Alcohol ruins lives

[SneakyCosmos]

I wrecked my favorite motorcycle in 93 drunk and on xans. I actually cried more for the bike than I did for my sorry ass getting patched up in a hospital.

Oh gawd im sorry

 

[Lil'LinaptkSix]

Alcohol was a major player in my doing time from 85-92.

 

[Keif' Richards]

Yea, I think it's found it's place in society mostly because it's so easy to make. What blows my mind, is that, to this day, there are people being fired from the White House staff for having ever smoked cannabis, while there are many people with serious drinking probelms at the heighest of high levels of office.

 

[plumbus-nine]

Yeah, alcohol has its position in society probably only due to history and easy availability. No chance that it would be allowed today (approved - nowadays all things for human consumption need fulfill security standards and alcohol would never pass them) which is why we don't see alternatives to it. There should really be a regulated market for softer drugs at least. Like pagoclone which was suggested as a safer alternative to alcohol and so far I'd say this is correct. Or kava, fuck in the EU it is banned because some pharm corp messed up.

I, too, lost my driving license due to alcohol and couldn't get it back because of other drug use but responsible was alcohol without question. I don't touch this stuff anymore. Luckily nobody was insured but it sucks not to be able to drive. Here in Mexico one can just buy the license, no testing done - as soon as I have my residental visa, I'll get one. Finally, driving again!

 

[Keif' Richards]

I honestly think Alcohol is the "elephant in the room". It's the single biggest logical argument against drug prohibition to which all normal people are a party to knowing. Of course, simply taking away the freedom to use drugs is the biggest elephant, but if we're talking about drugs all equally here, Alcohol is a problem. I can only reiterate, when you read on the news that White House staffers in 2021 are being fired for having ever smoked cannabis, while the President himself can and many times has, had a serious problem with Alcohol. If having ever smoked a joint could be so serious a strike, you're telling me being seriously hungover at a Nuclear Summit or drunkenly groping Xi Xinping's wife can't have infinitely more devastating consequences.

Everyone knows these things. Few people are unfamiliar with the devastating effects of Alcohol. I believe justification and rationalization play a large role in all of this. Alcohol is what healthy, young, rambunctious men drink. You don't get hungover if you're truly healthy, right? There are people I know who have drank and smoked for decades and they are fine!!! You see the beer commercials. You're constantly flooded with the imagery of Alcohol as not devastating, more "mischievous", it's a ton of fun, but sure, it can cause problems. These "problems" are not usually shown to include wet brain, destroyed families, children without shoes, literal insanity, liver failure, shitting into a bag, cancer.... I'm sorry, but others like me who have seen Alcohol do its thing are jaded. The people who get the most totally fucked up by it? They're behind closed doors. They're not at the bar anymore, not in the spotlight. Jails, institutions, death, hell.

I fully believe that a rational concept of drug education for our youth is so important. They need to know the truth about these substances. Keif' Richards as an 8 year old child in Boston was more or less convinced that there were Black people waiting to shove Cocaine up my nose, then prostitute me once I was addicted. This is kind of funny, but it's not far from the truth

The truth is that substances that alter the way our brains work are as human as eating and breathing. These things have evolved with us and us with them. These things interact with our bodies in such specific ways that its undeniable. Treating substances as this great alien, other that should be ignored is like Japan closing its borders before the Meiji restoration. Europe was starting to fuck with their political balance, so they closed the island off. Well, 200 years went by and when white people showed up with guns the Japanese had no recourse. You can't hide from the inevtable forever. It's my belief that by integrating the best of the west with the best of Japan, that Japan has become the great, stable and safe place it is today.

We need to do the same thing about drugs. Teach children that Alcohol is okay. You can drink it every day if you want, but not more than 2 or at most... 3 drinks. That sort of thing. How often is it appropriate to "be drunk"? Who knows, but as a society, we can come up with something better than what we had when I was a kid. Look at how I fucking turned out?

 

[Lil'LinaptkSix]

Teach children that Alcohol is okay. You can drink it every day if you want, but not more than 2 or at most... 3 drinks.

I know this is an example but to tell a kid it's OK to have a few cold ones a day may send a message that there is no harm in drinking. I get that this is rather HR in essence as it also implies a sense of moderation.
I may be way off here but I am willing to bet that most (85%+/-) here and druggies global got their start on alcohol. They told me weed was the gateway drug when I was a wee one... alcohol was first, then the weed.
I think alcohol should be scheduled somewhere in the benzo region. I know this sounds hard but to what do we actually owe the most deaths to substance wise...? Yep... alcohol.
I am not blaming woes on alcohol I chose to fuck with that drug through my younger decades (like many other). But it was "OK" as everyone did it and it was legal and parents liked to see us be little weeble-wobbles so fed us a bit of alcohol once in a while... maybe more... idk.
Meh
A time and place
Not much time at all for alcohol for me. Snake-bit too many times.

