https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002585

Quote :

"the risk of heart attack and related cardiovascular disease was 14% lower for men drinking 0.8 drinks/day, and 18% lower for women drinking 0.9 drinks/day compared with none."

Quote :

"zero consumption may not necessarily be best, or any better than several drinks per week"

Quote :

"More than 100 prospective studies show an inverse association between light to moderate drinking and risk of heart attack, ischemic (clot-caused) stroke, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death, and death from all cardiovascular causes. [20] The effect is fairly consistent, corresponding to a 25-40% reduction in risk. However, increasing alcohol intake to more than 4 drinks a day can increase the risk of hypertension, abnormal heart rhythms, stroke, heart attack, and death. [5, 21-23]"

a little drinking > no drinking >>>>>>>>>> a lot of drinking

[Edited on July 23, 2019 at 6:49 PM. Reason : .]

7/23/2019 6:47:58 PM

I kinda think I drink too much, been trying to cut way back relatively unsuccessfully.

It’s 90% beer. I mean, I love beer...deeply,....although the reasons I drink so much of it are probably more complicated. I love my beer buzz, I love that full stomach feeling, I love the taste, I love the bubbles, I love the variety. I don’t consider myself a beer nerd, even though probably 1/2 the beer I drink is NC stuff/craft (I’ve never gone out of my way to pick up some seasonal at a bottle shop/brewery, etc). I do tend to drink heavier cheap beers (PBR, Yeungling, bud heavy) and IPAs (often high ABV) the other times.

I’m good some weeks, maybe drinking 6 beers throughout a weekend and not drinking during the week. More likely I’ll drink 6-8 beers during the week and then easily another 8-12 on the weekend.

Occasionally drinking affects my plans for the next day, but lighter beers rarely affect me. Heavier beers I do have to cut myself off that night for the last few or I’ll be miserable the next day. This past weekend I drank 7 dayblazers (light beer) all afternoon and was still on the water Sunday morning by 7AM.

I definitely found flavored seltzer water during the week has helped me cut back. I also notice my hangovers and beer shits are starting to get worse and more frequent as I age, which has actually helped too (it’s why I only rarely even drink liquor any more.)

7/23/2019 7:24:12 PM

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/drinks-to-consume-in-moderation/alcohol-full-story/

Quote :

"If you are thin, physically active, don’t smoke, eat a healthy diet, and have no family history of heart disease, drinking alcohol won’t add much to decreasing your risk of cardiovascular disease. If you don’t drink, there’s no need to start. You can get similar benefits with exercise (beginning to exercise if you don’t already or boosting the intensity and duration of your activity) or healthier eating. If you are a man with no history of alcoholism who is at moderate to high risk for heart disease, a daily alcoholic drink could reduce that risk. Moderate drinking might be especially beneficial if you have low HDL that just won’t budge upward with diet and exercise. If you are a woman with no history of alcoholism who is at moderate to high risk for heart disease, the possible benefits of a daily drink must be balanced against the small increase in risk of breast cancer. "

I don’t think it’s fair to say that moderate drinking is always a more healthy option than not drinking at all. It can be in specific cases, but not in all cases.

I didn’t realize that moderate drinking (seemingly regardless of type of alcohol) could reduce risk for heart disease. So that is interesting for sure.

[Edited on July 23, 2019 at 7:43 PM. Reason : A]

7/23/2019 7:41:09 PM

I meant to mention it might not be a majority consensus, but there are definitely plenty of studies that suggest a glass of wine or a beer isn't any worse for you than not drinking at all, and can have some potential benefits.

7/23/2019 7:42:48 PM

I had heard that about a glass of red wine...but had never realized that it applies to, apparently, any type of alcohol.

7/23/2019 8:00:19 PM

i had a drink earlier after an hour of cleaning up around the house, a drink while making dinner, a drink during dinner, and a drink after dinner. shrug.gif

[Edited on July 23, 2019 at 8:21 PM. Reason : i don't feel what the big deal is, but i guess it might be. oh well maybe i'll keep y'all updated?]

7/23/2019 8:17:46 PM

is it drink 5 or drink 6 when you usually start sending nudes?

7/23/2019 8:32:41 PM

I think the crux of it is cost. I don't have all those dollars just in the fun budget. Started my career late; need to catch up on the 401K front.

