Alcohol The Benefits of Alcohol?

[Eisbaer]

I have noticed that it's become completely politically incorrect to talk about the benefits of alcohol in the scientific community. Almost every article, movie, video, and book seems demonizes alcohol, and focuses mainly on the negative effects of alcohol. I find this to be very untruthful, and deceptive. Using common sense, there is simply no way that drinking alcohol, once in a while, will make someone a complete brain dead alcoholic, with a ruined liver, who beats their wife. From my experiences, people who use alcohol on average seem to be happier, less anxious, and nicer people to be around; where as people who refuse to drink any alcohol seem to be more anxious, more depressed, and more aggressive. Starting to drink alcohol at an earlier age might also have benefits as opposed to beginning to drink alcohol at a later age. Parents not allowing their children to drink alcohol might also have a negative psychological impact on children.

I personally believe this methyphobia (fear of alcohol) started from the prohibition, from people who had psychologically bad experiences in relation to alcohol, and after becoming accredited in the scientific community sought to demonize and ban what in their opinion seemed bad. People in the scientific community, also seem to be more of the antisocial type and not the type of people who would drink in their childhood (ages 5-25.) Thus, it may have given them a psychological reason for disliking more social people who drank alcohol, and alcohol itself. In addition to this, methyphobia may also have been pushed by certain denominations of Christianity in America, causing followers of those denominations to push prohibition and anti-alcohol agendas.

So, is there any information which logically proves my ideas to be correct in some ways, and that alcohol is more good than bad? Because I simply want to know the truth. It feels like we are living under a 1984 style fabricated hoax having everyone discredit alcohol, when the reality may be the opposite.

As a side note, the intellectual hatred of alcohol seems to be like well propagandized hoax that second hand smoke is far worse than first hand smoke. To anyone with a working brain, it logically does not make sense... There was also the idea that television harms eyesight, and no one is talking about that anymore.

 

[jamesBrown]

I have noticed that it's become completely politically incorrect to talk about the benefits of alcohol in the scientific community. Almost every article, movie, video, and book seems demonizes alcohol, and focuses mainly on the negative effects of alcohol. I find this to be very untruthful, and deceptive. Using common sense, there is simply no way that drinking alcohol once in a while will make someone a complete brain dead alcoholic with a ruined liver, who beats their wife. From my experiences, people who use alcohol on average seem to be happier, less anxious, and nicer people to be around; where as people who refuse to drink any alcohol seem to be more anxious, more depressed, and more aggressive. Starting to drink alcohol at an earlier age might also have benefits as opposed to beginning to drink alcohol at a later age. Parents not allowing their children to drink alcohol might also have a negative psychological impact on children.

I personally believe this Methyphobia (fear of alcohol) started from the prohibition, from people who had psychologically bad experiences in relation to alcohol, and after becoming accredited in the scientific community sought to demonize and ban what in their opinion seemed bad. Intelligent people, in the scientific community, also seem to be more of the antisocial type and not the type of people who would drink in their childhood (ages 5-25.) Thus, it may have given them a psychological reason for disliking more social people who drank alcohol, and alcohol itself. In addition to this, Methyphobia may also have been pushed by certain denominations of Christianity in America, causing followers of those denominations to push prohibition and anti-alcohol agendas.

So, is there any information which logically proves my ideas to be correct in some ways, and that alcohol is more good than bad? Because I simply want to know the truth. It feels like we are living under a fabricated Soviet style hoax, having everyone discredit alcohol, when the reality may be the opposite.

That's a lot to process/respond to. So I am not going to attempt to try and trip all over myself.

But I will say one thing...I disagree with your notion that "everyone discredits alcohol" etc. Just turn on your television....and count how many minutes(or seconds) you have to wait until you see a beer/liquor commercial. And then there are the statistics on alcohol consumption. I could go on, but I am honestly just too tired at the moment.

...alcohol has completely embedded itself into our world and our communities.

 

[d1nach]

Topical alcohol helps kill bacteria and germs and concentrated alcohol is extremely important for cleaning stuff. Also alcohol on my skin helps numb painful itchy skin without the use of painkillers

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Alcohol is widely accepted and, indeed, alcoholism in some segments of society is practically seen as a social obligation

As far as the intellectual community's take on booze, I've seen/heard reports with a positive spin on mild alcohol consumption, specifically wine and beer. I wouldn't hold your breath if you're waiting for scientists to justify being a drunk though lol

 

[burn out]

That's a lot to process/respond to. So I am not going to attempt to try and trip all over myself.

But I will say one thing...I disagree with your notion that "everyone discredits alcohol" etc. Just turn on your television....and count how many minutes(or seconds) you have to wait until you see a beer/liquor commercial. And then there are the statistics on alcohol consumption. I could go on, but I am honestly just too tired at the moment.

