This is a question to people who drink regularly or even compulsively. What effect does alcohol have on your choices for reading material or entertainment?
I am what you can call a high-functioning alcoholic, and sometimes I work or read in the evening while having a few drinks, and I noticed that, when it comes to reading, I usually go for short articles, reddit threads, social media posts, or other reading materials in my sphere of interests. Similarly, I am less likely to watch intellectual or foreign films while under the influence, or any films at all in fact, and I’d rather spend time watching short clips on Youtube from Seinfeld or Arrested Development or something pretty light. I would also never start watching a new show while drinking. Did you experience something similar? Is there a scientific explanation to that?
This isn’t the kind of problem that has a major impact on my daily life, but I started to notice that my vocabulary, expressions, cultural references, and overall knowledge have been in a state of stagnation for a while, because I’m doing very little ‘questing’ outside my familiar surroundings, and avoiding in-depth reading outside my common interests.
English is a second language to me, but I always thought that I had a more fluent and culturally refined command of the language than my peers. Yesterday I was on a video call with an overseas client, and I was having trouble articulating my ideas beyond a set of similar expressions, to the point that, when I failed to enumerate the list of things I wanted to mention, I kept on saying: “and so on and so forth, and so on and so forth.”
Does alcohol impair learning? Bear in mind that this isn’t a problem with my actual work, which is often demanding in terms of creativity and effort.
More stupid movies that I’ve seen dozens of times rather than something I have to pay attention to, or instead of hunting through Netflix et al. for half an hour deciding what to watch.
I drink a pretty fair amount and if I’m drinking I don’t watch anything that requires paying much attention. When I drink is about the only time I listen to music any more so I tend to have the TV on with the sound down while I surf YT for music and read the inter tubes. That’s if it’s too hot or cold to be outside. If I’m outside it’s the same minus the TV.
I’m also more likely to all of a sudden want to skip to a certain song I own / youtube video and then get bored with that band after the song or even during the song and move on to something else.
The only thing I’m very unlikely to do is to learn how to play a new game. I can play the games I have just fine, even when pretty out there. There’s even a certain point after which things become fuzzy where I will come back to the game and think “gee, I don’t remember doing that, but it wasn’t a completely bad move,” but it’s a fine line between that and becoming a horrible player, and I only go that far a few times a year.
When we were much younger, and more foolish, whenever hubs got, like, really drunk, he’d come home and put on The Last Waltz. And is drunken hammerhead friends were getting into it. “Are we watching TLW?” “Damn straight, let’s go!”
I mean, it’s a good film but too many times is too many!
I’d just hold the remote, and whenever he took his eyes off the screen, fast forward like a crazy person. I became quite adept. And, just like that, BOOM!, closing credits! I’d shut it down and we’d crash, no argument.
Not a lot, but then, I don’t usually drink enough to be more than slightly buzzed unless I’m hanging out with actual people (remember people?), in which case I’m not going to randomly pick up a book or start watching a video. There’s stuff I enjoy watching with a drink in hand, like live-streamed performances of plays (one of the few perks of not being in a real theater is that you can do that, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg). But it doesn’t really change the basic type of thing that I want to watch.
Alcohol’s not really known for increasing your attention span, pinpointing your focus, broadening your vocabulary, or improving your taste in entertainment choices.
As I age, and my eyesight becomes shittier by the week, drinking really means that there will be no reading. Unless it’s on the internet, like here, where a drunk bastard can blow the page up until it’s legible.