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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I can buy the sleep portion of things and sleep certainly has downstream effects, but I also think that you have to drink a lot for these to be all that noticeable.

I'm not a heavy drinker when I do drink, up to 3 or so drinks in one session at most, and more typically 2, and I'll say that I definitely notice the sleep benefits when I stop drinking. Just 2 drinks in an evening tends to make my sleep highly restless, while also making me feel dehydrated before and after sleep. The dehydration tends to lead to more drinking of water, which leads to more peeing which also leads to shorter sleep/more awakenings at night.

So I think people are just experiencing the world very differently from you.

This is very much an aside, but your comment reminds me of my experience with melatonin, which I was convinced for a very long time was pure snake oil. I have not once experienced any sort of sleep aiding effects with melatonin, whether that be help falling asleep or help staying asleep or help getting more restful sleep, and I tried it many times at many different periods of my life. So I was convinced that it was just a society-wide placebo. More recently, seeing just how many people report sleep benefits from it, I've come to be convinced it's just that different people experience that chemical differently, and I'm one of those people for whom it does literally nothing.

Yeah. I had assumed melatonin wouldn't do anything for me. But I've been taking it, and it absolutely has an effect on me.

Tangentially - and I mean very tangentially - if you have any experience with those rhino erection pills? I had one recently and I was surprised that it seemed to work. I'm not entirely certain. Think a somewhat delayed effect, if there was one.

One of the tricks with melatonin is to take a low dose. It's a signaling hormone rather than a drug, so it doesn't work properly if the dose is too high, and most commercial brands are too high dose and don't work (at least not for me). 1-3mg works well in my experience.

I've tried a large range of dosages over the years, including taking 1mg pills and chopping them in half to get half dose and taking multiple 3mg pills at once and many in between, and I never noticed any impact that was different from not taking anything. I think it just doesn't work for me.