Because you never asked for sources lol. My reference is Dr. Christian Rätsch's book "Enzyklopädie der psychoaktiven Substanzen", but I don't know if that book was ever translated into english.
Well, my point is that you present outlandish claims as fact without listing any sources why should I be convinced? I googled Dr. Christian Ratsch and couldn't find anything that would substantiate your claims which run contradictory to all historical accounts I am familiar with. If you want to post obscure theories, I am fine with it but just don't present them as established fact.
It is ludicrous for the reasons I have mentioned.
The first-line treatment option for ethylene glycol poisoning is actually Fomepizole and only if that isn't available will doctors use ethanol, because the use of ethanol itself carries risks for the reasons I have mentioned. Just because something is used as a treatment option doesn't mean it's actually a "healing agent". The chemicals used in chemotherapy kill off the cancer, not because it acts as a healing agent, but rather because the patient gets acutely poisoned. Now, what the leaflet doesn't tell you is that it also kills off a whole bunch of healthy cells with it. Cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy therefore haven't been healed, they have survived. That same principle is true with using ethanol. One poison is replaced by another poison. This is actually the reason why chemotherapy is HUGELY controversial in medicine and doctors have lost their licenses because they have spoken out against it and have shown how in most cases it is actually the chemo that kills the patient and not the cancer. That is why I will never do chemo in case I ever get cancer. I'll just use full-spectrum cannabinoid oil and that's it.
Alcohol IS objectively bad. I'm not saying this lightly btw. Few things in life are objective.
That doesn't make alcohol a "good" treatment option though. That's a bad choice of comparison. Why not compare alcohol with fomepizole, which is actually what is used in such a case and not freaking opium. Fomepizole is used as a first-line treatment for a good reason. Back when it didn't exist, alcohol was used, but not because everyone was convinced of how much of a powerful healing tool it is. It was because there was no other option around, so the doctor always takes the treatment that causes the LEAST HARM. That's the reason fomepizole was invented in the first place, because doctors wanted to get rid of the toxic effect ethanol has on the patients.
Also, as a quick side note: antifreeze poisoning is literally the ONLY area where ethanol has some kind of a marginal therapeutic "merit" and even then only as a secondary option. Now, what you are doing is taking this incredibly rare medical occurence (45K reported cases in the US in 2015, which is like what, 0.013% of the populace?), which only happens in isolated cases (suicide, homicide, lab accidents) and then take this ridiculously miniscule area of medicine where alcohol MAY be used as a treatment option and blow its role out of proportion to make it look like alcohol is this potentially great medicine that we couldn't live without because, uuuuh, look at all these numerous.....uuuuh....antifreeze poisoning...
Yeah that's where the argument starts to collapse. Alcohol isn't medically important because it can potentially save the lives of 0.013% of the US population and even then we already have a much better treatment option. Alcohol is simply redundant. Period.
I never said alcohol is a great medicine we couldn't live without. Like I stated earlier your worldview consists of opiates good and alcohol bad and no that is not an objective fact. Good and bad are value judgements and what is good for one person can be bad for another or what is good at one time in someone's life can be bad in another.
...and depression, and schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, and and and...
I suggest you read a little bit about opioids in older medical literature (like opioids in mental illness which I have referenced earlier in the thread) to see the incredibly wide array of use in medicine that opioids can be successfully used for, with minimal side effects compared to the incredibly side effect prone ADs and NLs being used today. Opioids have been reduced to only physical pain, but that doesn't mean they cannot be used in other areas of medicine too.
This substance has incredibly useful psychoactive properties that are being completely ignored by modern medicine.
I suggest you look what is actually within a human cell and what those cells do in the human body, and perhaps then you will realize how a substance being cytotoxic actually affects the whole organism upon harming those cells. Also, as I have already mentioned, alcohol is not just cytotoxic, it is also neurotoxic and hepatotoxic. The long-term implications of that are severe.
You're wrongfully assuming chronic usage. Obviously significant quantities of alcohol every day for many years has severe consequences, I am not denying that. Alcohol is not a drug like opiates where you can keep it in your blood constantly for years on end without damaging your organs. I understand that. However, some people find having a beer or two on the weekend invigorating to their mind and body and socially beneficial and throughout history millions upon millions of people have done this with no negative impact to their health. Who are you to tell these people what's good for them? Isn't that exactly what you're against when someone tells you that opiates aren't good for you?
What more do you want? Isn't that toxic enough for you? That is in my opinion enough to judge alcohol. It is only useful for certain chemical reactions in the lab and as a preservative (and perhaps some other uses I'm unaware of), but neither body nor the mind needs alcohol. It is therapeutical for neither of those two. Sure, it is unfortunately recreational for the majority of people, but I think that is only the case because most people in our society are unaware that we have other substances that have a better recreational value and also a much better safety profile. Admittedly, the former is subjective (some like alcohol, others prefer weed, then again some people like low dose acid, etc.), but the latter cannot be argued about.
How does alcohol have "an overall positive effect on the whole human being"?
Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. Despite considerable research on the misuse of alcohol, no one has ever asked why it might have become universally adopted, although the conventional view assumes that its only benefit is hedonic. In contrast, we suggest that alcohol consumption was...
link.springer.com
And this is not the only study to associate moderate alcohol consumption with improved heart health. According to the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA, more than 100 prospective studies have suggested moderate alcohol use may protect against stroke, heart attack, heart disease, sudden cardiovascular death and other cardiovascular conditions, as well as improve overall mortality.
Alcohol has short-term and long-term effects. Drinking a small amount can help people feel relaxed, but too much, too often, can be harmful for health.
www.medicalnewstoday.com
How is not having a heart attack one might otherwise have had not an overall positive for some people? How is improved well being and social engagement not an overall benefit for some people?
You state opiates helped you avoid quitting suicide as evidence for the therapeutic benefit. Don't you see the same could be true for alcohol? For example, some lonely depressed guy drinks a couple beers he feels a bit better it helps him come out of his shell and he starts chatting with other patrons at the pub and ends up making some friends who change the trajectory he's on and his life improves a great deal as a result.
I agree with you that in general alcohol tends to be quite harmful and if more people knew about other substances they would use less alcohol. For example, I believe that kava offers a lot of the same benefits of alcohol with much less of the negatives. However, not everyone will like kava and so for some people alcohol is actually a good option even though in general it does a lot of harm.
You see I agree with so much of your position but for some reason you seem dead set against acknowledging I have any sort of validity in my point of view at all and every time my opinion differs even slightly from yours I have to be 100% wrong.
That's not the point though. We aren't talking about what causes the greatest harm, but about harm itself. Even if you don't consciously notice it, alcohol is even in its smallest amounts toxic. The fact that it bypasses the BBB makes it even worse.
Correlation ≠ causation. The study doesn't take that into account, on top of it not being randomized, placebo controlled and double-blind or even peer-reviewed.
Furthermore, the study estimates the alcohol exposure across the patients' lifetimes via a self-created tool they call LACU (Lifetime Alcohol Consuming Unit). Let's ignore for a second the fact that the tool has neither been replicated in its use nor peer-reviewed to test its scientific validity. How is this obscure "Unit" even defined and measured??? This is where the study completely falls flat on its face. Is 1 Unit considered to be 2.09 x 10^3 mL/week, or is it only 0.0016 x 10^5 mL/week? How much percent alcohol per litre had been drunk on average? Questions upon questions. These are just a few reasons this study is qualitatively low.
I am aware correlation does not equal correlation but there are literally hundreds of studies showing potential health benefits from alcohol. In order to prove alcohol has no benefits as you claim, you would need to debunk every single one of those studies and even then it wouldn't prove alcohol had no benefits, it would only prove it had no proven benefits. It could still have as of yet undiscovered or unproven benefits.
SOME people always end up overdoing things. That doesn't negate the meritorious value of the substance. See, I was always addicted to opioids because I immediately noticed the beneficial and therapeutic effect it had on me. I had periods where I overdid it with the heroin and the positive effects started to diminish (it was around 1g a day), so I started to gradually reduce the dose to a level where the positive antidepressant effects would again shine through (around 0.5 to 0.7g/day). Yeah, some people can't do that but that's not the fault of the opioid. That was ofc all before I discovered ULDN. That stuff is such a game changer.
If you admit that some can't do it, then you've essentially admitted that some people do in fact struggle with opioid addiction which is the whole thing I was disagreeing with you about this whole time.
Furthermore, you can claim it's not the "fault" of the opioid but the fact remains that abuse potential/difficulty in moderating use is a risk factor with opioids. That's not the case for every substance and some substances tend to be harder to moderate than others.
Ofc they have, but those downsides are only a) temporary in nature and b) can be solved either through modification of dosage or by use of modern substances like NMDA antagonists or ULDN. Also, I'm comparing these temporary downsides to the permanent health hazards of alcohol.
I am admittedly no expert in chinese history. I do not have the full picture of what exactly happened during that period and who all the big players were and what their (ulterior) motives had been. All I know is that rational reasons could not have been the cause of prohibition because China had hundreds if not thousands of years time to prohibit opium consumption, but somehow only got the idea to ban it pretty late in history. It just doesn't add up...
Also, again, I'm not saying opioids have absolutely no negative sides. I'm just saying they are not toxic substances and whatever "harm" they cause, it is completely reversible, so don't start to twist my words in such a dishonest way.
Twist your words? These are direct quotes from you in this thread:
"No opioid addict would perceive his addiction as problematic (much less as having "ruined" their lives as you say) if opioids were legal"
"I only said that addiction wouldn't be perceived as an issue if those who are dependent on their medication could easily afford it. They only struggle because society keeps drilling into their head that being dependent on the most effective antidepressant is somehow an issue"
" I think it's a shame Perry spent millions of dollars on expensive rehab programs instead of spending it on private doctors who could have prescribed him some good ass opioids. He would have done well on them."
If all you were saying was that opiates are non toxic substances and the vast majority of harms they do cause are entirely reservable I would be in complete agreement with you and never would have even entered this conversation. Now that you've back peddled onto that, I guess we're done. I have no further disagreement.
Anyway, sorry it took me a couple days to respond I was busy with work and stuff but it's been an interesting conversation and I wish I'd given the LDN a try back when I was using opiates.
No self awareness.
