After reading the post: Yes, you get where I'm coming from exactly. I'm so glad there's someone else out there who recognizes the critical role of memory here, both as a catalyst and as something which needs to fall back into the soil.
I stopped alcohol 570 days ago using the Scott Adams reframe of "alcohol is poison". I quit because my son was abusing alcohol and I wanted to set a better example, and show him that you can still have a good time without alcohol. I definitely sleep better than I did when I would drink socially.
> I quit because my son was abusing alcohol and I wanted to set a better example
This is a major motivator for me for vices in general. When you say one thing then do another you shouldn’t be surprised when you don’t get any compliance.
I’m a casual drinker. Enjoy nice wine with a nice meal, am repulsed by beer, fix myself cocktails maybe a few times a week. Never drink to being drunk but certainly get buzzed off of two glasses of cab.
Anyone know if I have a risk of becoming an alcoholic? I’m 50 and never really started drinking until my late 20s.
My two cents: addiction is about losing the ability to control how much of something that you do. I'd get worried once you start finding reasons to drink earlier and more of it during sessions. I also believe that alcoholism is a disease that runs in the family, so if you know someone close that had it, then assume that you're at risk. Lastly, after seven years of traveling for work as a consultant (and, now, as a sales engineer) and seeing loads of people slam down beers, wines and all sorts of other things at 9am, I firmly believe that alcoholism is much more prominent (and, to a degree, socio-normalized) than people talk about.
Maybe try not drinking for a week and seeing what happens? It's hard to say. I think a lot of people hover in this inbetween of frequent casual drinking that for some people becomes pathological and others it's truly optional. IMO you'll know best if you attempt to choose to stop.
Choose one month in the calendar to abstain from all alcohol, every year. If you can do it, I think you are not an alcoholic. If you can't do it, you are.
One month is long enough time so that if you are addicted, it will feel like forever. One month a year still leave you more than 90% days to enjoy a nice drink.
> I have a theory, based on many years of research and practice with Anki, that true healing from any kind of psychic illness only starts to set in place when you start to genuinely forget what it was ever like to be ill at all.
I found this line thoughtprovoking.
From 5-20 I was severely depressed. Now it's been 10 years, and I'm not depressed anymore. In fact, those years feel like a factual moment in my life, not something whose emotional state I can really recall and bring in my present life -- unlike, for example, the grief of losing any pet in my life. That still comes back with raw power.
I love to drink alcohol. I enjoy the taste of whiskey with ice or a cold beer during summer. Unfortunately for me, I also suffer on occasional migraines and alcohol started triggering them even that it did not do so. Thus I have been forced to become abstinent or suffer head splitting pain. I was not drinking for over a year.
I quit five years ago. I lost track of the day count. I wish I’d quit in college or never started. I’m pretty sure every catastrophic hangover caused permanent reductions in my recall ability. I’d probably be a lot smarter if I hadn’t done myself all that damage.
My story is similar to yours, and I feel what you're saying. I would just be a different person today if I had avoided it altogether. Internally I have resolved to just keep looking forward, and only very occasionally, backwards.
I suspect so. Evidence from multiple scientific and medical sources indicates a clear association between chronic alcoholism and a decline in IQ. Obviously correlation is not causation, and it's hard to argue we should do an RCT for drinking with any medical ethics board. But in the case of a small molecule neurotoxin like alcohol that so easily weaves its way into and through brain tissue, and with relatively easy-to-understand molecular interactions, it seems likely to be causal.
Alcohol and its metabolites directly harm and kill nerve cells, contributing to a reduction in brain volume. Here it's particularly important to remember that neurons, if they grow back at all, don't do so anywhere near the rate of, say, your skin cells. But it's also true that alcohol use can damage blood vessels, including in the brain. It's not hard to suspect that causes less efficient neural activity over time even if no actual neurons are killed.
I am extremely concerned about the page behind the hyperlink "suspect I was the kind of alcoholic who gave alcohol a bad name". The logic on that page leads to giving death sentences for minor crimes, as a deterrent so there will be no crimes. And the author calls himself a libertarian...
You have confused someone being able to convincingly walk down a certain line of logic for that person actually believing that line of logic. The author states one of many reasons right afterwards why he thinks that is a really bad idea:
>Why, though, shouldn’t we just double-down on orthodox prohibitionist remedies? Because you wind up punishing a vastly larger number of innocent people, that’s why. [...] When you ban intoxicants, you conceivably reduce abuse, but you definitely end up punishing an enormous number of innocent hobbyists - as well as the professionals who supply them.
I linked that page because, when I was an alcoholic, I was also an asshole to the people around me. I mooched off my parents, deeply worried my brothers, and refused to pull my own weight even a little bit in the household economy.
