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Alcohol is toxic to virtually every kind of tissue in your body. They say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate
by dsrguru 15y ago
Alcohol is toxic to virtually every kind of tissue in your body. They say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine. But it feels good, it's legal in most countries so you don't have to risk contaminants on the black market, and lots of people pretend it's not even a drug, so Christian fundamentalists and old people won't even look down on you!
- stray 15y agoNice try, cocaine dealer.
- ludwigz 15y agojust what I was thinking
- Produce 15y agoThat's not what's scary to me. What's scary is the number of people in my country's parliment who drink like fish and, more than that, the number of them who drink at lunch. Some of these studies plainly state that behavioral and decision making side effects have been observed. I hate to sound alarmist, but my country is being run by people with compromised cognitive ability and, I assume, personality. I wonder if there's a threshold at which the toxicity starts or if it's just an inherent quality of alcohol just as the high from huffing paint is an integral part of the brain damage that it causes. Pretending it's not a drug is certainly an interesting perspective considering that it's one of the harder drugs out there.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoI understand your concern, but I don't see how that's any different than any other country for the last few thousand years. If anything, people probably drink less these days.
- wyclif 15y agoEngland, I'm guessing? Parliament even have their own pub! The joke is that at floor level, there are little arrows on the wall pointing to the door so that drunk MPs can find their way out.
- mgkimsal 15y agoA lot of Christian fundamentalists will look down on you. That's sort of the point of fundamentalism - extreme adherence to some principles. "No alcohol" is a pretty common one in a lot of Christian churches. Many will perform their communion with grape juice, not wine.
- dsrguru 15y agoI was under the impression that Christian teetotalism, at least among the predecessors of present-day social conservatives in America, became much less common after the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. ended. I guess that's not the case. But there are certainly lots of people, many but not all being religious Christians, who define alcohol as something other than a drug (as can be seen from the phrase "drugs and alcohol," which in my view is even harder to defend than "humans and animals" or "doctors and dentists," but I digress yet again...), which allows them to drink while simultaneously criticizing other recreational drug users. Oh the wonders of cognitive dissonance.
- warfangle 15y agoThe Presbyterian church I grew up in used grape juice instead of wine. In other ways, it was fairly progressive - especially in the kind of music played/performed during services. And the teachings were fundamentalist in a completely different way than most folks think of fundy christians.
- angersock 15y agothey put the "fun" in fundamentalism? :)
- warfangle 15y agoNot...quite. ;)
- bricestacey 15y agoI think that is common in Presbyterian churches. Same for me, though we had traditional hymns and piano accompianment. Not sure what is fundamentalist Presbyterian as I only attended 1 church, but things were laid back.
- carbocation 15y ago> They say drinking enough to feel drunk is much worse for your long-term health than a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine. Then "they" are proffering dangerous medical mis-advice that you should probably not be repeating on a forum.
- dsrguru 15y agoThe they was the World Health Organization. I can't actually find the article, but http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/bad-science-cocaine-study http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/bad-scie... suggests it was suppressed by the U.S. government, so I must have read a leaked copy that I can't find anymore. The leaked copy the Guardian links to doesn't appear to exist. But it was found that very low doses of cocaine such as the amount found in tea brewed from coca leaves are marginally healthful, and infrequent lowish doses of uncomtaminated powder cocaine aren't good but aren't very harmful. High doses of powder and basically any effective dose of crack are highly cardiotoxic and addictive. And cocaine combined with alcohol reacts synergistically and creates cocaethelene, which is very, very cardiotoxic. Also, saying that alcohol is even more harmful than cocaine and that you should probably avoid it (well I sarcastically said you should drink it, but no one would interpret the above post as a recommendation for alcohol) is providing very safe medical advice. I don't see how you got me recommending black market recreational cocaine use from my previous post. If that's how it came across, I'd like to make it clear I do not endorse cocaine use either.
- carbocation 15y ago* Surely the amount of cocaine found in "very low doses" of brewed coca tea is not what one would consider, in your words, "a moderate dose of recreational powder cocaine." So I don't think that what you've posted really supports your claim that the WHO finds recreational cocaine usage to be less hazardous than drinking enough to get drunk. * Whether or not the US's drug policies are more harmful than the drug itself is a totally different question.
- dsrguru 15y ago