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This isn’t culture war for today. It was between roughly 1918-1930’s. It’s short and about why he quit drinking alcohol. In my opinion he hit all the key points on the subject, his logic is correct, and wrote it in a very concise way.
He does seem to miss drinking alcohol. I have to agree as a mild alcoholic he’s correct. I think he’s also correct that cannabis isn’t the great substitute society now claims it is. Shrooms I am far less sure on.
It’s not culture war today but I’ve grown a lot of respect for the prohibitionists as being basically correct. I also wanted to post this as I felt like it’s a good example of fantastic writing.
https://pmarca.substack.com/p/on-pausing-alcohol?r=h8x
Edit: should we either more explicitly allow less culture war subjects or have another thread. Sitting on an Afghanistan article I found that was good journalism but it’s not heavily culture war
He made a followup post: https://pmarca.substack.com/p/followup-on-pausing-alcohol
As an alcoholic (not physically addicted, but sure am mentally), I've been experimenting with not drinking. I feel just like Marc does. I sleep and exercise and just generally live MUCH better when not drinking. But fucking hell, I'm less happy. I love the depressed/self-destructive/edge-off/dopey feeling of being drunk.
I feel like people who really get his comments have had some alcoholism in there life. I personally can’t buy a bottle of alcohol without finishing the whole thing in 24 hours. I end up talking myself into having a glass of whiskey to relax at the end of the night and it’s all gone the next day.
Does seem like he’s on to something about finding new drugs. Humans do need a social lubricant. I think the evolutionary biologist would say it arised from a natural fear of strangers or something like that. In the modern world where strangers are not dangerous a relaxant is needed. Something ideally without long term health problems from consumption and preferebly with low or no risks of addiction.
I sort of want to write a reply here as a woke prohibitionists using their rhetorical tricks. Scolding people who drink fine and not wanting it banned because a lot of other Americans suffer from the abundant availability of alcohol.
He seems to be writing this from the perspective of someone who knows he has some troubling drinking issues. And isn’t quite capable of taking away the bigger negative side effects on binge drinking. Seeing other comments some people just get this because they do it themselves. And some write in a style where they don’t get it and likely don’t have the same issues.
This is the same for me, but I'm a beer drinker. Part of why I only drink beer is that it's much, much harder (neigh impossible) to get physically addicted.
The way I avoid drinking is to just not buy any beer. If I buy a six pack, it's gone in 24 hours, and then I wish I had bought more. When I don't have beer I end up looking in the fridge anyway to see if maybe I missed a can somewhere the last time I looked. It's not great.
Something that really helped me was getting a garmin watch. It really lays bare how much of a difference even one drink makes. It doesn't have a "tell me whether I had a drink or not" mode, but it certainly could get one added based on how clearly it knows my sleep and recovery are worse on days I drink. My HRV and restlessness in sleep are drastically worse.
Of course I say this all while I'm hung over and feel too shitty to exercise because I drank too much yesterday...
The stress scores are amazing, one of the clearest indicators I've gotten in real time of the reality that a few drinks is doing something pretty gnarly to my cardiovascular system.
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Are you me? I was about to write this same post. I also stopped buying beer. It's been less than a month, and I've done a few bouts of sobriety before (30-60 days worth, twice in the past three years), but after enough mornings after too much beer, I just resigned myself to not buying it. I'll drink if I go out, but if there are cans in the house, I'm going to find them and drink them.
I also stopped buying cannabis at the same time, mostly because getting high makes me want to get drunk, and getting drunk makes me want to get high.
And getting drunk makes me want to get drunk, and getting high makes me want to get high.
And doing either makes me want to consume really alarming quantities of industrial sugar/fat slop.
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That's interesting. The more stoned I get the more I can totally forego alcohol. The downside is of course overeating.
Alcohol and amphetamines go together for me. But weed neutralizes that whole package.
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I think it’s just a heavily common experience. 10-20% of the population probably falls into this grouping. And some probably limit the issue with kids keeping them busy.