But there are plenty of people who drink alcohol who are not assholes because of it. They should not be thrown under the bus because I personally become an asshole when exposed to the substance.
The author recommends zero penalties for production or use of mind-altering substances, and infinitely harsher penalties for addicts. Because people are perfectly rational beings, especially when using mind-altering substances, they'll look ahead at the penalties and decide not to be addicts. That's the author's argument, and it's obviously completely wrong.
The war on drugs has been a failure, but giving addicts the death penalty (as opposed to helping them stop being addicts) isn't very good either.
I’ve noticed that people who resort to absolutism to repair their addictions (zero carbs, zero fat, zero alcohol, no smoking cold turkey, never gambling, no sex, no fap, no porn, no credit cards, etc.) tend to think everyone would benefit from their one easy trick.
That this approach doesn’t scale seems to be lost on them.
I've noticed people who leave comments like this tend not to actually read the links they wish to pass judgment on. If you did you'd know nowhere in my post do I claim quitting was easy.
The linked post implies that most drinkers should continue drinking, and maybe even drink more precisely because they aren't the kinds of drinkers that give alcohol a bad name. If you feel like being edgy, try taking that as your soapbox instead. Much more interesting than saying "the optimal amount of X'ing is nonzero" given a large enough group of people X'ing.
I understand having a knee-jerk personal reaction to this comment, but it wasn’t about you or your blog post. Both the parent comment and I are discussing the linked post, which has very little to do with your situation in any case.
But... you were wrong about the linked post, too. If you had actually read that one, you'd have realized it claims basically the exact opposite of what both you and the parent comment said.
Sorry, TB. I can't give you a magic pass on being wrong just because you are also an asshole. That wouldn't be fair to all the correct assholes out there who suffer for their art.
I'm currently ~150 weeks into 1000 Weeks Without Drinking! Highly recommended.
[0] https://taylor.town/1000-weekends
Hell yeah! Keep going!!
After reading the post: Yes, you get where I'm coming from exactly. I'm so glad there's someone else out there who recognizes the critical role of memory here, both as a catalyst and as something which needs to fall back into the soil.
I stopped alcohol 570 days ago using the Scott Adams reframe of "alcohol is poison". I quit because my son was abusing alcohol and I wanted to set a better example, and show him that you can still have a good time without alcohol. I definitely sleep better than I did when I would drink socially.
> I quit because my son was abusing alcohol and I wanted to set a better example
This is a major motivator for me for vices in general. When you say one thing then do another you shouldn’t be surprised when you don’t get any compliance.
I’m a casual drinker. Enjoy nice wine with a nice meal, am repulsed by beer, fix myself cocktails maybe a few times a week. Never drink to being drunk but certainly get buzzed off of two glasses of cab.
Anyone know if I have a risk of becoming an alcoholic? I’m 50 and never really started drinking until my late 20s.
What should one look out for?
You're going to get lots of opinions from lots of people, so here's a Reddit thread from the before-AI times that does a pretty good job of answering that: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/5kp9va/alcoholic...
My two cents: addiction is about losing the ability to control how much of something that you do. I'd get worried once you start finding reasons to drink earlier and more of it during sessions. I also believe that alcoholism is a disease that runs in the family, so if you know someone close that had it, then assume that you're at risk. Lastly, after seven years of traveling for work as a consultant (and, now, as a sales engineer) and seeing loads of people slam down beers, wines and all sorts of other things at 9am, I firmly believe that alcoholism is much more prominent (and, to a degree, socio-normalized) than people talk about.
Fascinating Reddit thread, thanks for linking. I’m happy to say I’m not even on the same planet as any of those cases.
No problem!
Maybe try not drinking for a week and seeing what happens? It's hard to say. I think a lot of people hover in this inbetween of frequent casual drinking that for some people becomes pathological and others it's truly optional. IMO you'll know best if you attempt to choose to stop.
Fixing cocktails multiple times a week is a red flag.
Not wanting to be an alarmist, but if you fear about your consumption being problematic, it probably is.
Talk to AA instead of strangers online
Choose one month in the calendar to abstain from all alcohol, every year. If you can do it, I think you are not an alcoholic. If you can't do it, you are.
One month is long enough time so that if you are addicted, it will feel like forever. One month a year still leave you more than 90% days to enjoy a nice drink.
> I have a theory, based on many years of research and practice with Anki, that true healing from any kind of psychic illness only starts to set in place when you start to genuinely forget what it was ever like to be ill at all.
I found this line thoughtprovoking.
From 5-20 I was severely depressed. Now it's been 10 years, and I'm not depressed anymore. In fact, those years feel like a factual moment in my life, not something whose emotional state I can really recall and bring in my present life -- unlike, for example, the grief of losing any pet in my life. That still comes back with raw power.