7/23/2019 9:28:09 PM

it's summer time and I don't have to wake up at 4:30, so my habit is pretty bad right now

7/23/2019 9:33:27 PM

I have one beer or one cocktail maybe four nights a week. Once during the week and sometimes once during the weekend I'll have more, like 3-5. One or two days a week I won't drink anything, either because I'm busy or not feeling it or maybe I was thinking about it but I forgot. When I do drink, I'm past the point of consuming any old crap.

All told, I'm not a poster child for the CDC standards or anything (which is fine - bunch of puritanical draconian nonsense), but I'm comfortable with where I'm at. I'm rarely drunk, which is just as well because I don't enjoy being hammered and I hate hangovers, which by my mid-30s have become a daylong misery. And it's an enormous improvement over my 20s, virtually all of which were spent at or above qntmfred's current levels.

Which brings us to our dear leader and site owner. Taken as a snapshot, 3-5 drinks per night doesn't strike me as the absolute worst thing in the world. It's not great, and it's probably shaving some years off the end of your life, but that's a compromise we make with a lot of behaviors that get less judgy disdain than alcohol does. If your physiology allows you to consume that without present adverse affects, then the volume is not my point of concern. (This all assumes that by "drink" you mean something like a standard mixed drink, and aren't pulling what I did through most of my 20s - saying "I only had three drinks!" but each one had a third of a pint of rum with a splash of coke on top)

The concern is that your drinking is accelerating during a period in your life when most non-problem drinkers would see it stabilizing or declining. I say most, 'cause I don't know your life - maybe your bigger responsibilities were front-loaded in your 20s and now you have space to relax. But you've got three transitions here that, taken together, are a little alarming - moving from occasional to daily drinking, moving from light to heavy consumption, and moving from beer to liquor. Then there's your throwaway line "I rarely pass out," which implies that from time to time you do pass out from alcohol. And finally there's the implication that you're doing all this drinking alone. (Which implication I may be reading in error, I admit)

None of these factors, taken alone, signify to me a problem drinker; but if you are a person who is drinking liquor at a heavy and increasing rate, on a daily basis, by yourself, occasionally to the point of passing out...I mean, taken all together, that doesn't paint a great picture. It still doesn't mean you're an alcoholic - that's a thorny question that comes down to physiological traits you might just not have, and to the question of how easily you can stop drinking, which you haven't said, and would be unreliable if you did say - but suffice it to say, I'm a little concerned on your behalf.

But then, I recognize that I don't exactly speak from a position of high moral authority here. Unfortunately, many of my old posts on this site stand as monuments to my past stupidity.

7/24/2019 8:29:56 AM

Quote :

"I love that full stomach feeling"

gross, why?

7/24/2019 12:18:06 PM

I’m not sure I have a good explanation. I should point out that this is just a belly full of beer, not “Jesus Christ I’m about to explode!!!!” (Although I have been there on occasion after drinking/eating too much, it’s really rare these days).

I think it might be a physiological response in my body. Kinda like a “contact high” when you smell dank weed. You aren’t actually getting high your body just loosens up because it thinks it knows what is coming next. As my body feels my gut swelling my brain is like “Hell yea, let’s get fucked up.”

Or it could just be straight gluttony.

7/24/2019 5:42:20 PM

has anyone googled to see if OP hit us with a copypasta?

7/24/2019 5:51:12 PM

It's not. I'm on the same path as yesterday so far. Had one early in the evening, one while making dinner, just poured another for dinner and won't be surprised if I have more after dinner. iamstillshrug.gif

7/24/2019 7:07:23 PM

Quote :

"Kinda like a “contact high” when you smell dank weed"

All I feel when I smell dank weed is "wow that shit smells fucking terrible"

7/24/2019 7:29:51 PM

i drank 3 beers tonight while helping someone move furniture and then i wrote a new pretend band name in the notebook i keep for writing such things

7/24/2019 9:19:20 PM

Visited my grandmother the other month, everyone was saying how the best thing they ever did was not have a third drink those nights in their thirties

7/24/2019 9:56:09 PM

Had a few glasses of wine last night with dinner

7/25/2019 6:05:29 AM

Nothing so far for the week. Going to be out in Durham tonight though...so I might have a couple.

7/25/2019 8:22:00 AM

I've been trying to cut back a bit, especially since I've been back on anxiety meds since February and the doctor would prefer that I drink zero alcohol (oops). So in that, effort basically if I'm on the fence about having a drink (or having another drink) I usually don't these days.

