I believe the latest info has it appearing that those benefits were illusory and that alcohol has no positive physical benefits.

I have all but given up on drinking the stuff. Not for any particular reason other than the extension of hangovers to two days with increasing age made it just no longer an attractive proposition. Though I did fancy a brew a month or two back and the inflation of the intervening years gave me severe sticker shock.

Explanation
Chartbuddy thanks talkimg.com

The geek in me is very much attracted to the various vapes out there. I like the little LCD screens, the heaters, refilling, cleaning, and maintaining them. If I was a smoker, I would definitely play with these little machines. Fortunately, there are loads of cool gadgets for non-smokers out there, to satisfy my tech cravings. But I often see vaper friends and like their vapes a lot. Some of them are works of art, metal+glass+leather, and very beautifully designed.

Then there are the health issues. How safe are they? I guess they must be safer than real cigarettes, as there is no direct flame and no paper involved in the burning, although the vape heater still heats up the liquid. Also, they feel better for non-smokers that are close to vapers. Personally, I don't mind much about smokers smoking near me, I grew up with smoker parents, so I've had my fair share of passive smoking in my life. Got used to it. Now they're both gone, I can appreciate the cleanliness in a non-smoker house. The walls, and other items in the house stay clean and bright/white, instead of the yellow tint they had when my parents were around.

I don't like smoking as a concept/idea. I think there is a huge industry behind it, promoting it, purely for profit, relying on its addictive properties. I remember I watched a documentary about how, in the USA, the tobacco companies had tasked a famous advertiser to promote smoking to women, because at the time it was predominantly men who smoked. They succeeded, and women started smoking too, and it has stayed like this even today, all over the world. These companies did huge damage to the world. The image of a woman, or even worse, a girl smoking is repulsive to me. It steals away their femininity, makes them "dirty" in my mind. No offense to women smokers out there, but that's just how I feel. I've never dated and would probably never date a smoker -- it wouldn't work for me. I should add that, in a LHB scenario, I can see a working girl smoking as a kind of attraction, and yes, I'd probably be attracted to her, but only for the sexual pleasure, I wouldn't want to date or marry her...



Despite my user name here in WO, I'm a firm opponent of alcohol. There is no alcoholic drink in my house right now, and never was, except the occasional can of beer that sometimes I get offered as a free gift to try in supermarkets (I have one in my fridge, sitting there for months). I do drink beer, or even wine sometimes, when out dining with friends, but not to the point of getting drunk. Not even to the point of feeling the alcohol in me. I drink for the taste and refreshing feeling (of beer), especially in the summer. Always with friends, absolutely never alone.

I think alcohol does more harm than good, if it does any good at all. I've heard/read somewhere that it permanently kills neurons in the brain. But because we have literally trillions of neurons, and because of the way those neural networks work, killing a few (hundreds? millions?) does not have an immediate effect, but the effect is cumulative and [may be] irreversible. So, think of drinking alcohol as a way to progressively, over the course of many years, getting dumber and dumber... No, thanks.

Edit: I Googled about the bold text above, and it seems that alcohol does not directly kill neurons in the brain. It doesn't kill neurons, but it damages the connections between neurons, so it's still bad for the brain. Also, this happens regardless of dosage, so even small amounts can be harmful. The damage may be reversible if the dosage is small, but not if it is higher. Regardless, it's definitely bad for the brain.

Speaking of alcohol, I've been watching some of those YouTube police body-cam videos, where they pull cars over and arrest the drivers for DUI. I see these people drive their cars completely plastered, not even being able to speak, let alone drive safely, and I wonder... How do these people end up like this? Is alcohol really so addictive? The reason this really puzzles me, is that, when I was young, like in my 20s, as a student, I did drink, and quire heavily I must say. Again, always with friends, never alone, but I drank a lot, sometimes to the point of passing out and being carried to my home, and waking up in bed not remembering anything. Yet, after doing this for some time, maybe 2-3 years, I never really felt addicted to it. When I finished my studies, those heavy drinking sessions slowly decreased until they stopped completely. Never felt the urge to drink again like that.

I guess it depends on the individual, and their life experiences, and the feeling that they get from drinking alcohol, and how this feeling kind of fills a gap, a missing piece in their lives. For me, getting drunk from alcohol or high from drugs is just an illusion, like an artificially induced euphoria that has no real substance. All those chemically induced euphoric feelings and rush can be fun to experience, and I'm not against it for casual, recreational use, but those substances, including alcohol, can become very addictive when they serve as an escape from something bad. They shouldn't be needed, but they are to some of us. And if they are needed, one has to ask why, and try to fill that missing gap in their lives with something worthy, meaningful and substantive, rather than pumping chemicals that temporarily patch it, just for a quick fix. It may be the easy way out, but it's destructive and an admission of weakness and defeat. At least that's how I see it.

Having said all of the above, I can't wait for Phil to have a 140+ proof drinking session (with photos to prove it), gratefully sacrificing his liver for the WO community. After all, it's not the alcohol, it's the hopium that we're all addicted to in these here parts, and there's no cure for it...

Explanation
Chartbuddy thanks talkimg.com

I haven't had a hangover in over 10 years, probably closer to 20.
As someone here mentioned, "It's the dose that makes the poison" (Paracelsus).

Explanation
Chartbuddy thanks talkimg.com

Health benefits like less likely to catch a flu when you gargle it?
Other than that it's a cytotoxic agent and a neurotoxin.
Beer and wine have some beneficial stuff in it, mainly the yeast and some vitamins, but the alcohol (as a poison) outweighs those benefits.
At least that's what i have read...


Secret: Keep hydrating yourself when drinking alcoholic beverages. At least as much clear water as the equivalent in beer (5% alc.), so three times as much as wine, eight times as much as schnapps etc.

Pretty long then, but the story is similar with many smokers just the details will differ. But with persistent will to end it the end usually comes. Most give up but they also don't understand what what smoking takes away from you. Knowing how to repeat some information on negative impacts of smoking is not the same as understanding. On average the loss is 10 years, and besides length it is also a loss of a lot of health. It is one of the worst deals that one could make, it doesn't even make you feel good. Some are in denial as say yeah 10 years is not bad, but average means there are plenty of people that lose more like 20 years. And many years prior to that they have terrible health and a hard life..

No amount of alcohol of any kind is healthy recent good studies have confirmed. Those media headlines from the past were based on junk quality studies. People need to remember just because something is a study that does not mean it actually tells us something.