The Case Against Drinking

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Society & Culture
Alcohol
Abstinence from Alcohol
Moderate Drinking

The more I moved into sober life—the more that became a fact rather than anything to think about—the more I found myself questioning the alcohol-based structure of Western society. - Persuasion

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Discussion

Profile picture for user Bert Perry
Bert Perry
Tue, 02/04/25 12:17 pm

OK, hangovers occur when men have five to seven drinks in a short period of time, or women have three to five. So when the author claims he was a moderate drinker, that's nonsense. The same thing goes as he realizes that alcohol was taking a large portion of his waking hours. Now you theoretically can do that without binge drinking by the definition--four or more drinks in a two hour period--but to draw a picture, get a cup of coffee or a Coke and try to sip it over an hour or so. After about 30 minutes, you are going to notice that it's lukewarm and flat, and you might be likely to throw it out in the sink, right?

Same basic thing with an alcoholic drink, so unless Mr. Kahn notes how much time he was spending on alcohol, he's almost certainly telling us that he was having four to five drinks per day at least. It reminds me of a Russian author's comment that "the drunk does not eat", as 4-5 drinks would contain four hundred to a thousand calories. Even apart from intoxication, it's not a terribly good idea to get that much calories without vitamins and minerals (this is part of why street drunks look so bad, FWIW). (and the same thing applies, yes, to the Super Big Gulp)

Regarding the notion that our society is built around the copious consumption of alcohol, well, that's false too. There are certain parts of our society that do overconsumption of various foods and drinks, as anyone who's ever been to an all you care to eat buffet knows, and there are respectable places.

Don't get me wrong; I'm glad that Mr. Kahn has the monkey off his back, but he was, sadly, a fairly heavy drinker, possibly in a community that prioritized the same. Reality is, though, that that doesn't broadly apply to the rest of society.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

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dgszweda
Tue, 02/04/25 3:35 pm

The author of this article doesn't read the stats correctly. 10% of the population is not alcoholics. 10% of the population are heavy drinkers. Out of that population 10% of those are alcoholics. That is what the Harvard study that he quotes states.

"The knowledge that only 10% of heavy drinkers are alcoholic may be reassuring, but that doesn’t mean the other 90% aren’t have problems with drinking."