habits than me but all the weed users I know (plenty) use it every day all day. The biggest detriment is opportunity cost, time you'd spend doing something exciting or productive is spent on watching your Netflix queue instead. Some people claim to get a lot of creative work done while stoned but those people probably haven't tried doing it sober for too long. If you're rolling an after lunch joint while out with friends that's substance abuse even if it's, like, not harmful at all, dude.

hrh 5y ago
It really is dependent on the person. I figured out at some point during the last decade that the only stimulant that works for me is THC. Caffeine won't do it. It doesn't matter what I do, if I eat healthy get 8 hours of sleep, exercise, etc, I can wake up and within 30 minutes of work feel so mentally and physically wiped that I have to sleep...rinse and repeat. I've managed to force myself to get through that repeatedly (it didn't really happen to the same extent as a kid - I guess life was more fun). But weed? Scared the hell out of me the first few times (over years, I'm in an illegal state, but of course it's as easy to get as donuts). You know the usual introspection, whoa dude thoughts, the slightly different perspective you see yourself and the world, and on the high, every time...incredible anxiety. But once I got past that, I could work for 8 hours like I used to, and like most people can. I was high 24/7 for about 4 or 5 years. I care about my health so I took different precautions (dealers, vapes, etc). However, I don't begin to smoke like some people (I'm not into pot culture), can't physically take those amounts. Changed my life. I was able to work through major issues like OCD, etc. Guess what? Nobody at work or school nor my family or friends that I've only told recently know that I was high. Couldn't tell at all, entirely functional (more functional than the past). The real save lately has been delta-8 (the way of the future). It (THC, drugs) is not for everyone and you should not abuse it too young (psychosis). Don't go buy weed off the street and get really high your first time, you might have the worst panic attack in your life. I agree we shouldn't just rave about drugs like they don't have an impact, but some of you guys don't obviously have that much experience with what you are talking about (not you). No offense, but that's part of the issue. How many decades have we lost and how many tens of thousands of lives have been lost because we are too prudish to test this stuff as it should be? The geniuses in my state, instead of grabbing the new industry were ready to ban delta-8 to protect the non-existent cannabis industry, or god, or something. It'll all be legal in 10 years anyway, why waste our time? I can't tell you how many small businesses I've visited in the last few months that would have out of business, and how many customers that might have been put in really bad mental spots. There's a Cowboys player, Randy Gregory, that's lost 4 or 5 years of his career to bans because he smokes pot because it helps his anxiety and bipolar issues. That's criminal. I drink, sometimes, too. edit: To save the Google, delta-8 is just a different form of THC, extracted from hemp produce federally legally due to the 2018 farm bill (magic). Of course there's also CBD from that (the original big industry) and lots of other things coming out Delta-10, etc. Most people don't get extreme anxiety on THC, but some do... someone is going to correct me if I'm wrong, but THC is psychoactive (CBD is not), so when people are microdosing this or shrooms or whatever they're getting different effects but similar end results. It plays with your perspective and chemistry in a way that alcohol does not, especially at higher doses.

chapium 5y ago

> HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers who rag on alcohol but promote the uninhibited abuse of THC and other dangerous mind altering drugs. It's an absurd bizzaro world. I've never seen this. Do you have an example article or comment that supports this? It should be easy to find since "HN is filled with these pop-sci teetotalers".

helloworld11 5y ago
I've seen it many times in posts relating to health, drug use or alcohol: a tendency to piss all over alcohol in particular (cigarettes as a close second) and those who use anything more than a tiny amount of it while hardly blinking at descriptions by others describing THC, LSD, MDMA and all sorts of other ad hoc mind altering drug mixes as a solution to assorted psychological situations. Many people here regularly describe consuming large amounts of THC in different forms, get applauded by others who do the same and then strongly criticize the notion of someone drinking more than some very moderate, arbitrarily defined amount of alcohol per week or X time frame. In the absence of concrete evidence showing explicitly why your drug of choice is superior to someone else drug of choice, it's hypocritical to shit on their preferences as moral weakness while you happily indulge your own substances.
- palimpsests 5y ago
  There’s a lot of evidence in clinical trials with MDMA and psilocybin mushrooms (which have a lot of similarity to LSD) regarding efficacy for treating various psychological conditions when used in a safe and guided setting. Pretty sure we have nothing of the sort for alcohol. Just the opposite, in fact, like this article. I can’t speak for THC. I wouldn’t say that this evidence makes any substance more morally “superior” to any other, it all depends on the context of use.

sidlls 5y ago

Techies especially are a gullible lot, susceptible to new age nonsense, anti-vax style pseudoscience, and a glut of other anti-science things. At least in the Bay Area. It’s ridiculous to see how quickly they take to any fad.

ipaddr 5y ago
Probably because they think for themselves instead of appointing someone else to do the critical thinking for them. They think the ones who are gullible are the ones that hear something on the news and repeat it as fact without ever thinking about it. Anti-science is anti-politics around science not anti-evidence. Things like questioning the Covid bat theory. Glad to see the news is coming around on the lab theory.
- sidlls 5y ago
  It’s more like they think too highly of their own critical thinking skills and aren’t knowledgeable enough about the science to credibly judge the evidence, then pat themselves on the back for “independent thinking.”