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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32999 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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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.

I think people are far more chill and get along with each other who do.

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.

It’s almost like you get incredibly bored without alcohol to distract you and need to find major goals to carry yourself.

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?

It’s almost like you get incredibly bored without alcohol to distract you and need to find major goals to carry yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What initial discomfort?

My first impression in my late teens after discovering there were other drinks than just beer and wine (which I still don't like) was "Wait, this actually tastes pretty good?" followed some half an hour later with "Whoah, this is fuuuuuuun!" (being mildy and sometimes not so mildy intoxicated in good social company). That qualifier is also the reason I've never been in the slightest danger of getting addicted to it.

Taste of alcohol takes some getting used to, and some people are just super low tolerance initially.

It’s almost like you get incredibly bored without alcohol to distract you and need to find major goals to carry yourself.

This is certainly a creative way to spin what would seem to be an unalloyed positive into something that sounds vaguely negative.

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.

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.

A drinker will drink with anyone even their worst enemy and get along.

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.

I think you may have experience with an entirely different type of drinker than others here are talking about. It may be the rest of us who are unusual, I only really drink with other people who have their shit together so I've never experienced this, if anything the people I drink with fight over the check as a status thing. And none of them are going around asking random people to go to the bar with them as they all have friends that would like to go to the bar with them already.

I think you may have experience with an entirely different type of drinker than others here are talking about.

See above what I said about the Irish problem with drink 🤣 For the record, these events happened in bus station tea rooms (when they still had the tea room in the bus station). So yeah, guys who were plainly what you could call alcoholics but not yet at the level of the guys lying on the street with the bottle in the brown paper bag.

So this is why I start twitching when reading things like the comment above about "I need a drink with my meal, when I'm watching TV, when I get home from work, when I'm hanging out with friends, when I'm out socialising" or "things are more fun than when I'm sober" because to me, that's not "social drinking", that's "eventually you'll be leeching off others for drink because you've drunk all your money".

Different environments, different types of people. If your experience of drinking is "a few beers when I'm hanging out with the guys", I'm happy for you. But there are reasons people do support prohibition campaigns about a wide range of activities, because for every person who is "why are these killjoys trying to do away with harmless fun social activities?", there is another person whose experience is "that activity is not harmless, fun or social".

Agreed. Absolutely willing to accept that I'm the outlier, but I have never had someone invite me out drinking with them with the expectation that I would be paying for their drinks (if anything the opposite, where the person inviting others out pays for the first round for everyone).

The only situations I have heard of that align at all with that are sketchy situations meeting women in East Asia where at the end of the night guys with baseball bats come out along with the bill to make sure you pay the inflated drink prices. And even then purely in a "friend of a friend heard this happened to another guy" sense.

if anything the people I drink with fight over the check as a status thing.

We all tabulate it and figure it out Venmo, even if we're pretty drunk. Bunch of nerds, I tell ya.

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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