Is this true? How could you be locked up for your beliefs alone, in the USA? Not just locked up but locked up indefinitely? I mean, unless the “beliefs” are telepathic powers that are causing people’s balls to fall off or something.
For the forth time, nobody is disputing that.
My great-grandfather would go through a fifth of bourbon a week, and would smoke the finest cigars made in Wheeling, West Virginia. He lived to be 96.
My grandmother never smoked and can be talked into about two drinks a year and she’s still living in her own home at 91.
So mileage does vary. Personally I’ll take my chances with bourbon, though I don’t go through it quite so fast as Pap.
In Russia, beliefs lock up YOU!
Doing something, even potentially harmful (drinking alcohol, scarring your face, jumping from a wood tower with your feet tied by a liana, whatever…) when it’s socially accepted and culturally a norm isn’t indicative of a mental health issue.
Keep in mind that cigars aren’t typically inhaled. They can still cause throat or mouth cancer (maybe others), but a lot of people don’t realize they’re usually just puffed on.
Yeah, but he had given up cigarettes for the cigars, and he would inhale them. Plus the bourbon was just for his drinking at home - he still liked to go out.
Doesn’t matter much - he obviously isn’t a role model, at least not for matters of health.
I think the causality points the other way. Lots of alcohol damages brain function over time, leading to mental health problems. You’re not crazy to be drinking as much as everyone else, but the drinking can still make you crazy.
Analogous to heavy lead consumption by the Romans. It wasn’t a sign of mental health that they used lead in plumbing and as a sweetener, but it definitely caused a lot of mental problems.
Taking just the wine consumption into consideration and assuming your consumption of alcohol isn’t addictive or symptomatic of some underlying mental health issues, it’s probably a bit too much. Cutting back to half a bottle a night would be better.
That said, by your height/weight and statement that you work out, etc, you’re probably actually above average health-wise. So, yeah, I’d cut down a bit, but if you keep watching what you eat and get plenty of excerise you can probably ride out a bottle a night for several decades.
If a bottle of red a day is going to kill you, then there ain’t much sand left in my hourglass, and my poppa should have been dead a long time ago.
In every thread like this we get the anecdotes of “my uncle who smoked and drank like crazy and lived to be 95”. I do not know why people obligated to post meaningless anecdotes unless it is to validate their own weakness. The fact is that smoking and drinking in excess greatly increase your chances of health problems but many people like to ignore that in favor of anecdotes. People who think nothing of smoking or binging are scared of terrorists or of flying or of cell phone radiation when those things are statistically insignificant risks when compared to smoking. Some people are just totally irrational when it comes to correctly assessing and managing risk.
Another point to take into account is that average alcohol consumption per person per year is not really all the information we need. It is not the same if 75% of the population do not drink and those who do have an average 4 times higher. It is not the same if those who drink do so moderately over the week or binge on weekends. Many variables.
No kidding. If I could have kept it to a bottle of red a day, I’d still be drinking. You’re certainly not an alcoholic by my lights, and I should know-- not only am I one myself, I’ve spent a lot (a LOT) of time listening to other people talk about their experiences being alcoholics.
If you’re the sort who likes to drive 55 in the passing lane of life, cut down. Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry about it. (If it’s really only one bottle, of course.)
ALL people are totally irrational when it comes to correctly assessing and managing risk. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t inflate risks that reinforced their own prejudices and minimize those that didn’t.
This thread didn’t get fat because everyone here is passsionate about liver science. Drinking (and smoking) are emotional issues-- you decide where you stand first, based on temperament, and try to support your position later using whatever arguments you think will help while ignoring the rest. That’s why we’re not going to get to the bottom of this, and frankly the whole thing should probably be in Great Debates at this point.
I’ll drink to that! 
Not to nitpick here (and I can’t believe someone else hasn’t already mentioned it) but wine, like most alcoholic beverages are measured as ABV (Alcohol By Volume). Therefore, a 750-ml bottle of wine with 13% alcohol contains 77.3 grams of alcohol. 13% ABV equates to roughly 10.5% ABW (alcohol by weight).
In my case, I wasn’t doing so - I was just using these examples to illustrate that mileage does indeed vary. My grandma is practically a teetotaler and she’s pretty healthy in her nineties.
I’ve seen people die from alcoholism at the age of 22, 42, and 80. A lot depends on the person’s physiology.
Oh, please don’t…please, please, please don’t.
We almost lost my sister. Two stints through rehab. Liver damage. Jaundice. Depression. Nerve damage.
And she wouldn’t believe she was an alcoholic because all the other alcoholics said “you don’t drink that much” - she was a bottle of wine a day drinker too. Or that was all she would admit to when she was a drunk.
Alcoholism is not a contest about who drank more than you - and if they didn’t drink as much as you then they didn’t have a problem.
That was very well put. Thanks.
It is one bottle. Sometimes slightly less. However, since reading this thread I decided to give it up, at least for a few weeks. I notice it’s much easier to wake in the mornings the past few days and I’m much more alert. I was never hungover in the classic sense from one bottle but it apparently makes you a bit groggy even hours later.