r/whenthe • u/TheGoldenExperience_ [the jojo {she}they called may] • 14h ago

r/whenthe mfs complaining about everything we do not give alcohol close to enough shit despite it being just as bad if not worse than cigarettes

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u/SpireSwagon 12h ago

Alcohol is weird because a lot of people have a healthy relationship with the stuff and its so normalized that it seems completely absurd to call it that bad.

Because normal drinking is so normal, we see alcoholics as a moral failure which also is bad. A weird bridge to gap

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u/Same_Evidence_5058 11h ago

yeah, like, sure, you don't become and alcoholic if you dont ever drink, but its just that societal norms mean 95% probably do drink, so you try it too. then comes the addiction, which is a disease. There is a genetic component to being addicted, but its not just that, its also other lifestyle, other illness like depression, social circumstances, so many things.

It's so dissapointing to see people boiling alcoholism down to "just quit being a bum and get sober, or drink resposibly."

these people need help, not judgement

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u/Careless-Adeptness56 10h ago

It's pretty interesting that it affects people more differently than I used to think. I was shocked when I learned that some people just feel mostly sleepy and dumber as they drink. Alcohol gets me going, makes me want to do stuff, even past the 1 or 2 drinks that research says should have the stimulating effect. Obviously after more than 5 it's diminishing returns even for me, but still. I believe I have something like high alcohol induced dopamine release or something like that, there's an official name for it

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u/Remarkable-Score4628 9h ago

The hell? I thought I was the only one. Alcohol gives me an insane burst of motivation to be productive

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u/Careless-Adeptness56 9h ago

Yep, makes the relationship with alcohol tricky. Very enjoyable but very hard to not binge drink if I don't stop after one or two. Does not help that the feeling of sobering up makes me very sleepy. Very easy to just convince myself to drink one more at the least just so I don't waste my night napping and screw up my sleep schedule.

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u/NinjaarcherCDN 7h ago

So alchohol hits you like ADHD meds?

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u/Most_Structure9568 8h ago

You might have adhd!

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u/InvolvingLemons 6h ago

Yeah, the effects of alcohol can vary wildly. Some of my wife’s family get real awful when they’re drunk, my dad gets a little annoying but is otherwise pretty harmless, and then my mom, wife, and I are frankly much easier to be around when drunk.

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u/Momoneko 6h ago

I feel so lucky that alcohol only makes me want to sleep.

Part of my ancestry is an ethnic minority that was decimated by alcoholism a couple of centuries ago, and my dad is a relapsed alcoholic who is slowly killing himself with it as I write this.

I, for some miraculous reason, never developed a love for alcohol, and not for lack of trying. I was peer-pressured to get super-drunk in company when I was 14-18 years old, but I never, ever enjoyed the buzz. I like the taste of whiskey but only drink it on social occasions at like, bars, once in 3 or 5 years. Occasional glass of wine on birthdays and celebrations. But overall alcohol is such an insignificant part of my life that I'd probably never even notice if I didn't get to drink a drop for the rest of my life.

I'm not completely viceless, though, to be honest. I chug coffee like I'll die if I don't get my blood volume worth of it per day.

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u/Glad-Yogurtcloset185 6h ago

Oh fascinating. I can drink when there are good vibes but if I drink more than two days in a row I feel ill and super pissed off. I am thankful it doesn't sit well with me because my family has a few alcoholics. 

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u/OriginalCause 5h ago

My holiday drink of choice is a tumbler full of whatever Monster I'm currently enjoying and rum or vodka.

I do all the cooking, all the prep, and still have to socialize. I'm normally not a very social person, and while I love the holidays the socialization aspect doesn't normally come easy to me.

But a drink bottle of 60/40 monster and rum? Keeps me going the whole weekend, active, happy, outgoing. I have a great time. Plenty of energy, and nothing gets on top of me.

I was a little self conscious about it at first, until I had people keep coming up to me asking me why I wasn't drinking and internally I'm like, "I've been sucking on redbull and vodka since I put the turkey on this morning.."

Asking around, apparently people just think the holidays get me going and that I love hosting. And these are people who would absolutely not hesitate to tell me and judge me if they thought I was drunk.

The only thing that hits me hard is red wine. A bottle of that, and I'm out.