...alcohol has completely embedded itself into our world and our communities.

Yeah man, for every person who demonizes alcohol there is a beer commercial, pub sign or song that praises it. Most grocery stores have an entire isle dedicated to beer and one for wine too and sometimes one for liquor.

And on the side of the people that demonize it, is the fact that alcohol causes tremendous amounts of death, disease and misery. Broken families, innocent people being killed by DUI drivers, violence, etc. The amount of suffering related to alcohol in our society is astronomical.

In my opinion a major issue in this discussion is the tendency especially of american culture to believe things have to be either good or bad. So for example, a scientist looks at the facts regarding alcohol, sees how much suffering results from its use/misuse and decides that alcohol is bad and a harmful substance and should not be used by anyone. The scientist is not wrong in his conclusions about the harms associated with alcohol, but he does tend to ignore the positives, like the enjoyment of drinking a small glass of whiskey on a cold winter's day. In small amounts alcohol does not lead to any long term problems and can be a tasty and enjoyable way to relax and socialize.

I've also read studies that say whiskey has other health benefits such as increasing blood flow to the brain. There have also been studies shoowing health benefits from drinking wine. So I disagree that all scientists are against alcohol. I think your post is pretty biased and completely ignores the very deal negative effects of alcohol abuse.

It just seems like in our culture, and especially when it comes to educating kids and teenagers about drugs, there is this tendency to only focus on the negative and act like any time you use any sort of drug you are doing something harmful to yourself.

Even bluelight buys into this mindset at least part of the way imo, by focusing on "harm reduction". That implies that using drugs is inherently harmful and the only thing we can do short of stopping all drug use is to try to reduce the harm it causes.

Well I say, what about intelligent substance use for health improvement? While I believe using substances always some risk (as does virtually everything in life) i believe that if done responsibly and intelligently, it can actually improve one's mental and physical health. So why not focus on benefit maximization instead of harm reduction?

It goes back to the idea that everything must be good or bad. I no longer look at life in this way. Instead I see drugs as having both positive and negative effects and the question is are you intelligent and responsible/mature enough to use it in a way that benefits you or are you going to abuse it and hurt yourself? If we focused all attention on the former and taught kids this philosophy, I bet we'd see a big reduction in the substance abuse problem.

Instead we focus on preventing substance use itself and demonize the substances and their users, rather than learning how to prevent the negative outcomes that often result from it. We need to realize that the forces that drive a human being to destroy their minds and bodies with a substance are not in the substance itself but in the human psyche. The substance merely gives them an avenue to work through.

 

[d1nach]

I think drinking alcohol is kind of a waste alcohol is a important solvent in chemistry.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

you're obviously one of the nerds whos been giving booze a bad name!

 

[dus_aster]

Ethanol, on paper or when consuming reasonable quantities, is an enjoyable compound... but so many people abuse (if we define abuse as 'consumption with a primary goal of intoxication) it that one wonders if the social harm outweighs the good?
If one were to develop a drug today (pharma) that, while a benefit in reasonable doses, had a high propensity for abuse and a dangerously low therepeutic index, it seems dubious that the powers-that-be would allow it to proliferate without one hell of a fight.
Unless, of course, they had been exposed to alcohol in every facet of their lives from a very young age.
Our relationship with alcohol has taken thousands of years to develop, and, in my experience, it's demonized a hell of a lot less than it deserves.

Or- no, demonize isn't the right word, because no drug deserves demonization, but (as an on and off alcoholic) I would love for there to have been more education on what constitutes responsible alcohol use /before/ it messed up my life. Drugs were discussed in middle school, when I attended, c.2006, but alcohol never came up beyond the warning to not drink if underaged. I was never told of the dangers *or* benefits; rather, I was left to experiment on my own and develop my own normalizations of alcohol use, which, because of the poor education, were derived from unhealthy preexisting cultural modes of use. Movies, television, models of masculinity, et cetera.

A lot of respectible BLers consider alcohol one of the hardest and most damaging drugs out there, actually :/


Ethanol (low dose, equiv. 0.5-1.0 US stand. units) produces cognitive benefits and can both improve reaction time/task performance!
I can't say I've met or heard from anyone working in the industry who rejects that notion... but really, lets be srs, the majority of drinkers (imo, no source, pls correct w source if wrong) really don't use alcohol in a therapeutic manner, following dosage instuctions and carefully measuring the quantity consumed.
EtOH is rad
i love the sauce
But, without mincing words, it's a pretty dangerous and damaging drug that does more harm to individual physiology and the social environment than is easily justified.