It’s also very curious that 3 of our last 4 POTUS are sober. Bush was an alcoholic and fully gave up. Biden and Trump don’t drink. It’s almost like you get incredibly bored without alcohol to distract you and need to find major goals to carry yourself.
And fwiw I think a non-drinking potus is a bad thing. I think people are far more chill and get along with each other who do. It’s like being an alien who doesn’t follow the normal cultural rituals.
If it's social drinking, a glass of something over a couple of hours, sure. If it's boozehound stuff? No, not as much as the drinker thinks. They tend to get much more trashed, faster, and are boring/annoying/scaring the less drunk people around them. "I had such a great time, I can't remember a thing that happened!" is only fun for the drunk, not the people who had to clean up the broken shit and vomit after them.
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That's a heck of an inference to draw from N=4. Especially since one of the guys in question is named George Bush, Jr. Gotta think that he might have gone into politics regardless. And why arbitrary draw the line at the last 4? Given that the pct of teetotalers in the US has apparently remained steady in the 30-40 pct range for 80 years, why not the last 15?
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As someone whose normal alcohol intake rounds to zero, I have no idea what the rest of you are talking about. Being drunk is awful. My head hurts, I can't think or talk straight, I'm super sweaty, plus a few other random pulls from the Grab-Bag of Unpleasant Symptoms! There's like this teeny thin line where I've had just enough to disinhibit myself, but not so much that my body starts going haywire that's pleasant, but it's just about impossible to maintain for more than about 10 minutes at a time. I enjoy the taste of a few beers, wines, and whiskies, but barely ever drink them because the side-effects of the booze are so unpleasant.
That's not the normal reaction. Are you Asian? Could it be ALDH2 deficiency?
I am not asian. I have not had medical testing done to determine if there's a genetic component. But I do notice that I dislike most mind-altering substances. I've gotten stoned a few times and disliked it each time, and generally disliked the feeling that psychotropic prescription medications (e.g. vyvanse) had on me. Maybe I'm just ornery and/or literally don't know what's good for me. IDK.
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Maybe you are consuming too much at once
For reference, the amount of alcohol intake I find pleasurable in an evening is [two fingers of whisky / a glass of wine / a beer] consumed slowly over a 2- to 4-hour period. Anything more turns unpleasant quickly.
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Yeah but that's the thing with alcohol. Need to consume your way through initial discomfort into a tolerance that allows for responsible, pleasurable drinking.
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This is certainly a creative way to spin what would seem to be an unalloyed positive into something that sounds vaguely negative.
This to me feels like it fits in the same camp as people who say they'd be more likely to vote for someone that they could have a beer with. I get the sentiment, but it just seems to be a pretty terrible way to think about national leaders. I've had drinks with many people and not once during (or after) those encounters have I thought to myself that the person I was drinking with should be given control of a nuclear arsenal, or the ability to alter the fate of nations. I would in fact be much more comfortable handing that responsibility off to some sort of hypothetical stone cold sober ubermensch, whose only joy in life was found by bettering the lives and futures of his people.
A drinker will drink with anyone even their worst enemy and get along. While finding human connections. I don’t think they are capable of some of the worst aspects of todays culture wars.
Drinkers will also smash glass bottles into each others heads over imagined insults, frankly you sound like an addict trying to excuse their drug of choice.
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Yeah - so long as the booze is flowing, and even better if the other person is paying to keep it flowing. Put that drinker with their worst enemy without booze, and what human connections do they find? What human connections do they maintain after they sober up and need to go hunting for the next patsy to buy the booze?
Personal confession: I've had strangers, guys who were plainly dependent on booze, try to ask me to go to the pub with them and I knew it was only because they thought they could get me to pay for their booze in exchange for 'male company'. It was not about "finding human connections", it was "get someone to buy my next fix because I drank all my money today and have nothing left". I'm not the type, even in my younger days, who gets asked by random guy "hey can we go for a drink" because I'm just simply that attractive.
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Bush and Biden are rather well known for getting along with people and finding human connections. As are, honestly, most successful high-level politicians.
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