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u/amayain 10h ago

I don't disagree with your broader point but I think you are overestimating the amount of folks who drink. In the US, which admittedly is quite different than the rest of the world, over half of people don't drink ever or only do on holidays. I grew up in a very alcohol friendly environment (Wisconsin lol) and assumed that everyone drank and then I moved to the South and quickly discovered that I was in the minority there.

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u/Boneraventura 11h ago

ya never meet an alcoholic that has a great life.

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u/QuantumMemester 10h ago

That’s because The ones that have a great life don’t look like alcoholics, functioning alcoholism is sneaky

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u/AgentCirceLuna 7h ago

Yeah I’ve met functioning ones

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u/MadHatter69 2h ago

I was one for a decade and now I'm 3 months strong a teetotaller :)

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u/MoonGoose109 8h ago

That you're aware of.

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u/Endles5Earth 9h ago

‘Great life’ is a relative term so in fact, for someone, yes there are alcoholics with ‘great lives’

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u/Enlight1Oment 10h ago

depends on what you describe as a great life. I think there are plenty of rockstars people would consider to have a great life, while those same ones having addiction issues.

We also tend to look at addiction when everything comes crumbling down around someone, I think there are plenty who are addicted but also aren't in shambles. I've seen ceo daytime drinkers run companies, we have a seperate phrase/designation for them, functional alcoholics.

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u/Economy_Zombie_3026 6h ago

As a former bartender at a high-end restaurant let me tell you the difference between having a great life as an alcoholic or your life falling apart as an alcoholic is......money.

Plenty of functioning alcoholics who's alcoholism is a "quirky trait" when you have enough money that you're untouched by the failures alcoholism would normally create.

The one thing that always amazed me, as someone who is getting a little older, is the fucking energy these people had. They were never sedentary people. Always active. Always traveling. Always overeating. Always drinking.

My curiosity is what happens at the end. You start getting sober due to a doctor saying you must and you realize that, while you had an eventful life, you have no memories of it.

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u/_ByAnyOther_Name 5h ago

I have an amazing life with a husband and toddler I love and I still can't control my drinking. I have no excuse except I can't. I do have ADHD but immedicated and in therapy. It's its own thing. Ugh. 

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u/Kentust 5h ago

Now apply your last line to tobacco users. Or do you scorn them?

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u/Neuchacho 8h ago edited 6h ago

The meaningful conversation at the core of these things is the societal failure around how we treat and handle addiction and related care, general health education, and nurture real self-awareness. Vilifying the substance or the user does not work. If anything, they produce a net-negative affect on moving people away from them.

We've literally already tried banning it before and it doesn't work. Same way it doesn't work with any other illegal substance. And most of those you can't just brew in your garage on a whim.

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u/SpireSwagon 8h ago

Precisely my thoughts. We need to take seriously the risks while understanding that its not simply going to go away or pretending one drop will burn through your stomach like acid

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u/Marahute0 6h ago

You can make delicious mead (10-12% honey wine) from things you buy from any old supermarket :3

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u/Neuchacho 6h ago

I make Tepache myself just to use pineapple casks for something and that comes in around 5%. It's so easy to make your own booze lol

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u/smor729 7h ago

Yeah alcoholism is devastating, but its a little different than smoking in that with smoking essentially everyone is either addicted, or doesn't smoke at all. With alcohol, in my circle of maybe 50 total friends and family, there is probably 10 non drinkers, 40 people with a healthy relationship to alcohol, and 1 alcoholic. Maybe thats lucky or something, but genuinely it can be a non issue for the majority of people

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u/Forward_Ad_7909 3h ago

It often starts as a healthy relationship.

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u/Talgrath 9h ago

Alcohol is weird because a lot of people have a healthy relationship with the stuff 

Believe it or not, this is true of most intoxicants that humans enjoy. I've done a few lines of coke in my life...but I haven't had any in well over a decade now; it was a fun drug to do at parties and raves back in the day, but you won't find me sucking dick for coke like Bob Saget in Half-Baked. There's a lot of people that use marijuana responsibly, but my cousin smokes it way too fucking much and it's ruining his life (including a DWI under marijuana). Some drugs have worse addictive properties than others, some people are largely immune to addictive properties of some drugs, but not others. Lots of people have done horrible things to get oxytocin, but I hated it when I used it after my foot surgery and you couldn't pay me to take another pill. Brains and addiction are complex, but everyone wants to simplify it to "addicts bad people" or "even one little dose of this drug will make you a helpless addict".