In general I consider myself a social drinker. Have no problem sitting around the house at night alone and avoiding alcohol (despite having lots of it in the house), but if I'm out with friends (casually) I'll have 2-3; roughly one every 45 min or so. It's summer, so if I find myself at the pool during the day I might throw back 8-10 drinks. Day drinking + night drinking has gotten more and more difficult with age so I rarely do that anymore. Still love going to house parties and playing drinking games. Just fun IMO. With that being said, my weekly consumption could be 2-3 drinks, or 20+.

The older I've gotten, however, I find that hangovers aren't as bad as they used to be. I bounce back pretty quick. Go figure.

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 10:18 AM. Reason : ]

7/25/2019 10:16:41 AM

I've had problems controlling my drinking and just find it easier to have 0 than 1. I've also thought about the health consequences of drinking vs. not drinking. The results of studies don't really matter to me -- Tree's study from June 2018 was directly negated by another study's results that came out in Aug 2018 (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45283401) -- but it's always going to be a back and forth because people really, really want to believe it's not that bad for you.

I fucking used to love that feeling of the first drink. I get it.

Even if you look at Tree's study results, I mean, who is drinking 0.8 drinks/day? Look at this chart:


According to that only 30% of Americans are drinking at a level that is better for the heart than not-drinking. 40% of Americans are worse off for their habit.

ANYWAY, I know that FOR ME no drinking is best. And for OP as cliche as it sounds... thinking you might have a problem is the first step in recognizing you might have a problem. Other people can't validate/invalidate your habits -- it's just you.

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 11:54 AM. Reason : MATHS]

7/25/2019 11:54:09 AM

Oh, one other thing for everyone. If you at any point want to know how your liver is holding up ask your doc to run a liver function panel blood test at your next physical. I had bone-chillingly terrible results after rolling up to my physical 4 days after a huge bender. I was back to normal by my next physical but you never want to hear about Hepatitus and Cirrhosis when you're 33 years old.

7/25/2019 12:04:35 PM

This is a good idea. I think that if you are the type that is out drinking a lot in your early thirties, that these screenings as well as biannual STD tests should be highly encouraged.

7/25/2019 12:28:39 PM

it amazes me that 10% of american adults average 10+ drinks/day.

7/25/2019 12:30:36 PM

don't knock it till you try it.

Again, I generally only get involved with people and their drinking when they start routinely showing up to work drunk or are drunk around their kids.

But, if you are a single person with a lifestyle/job that is tolerant to 10+ a day, then why not? Outside of regularly playing amateur sports as an adult, drinking and going out is a great way to make some buddies. A lot of cooks or hotel receptionists, for example, have this lifestyle.

In a weird way I can almost admire somebody that makes it to their 30s without kids, a very demanding job and/or partner and has the freedom to enjoy life.

7/25/2019 12:42:49 PM

you have a severe drinking problem if you drink 10+ drinks a day and it absolutely should be knocked

there’s no sugarcoating it

7/25/2019 1:27:35 PM

I'd buy qntmfred a beer

7/25/2019 1:34:09 PM

Quote :

" But, if you are a single person with a lifestyle/job that is tolerant to 10+ a day, then why not? Outside of regularly playing amateur sports as an adult, drinking and going out is a great way to make some buddies. A lot of cooks or hotel receptionists, for example, have this lifestyle"

I’m not knocking anybody for drinking or for being social. But 10 drinks/day is a problem. It’s not healthy. If you wanna go out with friends and get plastered, that’s great. I don’t knock that at all. But averaging 10 per day is insane.

7/25/2019 2:08:12 PM

Not as insane as you might think. Let's just say you're a receptionist and that you are also heavily involved with social groups in the city.

Monday, for example, you work 6 to 3 and get off and meet up with a friend after work for two drinks.

You walk home and meet up with your flat mate for a beer in the kitchen.

Do some chores and then get ready for one of your events (like, Dutch speaking table or something) and take a beer with you as you walk to the event. You are already at 4 drinks and it ain't even 7 PM yet.

At the Dutch table, you have another 4 drinks over the course of the 3 hour event, which is fairly normal for events like that.

Event will be over at 11 and maybe some people want to go out to one more place before going home.

You get home at around 130 or so and go to bed. Tuesday you prolly dont have to work or you go in at a later shift. So you are already easily at 10 plus and wouldn't even wake up with a hangover or a stench.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 2:40 PM. Reason : k]

7/25/2019 2:19:39 PM

Yeah rinse wash repeat... without taking the next day off work. Because it's 10/day for 7 days. Can't not work the next day every day. Anyway we don't need fan fiction to figure out it's easy to down 10 drinks in a day. You don't even need to start early in the day to do so. 10 is a bad number on its own; averaging 10/day for 7 days is catastrophic.

