3 ms·

is the alternative (drinking enough to get buzzed every day) healthy?

reducesuffering 3y ago
If there was a limit to healthy alcohol, it would be ~3 drinks / week (on all the J curves I’ve seen, & 12oz beer / 5oz red wine, not 1.5oz liquor) Although I’m still unconvinced where in 0 - 3 is optimal
et-al 3y ago
I don't think that's Emily Oster's proposal, either: > But many people do enjoy a drink from time to time: a beer with friends, a cold glass of rosé in the summer, a hot toddy in front of the fire, even just a glass of white wine while cooking at the end of a long day. If we accept that pleasure has value, and that the data are muddy, then the moderation standard makes more sense.
nicbou 3y ago
The alternative is enjoying a drink once in a while, ot functional alcoholism.
- vintermann 3y ago
  We know that if you recommend that, it will change the baseline for what's considered normal/responsible, leading to increase in alcoholism or alcohol-related harm more generally. I agree with the headline "Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question". But I think it's wrong for a very different reason. I think it's wrong because it is hyper-individualized (is it harmless for me right now?) question about a collective, social problem. It's a choice we don't actually make as individuals nearly as much as we'd like to believe.
  - spicymapotofu 3y ago
    Are you sure you're responsible for your doubt of societal drinking standards? There's been a shadow of teetotaling trying to creep into the historic human comfort habit, ever since the failure of prohibitionism. Abstention is just an insidious branch of social overreach, where my homemade beer is equated with the old soak waiting for the liquor store to open every day, and for whose benefit? I present this not just to mock your position. I find your argument myopic, that you take drinkers for sheep ignorant of the world around them. For all the people that may be true of, none of them will be enlightened by you here - and this leaves your argument a holier-than-thou sermon preached to the choir. We know we aren't immune to propaganda, but if you want to argue that alcoholism is a socially-mediated disease, you must not bury the lede.
    - vintermann 3y ago
      Try to be more succinct, please. I find it easy to say that not drinking is a conscious choice. I think it's much harder for you to argue that drinking this much, but not that much, is a conscious choice. Obviously neither of our choices are made in a vacuum. Alcoholism is not a disease. It's a description of behaviour, often abused as an explanation of behaviour. Drinking to excess is obviously socially motivated in most cases, I don't think I have to argue that? Either way, if you look up the catalog definitions of addiction/alcoholism it's easy to see they're socially relative - many of the criteria are effectively about whether society has a problem with your drinking/behavior. And if they drink more themselves, they'll probably have less of that.

If there was a limit to healthy alcohol, it would be ~3 drinks / week (on all the J curves I’ve seen, & 12oz beer / 5oz red wine, not 1.5oz liquor) Although I’m still unconvinced where in 0 - 3 is optimal

et-al 3y ago

I don't think that's Emily Oster's proposal, either: > But many people do enjoy a drink from time to time: a beer with friends, a cold glass of rosé in the summer, a hot toddy in front of the fire, even just a glass of white wine while cooking at the end of a long day. If we accept that pleasure has value, and that the data are muddy, then the moderation standard makes more sense.

nicbou 3y ago

The alternative is enjoying a drink once in a while, ot functional alcoholism.

vintermann 3y ago
We know that if you recommend that, it will change the baseline for what's considered normal/responsible, leading to increase in alcoholism or alcohol-related harm more generally. I agree with the headline "Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question". But I think it's wrong for a very different reason. I think it's wrong because it is hyper-individualized (is it harmless for me right now?) question about a collective, social problem. It's a choice we don't actually make as individuals nearly as much as we'd like to believe.
- spicymapotofu 3y ago
  Are you sure you're responsible for your doubt of societal drinking standards? There's been a shadow of teetotaling trying to creep into the historic human comfort habit, ever since the failure of prohibitionism. Abstention is just an insidious branch of social overreach, where my homemade beer is equated with the old soak waiting for the liquor store to open every day, and for whose benefit? I present this not just to mock your position. I find your argument myopic, that you take drinkers for sheep ignorant of the world around them. For all the people that may be true of, none of them will be enlightened by you here - and this leaves your argument a holier-than-thou sermon preached to the choir. We know we aren't immune to propaganda, but if you want to argue that alcoholism is a socially-mediated disease, you must not bury the lede.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    Try to be more succinct, please. I find it easy to say that not drinking is a conscious choice. I think it's much harder for you to argue that drinking this much, but not that much, is a conscious choice. Obviously neither of our choices are made in a vacuum. Alcoholism is not a disease. It's a description of behaviour, often abused as an explanation of behaviour. Drinking to excess is obviously socially motivated in most cases, I don't think I have to argue that? Either way, if you look up the catalog definitions of addiction/alcoholism it's easy to see they're socially relative - many of the criteria are effectively about whether society has a problem with your drinking/behavior. And if they drink more themselves, they'll probably have less of that.