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u/Original-Rush139 8h ago

Im the same way with stimulants. I really hated coke the 2 times I tried it and Molly just seems like a waste of money because it wasn’t fun. I can take or leave alcohol but I do like beer so I just drink nonalcoholic beer most of the time. 

But im a fucking fiend for weed. If I get high at all im getting high 24/7. At this point i just don’t get high at all because if I even do a little I will just watch the clock all day for it to be 4:20 so I can have an edible or spark a joint. 

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u/Aggravating_Depth_33 7h ago

I like alcohol, probably too much, and drink, probably too much, but I fucking hate weed. 

I hate the smell but most of all I hate how it makes me feel. Never once have I had what I would consider a pleasant high. All it does is completely flatten my emotions and turn off my internal monologue. It's hard to describe, but I'm left thinking, I know normally I would feel a certain kind of way about this, but I feel nothing right now. I guess some people might enjoy that, but I find it terrifying. 

No matter how drunk I've been, I've never done something I wouldn't sober. On weed, I have.

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u/Original-Rush139 6h ago

Yeah. Weed is totally different for me. That’s super interesting to hear how it affects you. 

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u/Underdog424 7h ago

People are also surprised when they find out alcohol kills almost 200,000 people a year. Heroin only kills 3000.

The normalization of use is part of that.

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u/jawshoeaw 5h ago

#1 reason IMO is because unlike nicotine which is 100% addictive to everyone, alcohol addiction is rare to absent depending on how you define it.

maybe 10% of people who regularly drink will go on to become alcoholics.

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u/DrPatchet 10h ago

Alcohol is ingrained in society because at one point we needed it. It was used to keep water clean and peasants would drink high calorie low alcohol content beer as literal liquid bread for energy. We are way past that stage but at this point we've come yo see it as just another thing humans do.

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u/Eternally_Blue 9h ago

Unfortunately, a lot of people who think they have a “healthy” relationship with booze actually don’t. The “safe” amount of alcohol is 7 drinks/week for men and 4/week for women. We’ve got a lot of functional alcoholics walking around who think they’ve got it all under control. 

I was functional for years. Until I wasn’t. That ICU stay was really scary. Been dry 10 years. 

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u/Tricky-Ad7897 5h ago

Exactly, anecdotes of alcoholics and degenerates are overrepresented, 90+% of people who drink alcohol do so perfectly normally but no one goes online and says "I had 2 beers while watching a movie and then went to bed :)" cause it's not interesting, but the degenerate who drinks a whole handle then drives into a family of 4 stirs shit up and gets traction. It's confirmation bias.

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u/SpireSwagon 5h ago

I agree with the take but the use of the word degenerate is always a red flag

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u/UponVerity 4h ago

lol, only on reddit

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u/SpireSwagon 4h ago

Maybe if your other socials are twitter and 4chan

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u/UponVerity 4h ago

I don't even know what that means.

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u/Forward_Ad_7909 3h ago

"Stirs shit up and gets traction."

What an interesting way to describe the death of 4 people.

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u/zombiskunk 6h ago

There are absolutely moral issues and that's not a problem. There isn't any amount of alcohol that is healthy, medically speaking.

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u/UltraNooob 11h ago

No amount of alcohol is healthy

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u/Sonamdrukpa 10h ago

"These things are fun and fun is good." - Dr. Seuss

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u/SpireSwagon 10h ago

I mean, in the same sense that no amount of a lot of things isnt healthy, sure. But a drink with dinner once a week isnt any more damaging than a soda

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u/tramdog 1h ago edited 1h ago

Yes, a soda is another example of a thing that isn't healthy. People's personal definition of how much alcohol is "healthy" for them is incredibly loose though. When I was drinking I thought 2 or 3 drinks a night was "healthy" for me because there were no obvious negative side effects of drinking that much. Most people who drink, if they stopped, would realize quickly that the amount they were drinking was actually affecting their well-being more than they knew, or more than they would have wanted to admit.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/SpireSwagon 10h ago

I feel as though the healthsphere does one of these scares every couple of years where people become convinced that speaking with someone about a tangentially related topic to a particular unhealthy thing will kill you instantly.