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 2:41 PM. Reason : .]

7/25/2019 2:40:13 PM

it's totally doable for somebody that only works 3.5 days a week, lives with flat mates and doesn't have kids.

Even if said person did have to go to work the next day, she would be in bed by 12 having easily consumed 10 or so.

People ITT are confusing "10 a day" with somebody that sits on the sofa throwing back jack from morning pancakes to passing out. However, for somebody that works part time and lives in the city with a busy social life, 10 drinks goes by pretty fast over the course of 8 hours or so.

It's also one of the big lifestyle differences of living IN a major city as opposed to having a house in the burbs. Because in the city you are typically going to be walking or riding your bike everywhere, which is gonna help you burn the calories and keep you moving. Also, depending on your friends or where you live, you will probably take a drink in route to where you are going.

City life FTW

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 2:49 PM. Reason : j]

7/25/2019 2:45:53 PM

Based on banjos post history, I would recommend not wasting time arguing this point any further.

7/25/2019 2:48:27 PM

I'd like to point out that having 5 or 6 light beers in a night is probably better than having 5 or 6 shots in a night

7/25/2019 2:53:04 PM

^^ Not trying to be that guy arguing for drinking, and TBH I don't know much of the OPs history or what kind of life that he currently has.

However, I have basically been saying the following:

1. Drinking to the point where u are regularly showing up to work drunk or are intoxicated around your kids is a no go. You might want to seek help regarding this.

2. Many lifestyles are conducive to functioning perfectly at work while also having a 10+ day drinking habit. The fact is that it goes by quicker than one might think. Yes, it may not be healthy on the long term scale, but I certainly wouldn't encourage a person to stop just because they do the math and they are at around 10 or so. These things need to be put in perspective.

3. I do not think that it is fair to judge somebody on their habits jut because they did not chose to live your life. It depends on how a person behaves when they are at 10 a day, or if they are depressed and are consistently getting into trouble or showing up late to meetings, or god forbid, driving while intoxicated. MANY MANY PPL in this world chose a life that grants them the freedom to socialize and spend times with friends out and in the city.


[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 3:08 PM. Reason : k]

7/25/2019 2:54:47 PM

Quote :

" You get home at around 130 or so and go to bed. Tuesday you prolly dont have to work or you go in at a later shift. So you are already easily at 10 plus and wouldn't even wake up with a hangover or a stench. "

I mean...yeah it can be done. I’m just saying doing that 7 days/week seems excessive, difficult, and taxing (both health-wise, and in terms of the effort and money). I mean...going out socially 7 days/week regardless of alcohol consumption is quite a bit.

Quote :

"However, for somebody that works part time and lives in the city with a busy social life, 10 drinks goes by pretty fast over the course of 8 hours or so."

So live in a city (potentially expensive), work part time and be single (no double income, low salary), and go out every night of the week? Easy enough!

Im not saying if somebody goes out a few nights a week + weekend and drinks 10+ drinks that’s impossible or automatically a problem. But maintaining that for long enough to average 10+ every single day seems really difficult from multiple standpoints - health, money, time, etc.

7/25/2019 4:03:50 PM

Quote :

"I mean...yeah it can be done. I’m just saying doing that 7 days/week seems excessive, difficult, and taxing (both health-wise, and in terms of the effort and money). I mean...going out socially 7 days/week regardless of alcohol consumption is quite a bit."

If you are single and without kids, then you can easily move into the city and share a flat with a person or people and save a lot of cash. There are many more advantages to going down this path as opposed to moving into to a big apartment or buying a house with a partner.

Plus, going out doesn't have to be that crazy expensive. You can go to a friends house and drink for cheap there, then go to a bar/event and have a couple while keeping your budget safely under 20.

Food and taxis is what gets people into financial trouble.

I could go on forever about the advantages of living alone with flatmates in the city. It opens up a lot of opportunities for socializing and meeting new people.

7/25/2019 4:19:58 PM

Quote :

"I could go on forever about the advantages of living alone with flatmates in the city. "

If you’re living with flat mates, you aren’t living alone.

I’m not saying drinking 10+/Day is impossible. I’m saying it’s not very healthy (duh) and I’m surprised 10% of adult Americans do it. That’s a lot of drinks.

7/25/2019 4:44:26 PM

Dms you're doing what I do in Sports talk but with a much worse poster

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 4:47 PM. Reason : Falling into that tt10 trap]

7/25/2019 4:47:10 PM

Goddammit.