 

[Keif' Richards]

I know this is an example but to tell a kid it's OK to have a few cold ones a day may send a message that there is no harm in drinking. I get that this is rather HR in essence as it also implies a sense of moderation.
I may be way off here but I am willing to bet that most (85%+/-) here and druggies global got their start on alcohol. They told me weed was the gateway drug when I was a wee one... alcohol was first, then the weed.
I think alcohol should be scheduled somewhere in the benzo region. I know this sounds hard but to what do we actually owe the most deaths to substance wise...? Yep... alcohol.
I am not blaming woes on alcohol I chose to fuck with that drug through my younger decades (like many other). But it was "OK" as everyone did it and it was legal and parents liked to see us be little weeble-wobbles so fed us a bit of alcohol once in a while... maybe more... idk.
Meh
A time and place
Not much time at all for alcohol for me. Snake-bit too many times.

If I had a nickel for everytime we posted-reposted-posted each others' conversations. Sweet suffering christ, I could buy a shiny new bike with all that zinc.

I will try so hard not to pretend that I know everything here. I have always heard that there is a proven benefit in introducing children to mild Alcoholic beverages as youths, say with a meal. My very first intoxicating beverage was 3 shots of vodka from a water glass chased with orange juice. I truly belive that experiencing such a potent shock to my system crystallized in me a desire for a fast, hard hit for years to come. Never in my life has "one drink" meant anything to me. Even two drink is a waste of time. I'll go to lunch with you and your friends if I can get away with four mimosas in an hour, but that's it.

I was taught, like many, that Marijuana could or did "kill brain cells" or whatever the fuck. It "was harmful" and we come to find out, years and years later, that Marijuana is basically harmless even if you inject it into someone's picc line by the garbage bag full. Simply having your faith in the institutions rattled by such an epiphany can lead the less-educated of us to say, "well, hey, Methamphetamine can't be THAT bad, can it? I smoked weed for years without issue".

I don't know, just having a conversation really. I've got opinions but Ill be the first to admit that these are the opinions of a wanton drug addict, so they are slightly biased.

 

[Lil'LinaptkSix]

Yep... that is what alcohol has left me with (for now)... a shiny new bike that I do not even ride. Somebody coulda gimme a heads up. I should have "seen" the warning signs in my surroundings (they were certainly there) but young and confused so they weren't processed til decades later.
Oh, well. Now I know and with this knowledge I can shrug off extra tonnage in an effort to get my damn ride... it has been such a long, costly battle.

 

[plumbus-nine]

For me, honestly speaking, psychiatric pills were the "gateway drugs". And, of course, alcohol. Extrapolating from a) they give me strong drugs on prescription which gave me even addiction and withdrawal (first drug ever was lorazepam, 3 months straight with 2-3mg/d for social anxiety, then switched to other ward with other quack which decided I'd be on the way to addiction (true) so he stopped cold turkey (wrong) and I got zero preparation or help for the panic hell which followed. And b) Alcohol is fun and freely available, this together with people in the ward reporting from their beautiful experiences with shrooms, MDMA and weed, I decided that the prohibition people can't have the absolute right on truth and decided to make my own experiments with whatever drug crossed my way. First one was DXM, as an OTC drug. Thankfully, or maybe sadly, it wasn't DPH - that one might have repelled me. But DXM was heavy, dirty, and great fun, and relief - it provided me with the first real antidepressant effect when the drugs the psych docs gave me didn't really work. Turned out I have therapy resistant stuff like many others out there and dissociaties happen to lift that therapy resistant stuff.

So far I've done the whole range of drugs, from opiates over psychedelics to GHB and stims, and of course the class which happened to really get me were the opioids, yet still it wasn't what I expected, I expected a panic hell comparable to benzo withdrawal mixed with diarrhea and vomiting and a feeling of dying but, as long as one used orally maybe, it's really more of a (bad) flu. No anxiety, not even so much of loneliness, but apathy, weakness, great restlessness and yeah, diarrhea but that's the easiest to treat with loperamide.

Other class which got me were the dissociatives but that was my own fault, I began to consume without any judgement after my first long-term gf dropped me out on street after something which might have been a psychotic episode from a tainted batch of MXE. Never had anything similar before or after but this days were so weird. And then I come out of three or four days of isolation just to realize my life has gone to the bahamas and I've been left there alone (suffering from heavy social anxiety my gf was the only real contract I had in that time, no job either) so I began to use what I had in mind to work: dissociatives. With some common sense much of that stuff which followed wouldn't have happened and certainly is similar shit possible with alcohol but in worse because on alcohol one can actually damage stuff by e.g. driving drunken and the withdrawal can kill you.

I'm for a full legalization of all substances, with a staggered model for access, e.g. soft drugs are free for adults while harder drugs require sort of a "drug license" where one needs to attend an introduction course of dunno not much but maybe 2-3 hours about side effects, risks, safer use and all that and of course the availability of addiction counseling (maybe they could make an addiction insurance, lol, where the money from drug taxes goes into a fund to help with addiction) and protection of minors.