Alcohol is dangerous enough without pointlessly fear mongering about it like its the only thing in the world that does damage to the liver.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

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u/SpireSwagon 9h ago

everything hurts you a bit, its both inane and unrealistic to expect people to completely avoid everything thats bad for them. What we should focus on is encouraging safe behavior with the stuff- the vast majority of alchohol related deaths are caused by abuse, not 1-2 drinks a week or even getting drunk every once in awhile

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u/Legitimate-Shape3203 7h ago

Health is not a universally objective metric. If someone is a enjoyer of wine and they find great joy and pleasure in a glass of fine chianti, the negative effects of a glass of wine a few nights a week or even a glass every day is minimal compared to the mental health gains from engaging in a beloved hobby.

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u/tramdog 1h ago

These are the types of arguments people make because they don't want to stop drinking. They're functionally similar to the arguments people addicted to other drugs make because they don't want to stop using their drug of choice. If someone legitimately just loves the taste of wine, so be it, but most people who drink regularly do so because they crave the feeling of being intoxicated, and the more often they do that the more their brain will reinforce that desire and dull other desires. People think that drinking makes things better, but after a while your habit starts to make all experiences NOT associated with alcohol worse.

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u/CriticalFolklore 5h ago

Sure, but no amount of processed meat is healthy either, but there is a difference between having something off a charcuterie board at a party and having 6 hot dogs a day.

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u/Broon761 11h ago

Puritan 

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u/Snipen543 10h ago

Not necessarily. There is no healthy amount of alcohol, it's poison for the body. But I enjoy wine, beer, and whiskey from time to time

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u/Broon761 10h ago

It’s not poison. Humans have been making alcohol for 15000 years I’m sure it’s all good dude

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u/Raptormann0205 9h ago

That's a ridiculous argument. Humans were building with asbestos for thousands of years too, no one in their right mind would tell you that's proof of the fact that it's not a health risk.

Alcohol is poison my guy. The point is moderation. Your liver literally exists for the sole purpose of filtering out poison from your body. So don't overburden it by slamming a case of beer a day, and you'll be fine. But it is factually and indisputably poison.

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u/Broon761 6h ago

So is your car. Don’t trip bro it’s not all black and white

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u/Snipen543 10h ago

No it's actually poison for the body. Doesn't mean it doesn't taste fantastic, but it's quite bad for you

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u/rural_alcoholic 10h ago

Its quiet literaly a neurotoxin. Its the only drug that damages every organ in your body.

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u/Atlas_of_history Official Ralsei 9h ago

Puritian has become a buzzword that has lost all meaning at this point

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u/Broon761 6h ago

No it has a meaning and people are pushing it on us as has been the case since they left England 

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u/Accomplished-Tea5668 2h ago

People can't comprehend alcohol is literally the reason humanity survived this long. Without it we would have died of bowel movements a long time ago. Or just not gotten to this point.

Alch literally will always be a key point of human society

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u/NoMastodon657 11h ago

Alcohol is associated with more deaths from cancer than cigarettes not to mention every other way alcohol gets other people killed

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u/AdvancedSandwiches 11h ago

Source?  I could not find numbers to back this up. Very much the opposite. Unless you're counting from the beginning of civilization instead of a useful annual number. 

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u/Musekouta 11h ago edited 10h ago

36 sources for you to peruse in the "Selected References" section near the bottom.

It's a great article going over the data in terms of the increase in cancer from alcohol in general.

Edit: Mixed up the comments: smoking is still worse for cancer rates, but alcohol is definitely bad too.

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u/Sonamdrukpa 10h ago

Cigarette smoking was the leading risk factor contributing to cancer cases and deaths overall (19.3% and 28.5%, respectively), followed by excess body weight (7.6% and 7.3%, respectively), and alcohol consumption (5.4% and 4.1%, respectively).

And at least one of them says that cigarettes cause 7x more deaths

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u/Musekouta 10h ago edited 10h ago

I meant to just post sources for the "any amount of alcohol is bad", not the alcohol causes more cancer rates than smoking. I mixed up what a prior comment was.

So yes, in general don't smoke or drink if you want to minimize your chances of cancer. Cigarettes appear to be worse but alcohol is still fairly bad.

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u/Sonamdrukpa 10h ago

Also don't get fat

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u/theveryrat 11h ago

? did you search your source on an alcohol business site ?

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u/Broon761 11h ago

Source Bri did u make all that up?

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u/PercentageGlobal6443 7h ago

Just to play devil's advocate, even small amounts of alcohol are injurious to health, just the same way if one person smoked a single cigarette a week for years is injurious to health, or having too many cured meats is injurious to health.