I got sucked in.

7/25/2019 4:47:52 PM

Quote :

"If you’re living with flat mates, you aren’t living alone. "

You have flat mates and pay for a room. What I meant is that you are not sharing the expenses with a spouse or partner and are in no way influenced by them when it comes to your own personal calendar.

7/25/2019 4:51:39 PM

Listen, I have been close to about 10 drink/night several times as I mentioned before. It wasn't even hard and didn't require a focus on how to fit in drinking and carry on my other activities. While I'm not advocating for drinking that much I can say that I have hit well over 10 drinks many times, and easily could have done that for 7 days straight and maintained my job and family relationships.

Again, not advocating for it, but it's a pretty easy number to hit. For me it'd look like this:

Go to work around 8, go lift during lunch, back at work until 5. Pick up food on the way and get home at 5:30 for a run. At 6 I'd eat my food with a beer and get ready to go out with my roommate. Going out from 7 to 9/9:30, we'd get have about 4 drinks. I'd come back and we'd knock back one or two while playing Playstation. That is 6 to 7, while holding down a job and exercising.

Weekends would be about the same, with some drinks bookended. 2 at brunch and out until 2AM instead of 9:30. Even if you assume my pace went down to 1/hour after 9:30 (can guarantee that it didn't), then you're an extra 5 at night. So 15 on the weekends. That's 9.28 drinks/day, when I'm actively being conservative about my estimates. I wouldn't be surprised if the bulk of the top 10 percent are in their 20s and living a similar lifestyle.

7/25/2019 4:55:19 PM

Quote :

"Going out from 7 to 9/9:30, we'd get have about 4 drinks. I'd come back and we'd knock back one or two while playing Playstation. That is 6 to 7, while holding down a job and exercising. "

I guess I’m just surprised people are doing a minimum of this every weeknight. Especially the going out for a few hours...every week night + weekends. I’m not saying it makes you an alcoholic or a bad person or incapable of holding down a job/relationship. I’m just not accustomed to having such a full social calendar. But as Banjo told me, that’s because I’m not living in a city I guess.

At my peak in my early 20s I was probably going out more like 3 times/week at the most. And drinking casually around my apartment with roommates a total of maybe 5 nights weeks (including when we’d go out later in the evening).

7/25/2019 5:07:33 PM

Quote :

"I’m not saying it makes you an alcoholic or a bad person or incapable of holding down a job/relationship."

So I never said anything about holding down a relationship. That is gonna be the biggest roadblock here.

And it's not that living in the city is the key, it is just that being single and living in a city makes this life much easier. It is certainly not as catastrophic as some on here are stating.

However, 10+ a day for a dude with a wife and kids and a bonafide career sounds damn near impossible. That marriage prolly sucks balls and has more to do with a financial agreement rather than intimacy.

7/25/2019 5:18:06 PM

BanjoMan is, like, a colossus of stupidity. Just a titanic fuckwit. Dismiss his rambunctiousness. Pay the jackass no mind.

7/25/2019 6:31:21 PM

you're the one claiming to be perfect frosh, not me.

7/25/2019 6:44:51 PM

i like when rwoody acts like he isn't just as argumentative as anyone on this site

7/25/2019 7:02:37 PM

I'm extremely argumentative! But you also either like to poke me or just very frequently disagree with me and neither of us is good at backing down, or at least I'm not not! It's all cool, no criticism intended.

BM on the other hand, just spews crap, which is why I said a much worse user!

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 7:28 PM. Reason : Ok, maybe SOME criticism intended... ]

7/25/2019 7:27:01 PM

It's funny when someone thinks to themselves "this person sees things differently than I do. they must be trolling!!1" like you tend to do

7/25/2019 7:36:07 PM

^^wtf?

^

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 7:38 PM. Reason : a]

7/25/2019 7:37:49 PM

Quote :

"It is certainly not as catastrophic as some on here are stating."

I’m not sure anybody really used the word catastrophic. There are some long term health concerns obviously but that’s not really the argument anybody’s making. I don’t think you’ve gotten much push back on the idea that it is possible. My argument the entire time is just that it seems...difficult to maintain that lifestyle for an any extended period of time. And I don’t even mean it in regards to hangovers and it impacting your work. Just in terms of maintaining a full social calendar...maybe I’m just not a social butterfly type that enjoys going out every single night. That’s some no days off shit and that is surprising to me.

[Edited on July 25, 2019 at 7:41 PM. Reason : A]

7/25/2019 7:40:15 PM