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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
All else aside, I think the trend of people that didn't have any apparent drinking problem proudly announcing that they've quit drinking and feel so much better is really weird. I'm really not clear what they're optimizing for or what they're experiencing that is ostensibly so much better in their post-alcohol phase. I guess Andreeson spells it out a bit:
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 drink more than I probably should, but do no meaningful experience any problems with energy for exercise or controlling my diet. Are the people that say that they feel much better sans drinking just even heavier drinkers than me or are they experiencing the world very differently?
As irritating as people that make drinking their identity are, people that make not drinking into an identity are even more irritating.
How much are you drinking?
I certainly notice some effects when I stop drinking. I have a sleep and heart rate monitor and it is easily apparent how much alcohol affects my sleep.
Also while some people (like my doctor) consider me a heavy drinker, in some of my social circles I'm a light drinker.
A light night of drinking for me is 4-6 drinks, usually spaced out over 2-3 hours. A standard drinking night is more like 10 drinks, and a heavy drinking day is about 15-20 drinks over the course of an entire day.
I don't notice the effects of just two drinks, enough so that I'd rather just not drink than have only two.
The main benefit of me going sober for a few weeks is that it seems to lower my tolerance back to more normal ranges.
Wow, unless you have a weird definition of "drink", then those are truly massive amounts of alcohol. Like Huberman would say, this is called "alcohol use disorder".
I think a large contingent of people at the parties I go to drink that much at parties but don’t drink much at all other times. It’s definitely binge drinking but I don’t think it’s that unusual. Alcohol use disorder sure, but it’s common at parties in my experience
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