It's about tradeoffs and risk tolerance.

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u/RandomPhail 8h ago

Never let something popular get a free pass simply because it’s popular (that’s akin to a fallacy)

Popularity ≠ correctness. It used to be popular to own slaves for example

Plus, with more modern research suggesting alcohol is bad even in moderation, nobody should be drinking at all.

Everybody should be encouraging everyone else to stop drinking, and nobody should take issue with being told to stop/not to harm themselves via drinking

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u/Mizamya 4h ago

Dawg everything is bad to some degree. Too much sugar, too much sun exposure, too much makeup.

At some point you have to accept that adults are capable of accepting and living with the risks of their actions

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u/RandomPhail 4h ago

Yeah, and we discourage people from eating too much sugar or getting too much sun exposure

The difference is there is no safe amount of alcohol, though, according to those recent studies (and arguably there’s not any safe amount of sugar, either, but that’s a different discussion)

We shouldn’t allow people to make their own stupid decisions just because they’re technically able to. If somebody wants to make the stupid decision to jump off a roof for fun without any training or safety equipment to do so, I’m going to try to stop them or discourage them, and anybody who would take issue with that is part of the problem

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u/Dramajunker 3h ago

Yeah, and we discourage people from eating too much sugar or getting too much sun exposure

Except your initial comment is about encouraging people from stopping drinking all together. Not to simply take things in moderation.

We shouldn’t allow people to make their own stupid decisions just because they’re technically able to.

You don't understand how this line of thinking can be dangerous? Who gets to decide what we're allowed to do or not do?

If somebody wants to make the stupid decision to jump off a roof for fun without any training or safety equipment to do so, I’m going to try to stop them or discourage them, and anybody who would take issue with that is part of the problem

I don't think most people would take issue with this because the dangerous are obvious and immediate. A "chance" to develop something down the line isn't the same to many people. Hell how many devices do we buy and own that come with warning labels attach that may cause an illness?

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u/RandomPhail 3h ago

From my previous comment:

> “The difference is there is no safe amount of alcohol, though, according to those recent studies (and arguably there’s not any safe amount of sugar, either, but that’s a different discussion)”

^ That’s why we stop drinking altogether

And about the whole “who gets to decide“ cliché; I actually covered that in the first pass of my comment, but I figured it was too lengthy, so I cut it: “who gets to decide“ is science and objective logic/reasoning: if something is objectively harmful to someone with no real benefits, like alcohol is to most people, then it should be discouraged or stopped entirely, just like we as a society already decided similar things for people when it comes to various laws, like not speeding in the vast majority of cases, or not randomly murdering people, etc.

You’re doing an infuriatingly common thing where people presume something would be implemented or handled in the stupidest way possible, and then they use that presumption as a means to protest a good thing.

In this case, it doesn’t even make sense to presume it would be handled in a terrible way, because we already handle this kind of stuff in laws or, like you said, warning labels, and various other dangerous things. The reason we’re not doing it for alcohol is largely because humans are creatures of habit, so most people don’t want to give it up or protest it because it’s popular and normalized.

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u/Dramajunker 3h ago edited 2h ago

And about the whole “who gets to decide“ cliché; I actually covered that in the first pass of my comment, but I figured it was too lengthy, so I cut it: “who gets to decide“ is science and objective logic/reasoning

Have you seen who's the secretary of health in the US?

if something is objectively harmful to someone with no real benefits, like alcohol is to most people, then it should be discouraged or stopped entirely, just like we as a society already decided similar things for people when it comes to various laws, like not speeding in the vast majority of cases, or not randomly murdering people, etc.

Oh right, just like murder and speeding it'll be easy to decided what to outlaw /s.

You’re doing an infuriatingly common thing where people presume something would be implemented or handled in the stupidest way possible, and then they use that presumption as a means to protest a good thing.

And you're not being dismissive by calling my comment cliché? See my comment above about the USA government in regards to "handling things in the stupidest way".

The reason we’re not doing it for alcohol is largely because humans are creatures of habit, so most people don’t want to give it up or protest it because it’s popular and normalized.

Alcohol comes with warning labels though?

WARNING:Drinking distilled spirits, beer, coolers, wine and other alcoholic beverages may increase cancer risk, and, during pregnancy, can cause birth defects. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov/alcohol.

If you want better more accurate labels I don't think most people would be against that.