This would also dry out a huge income for organized crime, as well as cease the need for a huge amount of people to do illegal shit because of addiction, self medication needs or plain desperation.

 

[Kaleida]

Alcohol is definitely one of the most problematic drugs in existence but to be fair, most drugs would be more problematic than they are now if they were as popular as alcohol, and the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people who ever ingest alcohol in their life will never reach a truly problematic level with it. At least it's not practically pointless to anyone but addicts like tobacco.

I agree though that alcohol would not be accepted by the world if it were discovered today, but that's mostly because it would be seen as just another drug, and the world is anti-drug. But I doubt drug users would like it as much still either, it'd be the one that's thought of as the worse alternative to other GABAergics instead.

Pagoclone was once proposed as an alternative by Dr. Nutt in GB but of course shelved. Tried it, it's nice and safer than alcohol i.e. you do less bad stuff on it.

Like pagoclone which was suggested as a safer alternative to alcohol and so far I'd say this is correct.

Is it actually nearly identical to alcohol, though? Just curious because I've never known anyone to use it. If it's not, I mean, it might be a fine drug, but almost every GABAergic drug in existence is at least somewhat similar to and safer than alcohol. Personally I like carisoprodol, I'd much rather have it than alcohol most days.

 

[Xorkoth]

I wrecked my favorite motorcycle in 93 drunk and on xans. I actually cried more for the bike than I did for my sorry ass getting patched up in a hospital.

I got a DUI in 2018, was Blacked out and apparently decided to sneak out of my friend’s house I was staying at and drive home. Crashed into a parked car 2 blocks away, totaled my beautiful car, an Acura TL I had had for 11 years. I loved that car so much. When I went to see it the next day and realized how bad it was I started uncontrollably sobbing and couldn’t stop for like 2 hours. I felt like I killed my friend. But at least I didn’t hurt anyone and hit a parked car and not a car with someone in it, or a person. Lost my license for a year and had to deal with lots of shit, and drive with an ignition interlock device for another year. Huge disruption to my life. I’m past it now, and honestly during the year I lost my license I still drank heavily. But since then I quit alcohol for most of a year, and then when I started again it was different, I’ll drink a few drinks at most and not want any more, whereas before once I started I would keep drinking til it was gone or I passed out. I also rarely drink now, just from time to time.

it really is a “hard drug”, one of the hardest. More toxic than almost every other drug and makes you lose more control than almost anything

 

[xaddictx]

Ive watched my brother go from being an all state hockey player with straight A`s to a drug addict, a liar, a thief, and just so cold. It all started with his first sip and i hate it. Remind me again why pot isnt legal in all states smh

That and also the braniacs at the fda want to also ban Kratom, which also helps many people including me. Yet alcohol is so much more dangerous but widely socially accepted. I just dont get it.

 

[TheFrogEffect]

Ive watched my brother go from being an all state hockey player with straight A`s to a drug addict, a liar, a thief, and just so cold. It all started with his first sip and i hate it. Remind me again why pot isnt legal in all states smh

Yep, alcohol can and will do that. I can't have a sip of alcohol without hitting the streets to score drugs, so I quit drinking. I still have a drug problem but it's a hell of a lot more manageable now without alcohol in the mix.

Both of my parents were wicked bad alcoholics when I was growing up. My dad still is, my mom quit drinking when she had a series of strokes a few years back. They were always so fucking verbally abusive when they'd drink. It took me most of my adult life to get over the trauma caused by their alcoholic raging. I'm somewhere in my 30's now and just barely starting to feel like maybe I'm not as worthless as they made me think I was with all their alcoholic rambling and abuse.

My dad isn't such an asshole when he drinks now ever since he divorced my mom, but he still drinks like it's going out of style. If alcohol doesn't kill him in the end, I'll be extremely surprised.

 

[dragonix]

Thanks for the reminder sorry about your bro hope they find healing.

I found myself recently developing a beer fancy like adoring the artisan craft types but it became drinking the crappy bargain bin stuff too who am I kidding I will drink anything often cannot afford the expensive craft brews. Used to shoplift vanilla extract like I was throwing a party for Martha Stewart haha...

I will be honest I enjoy the heck out of the effects of a strong craft brew or two or a couple glasses of wine or even organic liquor in a mixed drink or not so organic hah but I have to be more honest and admit I can't stop at a couple.

 

[dragonix]

Alcohol misuse costs the USA $200 billion a year

The withdrawals can also kill you

Fuck alcohol.

Well alcohol was once used by doctors as medicine. I cannot sit here and deny it can be used medicinally. Also the way they used to brew it often was out of medicinal herbs and spices. It was way healthier. Not sure Jägermeister counts...

NSFW:

They can't blame the consumer dude they are super corrupted m0r0ns. The ones trying to run the show and make the rules

Well if that's what I am then what are you?! You are a bigger one dragon! What a loser I am Uncle $am!

 

[Bigsmoke420]

Drunk Drivers Kill So Many People In The US on A Yearly Basis