 

[dus_aster]

tl;dr it isn't a conspiratorial sham due to the catastrophic damage alcohol does to the body if consumed the way most consume it. If it were more benign, the anti-alcohol rhetoric might be less needed, but it's really, really hard on the body. These health risks make it difficult to claim that it's benefits outweigh it's cost... if tobacco didn't induce so much damage, I'm sure there would be a lot less support of the anti-tobaccy lobby- similarly, if alcohol were benign, perhaps it would do more Good than bad!

But it isn't. Google some case studies of alcoholism. Bad shit, man. Bad shit.

 

[roxi2873]

The affects of alcohol aren't worth the shitty buzz IMO. If you're gonna do drugs at least do real drugs....Just my outlook. Yes, alcohol is a drug.

 

[Jekyl Anhydride]

A nice red wine with dinner a few nights a week reduces risk of heart attack and stroke but at the other end of the spectrum you have people that drink through all their money and move on to old crow & hand sanitizer, so moderation in all things I guess.

 

[nuttynutskin]

Are you serious OP? Alcohol is accepted, legal and EVERYWHERE and is one of the worst drugs out there. I would know. I never thought I was going to become an alcoholic but it will creep up on you.

 

[d1nach]

Idk how saying alcohol is one of the most important chemicals in chemistry and essential in both cleaning surfaces and as a solvent is demonizing it but nerd can't argue with that. I go through a
Quarter gallon of 25% alcohol a month I think it's a staple In cleaning and preventing illness

 

[nuttynutskin]

Pretty sure this thread is about ingestible alcohol.

 

[cujax]

Personally, IMO. I wish I never drank a day in my life. All its lead me to was loss of friends, jobs, jail, and depression. But still continue to drink a half gallon every day and a half. Morning to bed..... vicious, terrible f****** cycle. (I'm an alcoholic, unfortunately)

 

[Eisbaer]

Topical alcohol helps kill bacteria and germs and concentrated alcohol is extremely important for cleaning stuff. Also alcohol on my skin helps numb painful itchy skin without the use of painkillers

I heard that drinking a teaspoon of alcohol, before bed every day, helps clear up the skin too. Do you know if this is true?

Pretty sure this thread is about ingestible alcohol.

It was haha.

Ethanol (low dose, equiv. 0.5-1.0 US stand. units) produces cognitive benefits and can both improve reaction time/task performance!

That sounds interesting, do you have any sources for that?

Yeah man, for every person who demonizes alcohol there is a beer commercial, pub sign or song that praises it. Most grocery stores have an entire isle dedicated to beer and one for wine too and sometimes one for liquor.

That's advertising, companies wouldn't invest money in research proving why alcohol is good, because they wouldn't profit off of it. Scientific institutions are usually funded by governments or groups with hidden motives, to try to prove their agendas or ideas to be true. Then those "scientific findings", which were funded by groups with ulterior motives, is propagandized as fact in public schools, causing future intelligentsia and average young people to see alcohol as a bad thing. And as these people become adults, the dogma that alcohol is bad stays with them.

The statistics are inaccurate, as statistics focus mainly on human behavior, rather than the chemical itself. You can say the same for cars.. So many people are addicted to driving cars/waste their money on cars, cars kill so many people in a year, cars cause pollution, and etc. That's how alcohol is looked at, in only a mostly negative light. If you look at it from a positive light, you'll see that cars are actually great for humanity, and alcohol can be seen in the same positive light too.

 

[d1nach]

Drinking alcohol to get it to your skin IMO makes zero sense. Idk if it has to do with the actual skin being dirty I think the reason it helps my irritated skin is by blocking the sensation and replacing it with a cooling one. However, if you use vasoline or skin creams I rub on some alcohol after and it allows you really cover the entire body evenly then even after the alcohol evaporates off you have a perfectly even coating instead of globs of moisturizers

 

[Slow_Mobius]

For almost any benefit you can get from drinking alcohol, there's almost certainly a better alternative for getting that same potential benefit. Also, alot of the studies that say drinking x alcohol product helps produce y effect, alot of them are just looking at correlations between populations. Also, many of the potential benefits you would get from small amounts of wine have little to nothing to do with the ethanol. If we're purely talking about ethanol, I don't know of anything that it's really good for treating.

That said, it's not bad in moderation. I just think there are healthier alternatives to drinking.

 

[d1nach]

Rich people drink wine. Rich people have good medical care. I bet owning a horse and owning a luxury car is correlated with health benefits.

 

[RDP89]

Rich people drink wine. Rich people have good medical care. I bet owning a horse and owning a luxury car is correlated with health benefits.

The health benefit from wine is from the antioxidants, which you might as well just drink grape juice or eat the damn things.