I love to drink alcohol. I enjoy the taste of whiskey with ice or a cold beer during summer. Unfortunately for me, I also suffer on occasional migraines and alcohol started triggering them even that it did not do so. Thus I have been forced to become abstinent or suffer head splitting pain. I was not drinking for over a year.
I quit five years ago. I lost track of the day count. I wish I’d quit in college or never started. I’m pretty sure every catastrophic hangover caused permanent reductions in my recall ability. I’d probably be a lot smarter if I hadn’t done myself all that damage.
My story is similar to yours, and I feel what you're saying. I would just be a different person today if I had avoided it altogether. Internally I have resolved to just keep looking forward, and only very occasionally, backwards.
I often think about the neurological damage I did, too. It would sure be nice to have those neurons back. Live and learn, though.
Is this how it works though? Do become permanently less smart? I find that hard to believe.
I suspect so. Evidence from multiple scientific and medical sources indicates a clear association between chronic alcoholism and a decline in IQ. Obviously correlation is not causation, and it's hard to argue we should do an RCT for drinking with any medical ethics board. But in the case of a small molecule neurotoxin like alcohol that so easily weaves its way into and through brain tissue, and with relatively easy-to-understand molecular interactions, it seems likely to be causal.
Alcohol and its metabolites directly harm and kill nerve cells, contributing to a reduction in brain volume. Here it's particularly important to remember that neurons, if they grow back at all, don't do so anywhere near the rate of, say, your skin cells. But it's also true that alcohol use can damage blood vessels, including in the brain. It's not hard to suspect that causes less efficient neural activity over time even if no actual neurons are killed.
welcome to the 4 digit club! I'm on day 1,360 and still today gaining new insights into my drinking habits and learning more about myself without it.
I am extremely concerned about the page behind the hyperlink "suspect I was the kind of alcoholic who gave alcohol a bad name". The logic on that page leads to giving death sentences for minor crimes, as a deterrent so there will be no crimes. And the author calls himself a libertarian...
You have confused someone being able to convincingly walk down a certain line of logic for that person actually believing that line of logic. The author states one of many reasons right afterwards why he thinks that is a really bad idea:
>Why, though, shouldn’t we just double-down on orthodox prohibitionist remedies? Because you wind up punishing a vastly larger number of innocent people, that’s why. [...] When you ban intoxicants, you conceivably reduce abuse, but you definitely end up punishing an enormous number of innocent hobbyists - as well as the professionals who supply them.
I linked that page because, when I was an alcoholic, I was also an asshole to the people around me. I mooched off my parents, deeply worried my brothers, and refused to pull my own weight even a little bit in the household economy.
But there are plenty of people who drink alcohol who are not assholes because of it. They should not be thrown under the bus because I personally become an asshole when exposed to the substance.
The author recommends zero penalties for production or use of mind-altering substances, and infinitely harsher penalties for addicts. Because people are perfectly rational beings, especially when using mind-altering substances, they'll look ahead at the penalties and decide not to be addicts. That's the author's argument, and it's obviously completely wrong.
The war on drugs has been a failure, but giving addicts the death penalty (as opposed to helping them stop being addicts) isn't very good either.
>And the author calls himself a libertarian...
If libertarianism was all of the world's beaches, a thimbleful of sand would be those who actually care about liberty.
[dead]
I’ve noticed that people who resort to absolutism to repair their addictions (zero carbs, zero fat, zero alcohol, no smoking cold turkey, never gambling, no sex, no fap, no porn, no credit cards, etc.) tend to think everyone would benefit from their one easy trick.
That this approach doesn’t scale seems to be lost on them.
I've noticed people who leave comments like this tend not to actually read the links they wish to pass judgment on. If you did you'd know nowhere in my post do I claim quitting was easy.
The linked post implies that most drinkers should continue drinking, and maybe even drink more precisely because they aren't the kinds of drinkers that give alcohol a bad name. If you feel like being edgy, try taking that as your soapbox instead. Much more interesting than saying "the optimal amount of X'ing is nonzero" given a large enough group of people X'ing.
I understand having a knee-jerk personal reaction to this comment, but it wasn’t about you or your blog post. Both the parent comment and I are discussing the linked post, which has very little to do with your situation in any case.
Sorry for the confusion.
But... you were wrong about the linked post, too. If you had actually read that one, you'd have realized it claims basically the exact opposite of what both you and the parent comment said.
Sorry, TB. I can't give you a magic pass on being wrong just because you are also an asshole. That wouldn't be fair to all the correct assholes out there who suffer for their art.
The discussion was quite civil until you took all of it personally.
I apologize for taking you incorrectly, then. Indignation took hold of me, and I got caught up in my own interpretation of the facts. I'm sorry.