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Personally I'm far more more interested in questions about how correlated brain matter volumes are with real world outcomes and overall quality of life. I'm va

Personally I'm far more more interested in questions about how correlated brain matter volumes are with real world outcomes and overall quality of life. I'm vaguely familiar with the term "synaptic plasticity" to roughly mean the way the brain processes information and how it changes over time with varying life experiences. It seems to me that one's risk-taking behavior may reduce brain matter volume, yet still improve quality of life because experience itself (literally the way the brain is wired) is worth far more. Some experiences are practically impossible without alcohol due to its social and cultural significance. To make a dumb metaphor, consider the fact that the raw number of pixels contained in an image isn't necessarily correlated with its success. What is a life, but a meme? Disclosure: I'm buzzed right now btw :p

misja111 4y ago
The article mentions that the effects are particularly strong in the frontal lobe. This is the part of your brain that's involved with planning and self-control, amongst others. So if chronic drinking damages that part of your brain most, the visible long term effects would be problems with planning and being less able to control your impulses and emotions. I have to say that this matches my (few) experiences with chronic drinkers quite well. I've seen them become less inhibited and less self-aware and become more selfish over a couple of decades, even when they're sober.
- sublinear 4y ago
  My own experience with the so called "high functioning alcoholics" is they probably managed to both find the right level of moderation to slow this loss to a rate that they can handle and developed the coping strategy of keeping routines they cannot break. It's like they become robots. While it's definitely bad for health, I'm not sure broader society really cares because good health isn't necessarily correlated with success in life past a certain point. My somewhat more positive counterexamples roughly fall into the dichotomy of introverts and extroverts (yeah yeah I know). On the introvert side, I've seen hard drinking make people into creatures of habit. Not necessarily "bad" habits, but habits nonetheless such as overworking themselves in a narrow field, deep hobbies, etc. "drunken masters" so to speak. On the extrovert side, I've seen hard drinking train people to optimize for high charisma, handling crowds, and deep knowledge of conflict resolution to the detriment of being able to learn any other skills or really appreciate the world in any other way. The "life of the party" while being just as dead inside as the introverted example above. They get trapped into a certain way of life from the brain damage. I'm definitely not advocating alcohol abuse just sharing my perspective. I'm pretty sure more people drink than abstain so this isn't a topic that can be dismissed as just purely bad. If anyone knows of research on this kind of topic that would be amazing. Too often this is only discussed via movies, ads, and personal stories which are all strongly biased.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    There's a really common saying / dark joke in AA "we were all high functioning once." When admitted alcoholics look back on their lives we usually find a period of years where we and even those around us considered our drinking "high functioning" but that's not really a stable position. Eventually some major life disruption will throw off whatever is keeping you balanced there and then it's on for real. It's better viewed as a stage of alcoholism rather than a type of it, if that makes sense.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Could it not also be that people who happen to have less grey matter in those "self-control" areas, will (statistically) tend to be prone to drink more alcohol? That is, the causality could run the other way. It takes some self-control and restraint to moderate one's consumption, after all.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"It seems to me that one's risk-taking behavior may reduce brain matter volume, yet still improve quality of life because experience itself (literally the way the brain is wired) is worth far more. Some experiences are practically impossible without alcohol due to its social and cultural significance" Yes, sadly that might be. In my youth heavy drinking was the norm, all the cool kids and pretty girls did it and to connect to them, you had to do it, too. Those who did not, were the depressed loosers. So to socialize, you had to poison yourself. From an individual point of view that makes sense, but overal I believe it makes more sense, to change that culture around alcohol. And luckily since then, I met people who can have crazy wild parties, without being wasted. I love dancing, but I hate to avoid uncoordinated drunk idiots on the dancefloor. I mean, I still do like a beer or a coctail occasionally and I see nothing wrong with it. But needing alcohol to socialize or party is not healthy at all and I would like to see the obligatory drunkness to go away. Not just because of drunk parties, but also because this culture gets people hooked into alcoholism and then families get destroyed.

misja111 4y ago

The article mentions that the effects are particularly strong in the frontal lobe. This is the part of your brain that's involved with planning and self-control, amongst others. So if chronic drinking damages that part of your brain most, the visible long term effects would be problems with planning and being less able to control your impulses and emotions. I have to say that this matches my (few) experiences with chronic drinkers quite well. I've seen them become less inhibited and less self-aware and become more selfish over a couple of decades, even when they're sober.

sublinear 4y ago
My own experience with the so called "high functioning alcoholics" is they probably managed to both find the right level of moderation to slow this loss to a rate that they can handle and developed the coping strategy of keeping routines they cannot break. It's like they become robots. While it's definitely bad for health, I'm not sure broader society really cares because good health isn't necessarily correlated with success in life past a certain point. My somewhat more positive counterexamples roughly fall into the dichotomy of introverts and extroverts (yeah yeah I know). On the introvert side, I've seen hard drinking make people into creatures of habit. Not necessarily "bad" habits, but habits nonetheless such as overworking themselves in a narrow field, deep hobbies, etc. "drunken masters" so to speak. On the extrovert side, I've seen hard drinking train people to optimize for high charisma, handling crowds, and deep knowledge of conflict resolution to the detriment of being able to learn any other skills or really appreciate the world in any other way. The "life of the party" while being just as dead inside as the introverted example above. They get trapped into a certain way of life from the brain damage. I'm definitely not advocating alcohol abuse just sharing my perspective. I'm pretty sure more people drink than abstain so this isn't a topic that can be dismissed as just purely bad. If anyone knows of research on this kind of topic that would be amazing. Too often this is only discussed via movies, ads, and personal stories which are all strongly biased.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  There's a really common saying / dark joke in AA "we were all high functioning once." When admitted alcoholics look back on their lives we usually find a period of years where we and even those around us considered our drinking "high functioning" but that's not really a stable position. Eventually some major life disruption will throw off whatever is keeping you balanced there and then it's on for real. It's better viewed as a stage of alcoholism rather than a type of it, if that makes sense.
HPsquared 4y ago
Could it not also be that people who happen to have less grey matter in those "self-control" areas, will (statistically) tend to be prone to drink more alcohol? That is, the causality could run the other way. It takes some self-control and restraint to moderate one's consumption, after all.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"It seems to me that one's risk-taking behavior may reduce brain matter volume, yet still improve quality of life because experience itself (literally the way the brain is wired) is worth far more. Some experiences are practically impossible without alcohol due to its social and cultural significance" Yes, sadly that might be. In my youth heavy drinking was the norm, all the cool kids and pretty girls did it and to connect to them, you had to do it, too. Those who did not, were the depressed loosers. So to socialize, you had to poison yourself. From an individual point of view that makes sense, but overal I believe it makes more sense, to change that culture around alcohol. And luckily since then, I met people who can have crazy wild parties, without being wasted. I love dancing, but I hate to avoid uncoordinated drunk idiots on the dancefloor. I mean, I still do like a beer or a coctail occasionally and I see nothing wrong with it. But needing alcohol to socialize or party is not healthy at all and I would like to see the obligatory drunkness to go away. Not just because of drunk parties, but also because this culture gets people hooked into alcoholism and then families get destroyed.