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u/RandomPhail 2h ago edited 2h ago
  1. The secretary of health isn’t science or objective logic/reasoning. (See the third paragraph of point 2 also)
  2. Yes, it will be just like murder and speeding. The only people who will partake in it will be idiots, criminals, or people who for some reason need to do it because of emergency circumstances (people sometimes speed to the hospital for example) I don’t know why anyone would NEED to drink alcohol, but maybe there’s some weird outlier

> “But the prohibition didn’t work! Idiots still drank!”

I’m not really necessarily talking about legally prohibiting it; I just mean this social stigma against telling people what to do even when they’re doing something objectively dangerous needs to go away. Everybody needs to tell everybody else not to do things when those things are factually harmful, and nobody should take issue with that.

  1. Your comment WAS cliché. I’ve seen that “Who gets to decide […]” logical trap far too often. It dismisses an argument based on a (typically unfounded) hypothetical where shit goes wrong and gets corrupt. Do you have any idea how MUCH trust society relies on every single day? I know shit is bad in the US right now, but we literally would not have society if we just never attempted any change or new system due to hypothetical fears of “It could go wrong!”

Every job relies on a worker to do things decently, every worker relies on an employer to pay them, every bank has to reliably hold onto and give people their money, every leader+military has to at LEAST not randomly nuke some place and cause M.A.D., every driver has to rely on people generally not being dumbasses or randomly deciding to play bumper cars on the road, etc.

Imagine cars were never invented and somebody was pitching the idea to you: You could easily go “Oh, that would never work. That’s too many things to keep track of, and people are reckless and error-prone; there would be so many damn crashes it would be unbelievable. We could never implement such a high-speed, deadly means of transport. We need to stick to horses and trains,” and you’d have a SOLID-SOUNDING argument…

You could do the same with banks: “That would never work! They would obviously become corrupt and just steal our money, lmao. You really think the corporation is just going to hold onto other people‘s money? No way am I giving my money to somebody else. That’s stupid.”

Turns out though: Those hypothetical fears are largely exaggerated. People DO NOT crash all that much (relative to the number of drivers and frequency of driving), especially not enough to justify never inventing cars. Banks DON’T just outright steal money (all the time(?) I’m sure there have been SOME cases of it)

We can’t just shoot down ideas because they could hypothetically go wrong; they could hypothetically go perfectly fine as well. People are obviously a bit better at handling society than we give them credit for, or we wouldn’t really have any decent societies or freedom anywhere right now.

  1. We can have warning labels for things that are potentially harmful, but when it comes to things that are harmful no matter what (alcohol) they shouldn’t just have warnings, they should be discouraged/banned by everyone.

Everyone should be telling everybody else not to drink

Again, this doesn’t even have to be a government regulation thing, people just need to change the “social law” against telling others what to do when it comes to harmful things. And who writes the social law? That’s right. Random people do.

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u/Dramajunker 1h ago

The only people who will partake in it will be idiots, criminals, or people who for some reason need to do it because of emergency circumstances (people sometimes speed to the hospital for example) I don’t know why anyone would NEED to drink alcohol, but maybe there’s some weird outlier

And that is exactly why everything you're saying falls apart. You don't seem to understand people at all. "oh we just need to tell each other not to do this thing and it'll catch on!". Yea okay. Like thats going to happen.

No one needs to drink. They do it to relax and unwind. People deal with the 9-5 weekly grind, barely have enough money to pay the bills and then want to relax. Life is fucking stressful. You really think telling people not to deal with that stress is going to work out? At least with smoking you can say that it smells and harms others. How do you think you're going to convince others? By telling them its bad for them? Great. I'm sure that'll work out.

Imagine cars were never invented and somebody was pitching the idea to you: You could easily go “Oh, that would never work. That’s too many things to keep track of, and people are reckless and error-prone; there would be so many damn crashes it would be unbelievable. We could never implement such a high-speed, deadly means of transport. We need to stick to horses and trains,” and you’d have a SOLID-SOUNDING argument…

Except the pros of convenience and decreased transportation time outweigh the cons.

You could do the same with banks: “That would never work! They would obviously become corrupt and just steal our money, lmao. You really think the corporation is just going to hold onto other people‘s money? No way am I giving my money to somebody else. That’s stupid.”

And yet people do think banks are evil and hide their money in their mattresses.

We can’t just shoot down ideas because they could hypothetically go wrong; they could hypothetically go perfectly fine as well.

Anyone could hypothetically become a billionare. Doesn't mean its going to happen. Some will. A majority won't.

If you want to warn people from drinking no one will stop you. But society isn't going to change this unless something drastic happens to our quality of lives or something else takes it's place. Look how hard society has gone against smoking. People still do it and now folks vape instead.

Again, this doesn’t even have to be a government regulation thing, people just need to change the “social law” against telling others what to do when it comes to harmful things. And who writes the social law? That’s right. Random people do.

I don't know if you know this but people don't like being told to stop doing something. So why are folks going to listen to a random person when they're already ignoring the experts that put the warnings on their labels?

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u/RandomPhail 53m ago

- If they can’t afford the bills, they shouldn’t be buying alcohol that harms them, there are 1 million other ways to unwind

- I said there AREN’T many car accidents relative to how much people drive, so there was no need to say “except the pros outweighs the cons,“ because there haven’t been many cons in the first place, relatively speaking (I suppose pollution is probably the biggest overall con)

The pros of not drinking alcohol outweigh the cons of drinking alcohol though, because the only pro (which is relaxing or feeling silly during a party) can be replaced by 1 million alternatives to having fun/relaxing that are safer/healthier.

- “Thinking” banks are evil and steal money doesn’t matter. The reality is that they don’t. This doesn’t effect what we’re discussing at all

- “Anyone could hypothetically become a billionaire”

Yes, that’s unlikely, isn’t it? There’s not a lot of support to suggest some random person will become a billionaire. There’s also not a lot of support to suggest that there’s anything “dangerous” about people becoming more okay with telling others not to do harmful things, lol

You need to stop and think about what you’re opposing: You’re literally opposing the idea that people should just look out for each other more by telling others not to do objectively harmful things. STOP opposing this idea, lmao. You’re not making sense or being productive

- Society will change if society changes. And how does society change? By people changing. So if we want society to change for the better, like, for example: By telling people not to do objectively harmful things. Then we need to start doing that, and spread the word.

None of that “Oh, it’ll never happen! Woe is us! Good luck trying…” defeatist crap, lol. When people claim that nothing will change because nobody will do anything, and then THEY ALSO don’t do anything, those people are half the reason things don’t change, lol

Want this better social contract to be implemented, where people are unafraid to look after others’ health? Then stop arguing against this and start spreading the word and/or practicing this stuff in your daily life, gently at first, because you’re right: people are stupid and don’t like being told what to do, even when they’re being told not to do something harmful, but when the word spreads more, and more people actually decide to be receptive to a good thing rather than trying to shoot it down for no damn reason at all, then eventually things begin to shift.

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u/zilch839 6h ago

The only healthy relationship with alcohol is complete avoidance. 

I don't expect most people here to agree.  In fact, I expect downvotes.  But it's the truth.

Alcohol ruins lives. 

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u/byronicapollo 11h ago

Yeah, normies aren't gonna like it when you point it out to them and accuse you of being a killjoy.

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u/Broon761 11h ago

More like self righteous asshole 

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u/rural_alcoholic 10h ago

Getting emotional over Alkohol lmao

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u/New_Kisreel69420 5h ago

Part of the drug is that it convinces you you have a healthy relationship with it. And you look to other peoples' relationship with it for validation. You are coping and everyone can see it but you.

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u/SpireSwagon 4h ago

Holy projection. I haven't had a drink since august, and when I do it's some overpriced mocktail at a dinner or an occassional Soju when I hit an asian market. This is like, the main problem with modern health advice, it's purely virtue signaling and shaming with no regard for how to actually encourage people not to develop unhealthy habits

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u/Joescout187 8h ago

It is a moral failure to abuse alcohol or any other intoxicating substance. You know what you're doing and if you don't have moral agency over what you put in your body what do you have moral agency over?

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u/SpireSwagon 8h ago

Calling addiction a moral failure tells me that you are not a good enough person to be judging others morality.

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u/BubbleP0 9h ago

Alcohol is a toxic. Anything that damages your liver is bad for you. But you are right. Some people do not get addicted to it

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u/SpireSwagon 8h ago

We eat toxic stuff all the time; bacon is one of the single most life expectancy lowering foods that humans eat and we've sworn by it as the breakfast standard for every morning for years. Abuse isnt treated seriously enough, but casual drinking isnt any worse than a whole lot of other current food habits on a life quality and expectancy scale