To cut it short, I think a tiny amount of alcohol can be a superb bargain. It allowed me to stay a bit neutral in parties (instead of crippled by anxiety and phobia). And being around people, even like a wallpaper had strange positive effect on my moral. I don't know if doing that long term (even tiny amount of beer) would harm your body, but having zero social life is also very very damaging.
Well, we are social creatures. Even the most introverted of us (finger points at self). So no surprise that being around parties/other people has a positive effect on moral.
The health benefits of the social contact almost certainly outweigh the negative health impacts of a tiny amount of alcohol.
A lot of drugs make you more social, but sadly they are all outlawed except alcohol. MDMA was used for years to lubricate psicotherapy sessions, until the FDA found out that some people was having "too much fun", banned the thing, and denied it has any possible positive effect. Only two years ago it seems that it is going to be reseached again.
Thomas Szasz has some books about drug history and the paths that turns a substance from legal to illegal. It only takes a high level guy to find the usage, made up some "facts", and illegalize it. Sadly, society is quick to buy those lies. E.g. someone claimed that some guys on LSD stared the sun for too long and got blind. It was a hoax, but so many media repeated the story that it got ingrained in the society that LSD is highly dangerous.
I am surprised to learn that Szasz was in support of any drug use in therapy, given that he went on to cofound CCHR, a branch of the church of scientology whose mission it is to ban psychiatry.
These are the people who claim "psychs" killed Kurt Cobain
Perhaps slightly TMI, but it's HN so let's share some fun ideas I have about this.
__Stress is most likely super linear__
Not a doctor, but from what I know, the biggest negative effects of alcohol occur with binge drinking. From a logical perspective it makes sense that the negative effects are super linear, because that is the case with many forms of stress. When it comes to stress, there is always some threshhold value that you need to reach. When it is just over that threshhold value, you hurt, but you hurt a lot more if you reach 1.5threshhold value because there is 0.5threshhold value to wreak full havoc on your body while 1*threshhold value is being occupied with your body. Obviously, this way of thinking is simplified, but I think that's the intuition as to why many (but not all) forms of stress are super linear.
__Effects of alcohol in small and large quantities__
I think I've learned this particular fact about alcohol in my psych classes though, I can't fully remember so I can't cite sources (!). Another thing that I have learned is that alcohol is an upper at low quantities (1 to 2 standard glasses of beer), it gets your heart rate up, etc. It is a downer at larger quantities (e.g. drunk people at 10 standard glasses of beer). If you don't drink much alcohol, then you are most likely experiencing it as an upper, it doesn't continue that way.
I like to drink 1 to 2 glasses as well because of what you said, but also because it's an upper. When I was in my drug experimentation phase a few years ago, I've noticed I like uppers more.
__How to create upper effects without alcohol__
You don't have to drink alcohol to create an upper effect, when you go to a party, try this the next time: exercise beforehand, like a 3 to 6 mile run (if you have the stamina for that otherwise build it up). That will also produce a mild upper effect like alcohol. Another trick you can do is to present yourself as a hugger at the party (well maybe not with corona) and hug everyone you meet, that will also produce an upper effect. Also, dancing at parties will produce an upper effect (any aerobic exercise really).
My workshop on partying is open again in the summer, applications are open :P I guess I miss that time of my life. Partying sober is something to get used to, but it's possible (before I started experimenting with drugs, I started experimenting with partying sober, I've seen both sides).
> Another thing that I have learned is that alcohol is an upper at low quantities (1 to 2 standard glasses of beer), it gets your heart rate up, etc. It is a downer at larger quantities (e.g. drunk people at 10 standard glasses of beer). If you don't drink much alcohol, then you are most likely experiencing it as an upper, it doesn't continue that way.
> I like to drink 1 to 2 glasses as well because of what you said, but also because it's an upper.
That's an awesome share! Thanks for mentioning it it.
More importantly, it's definitely not the case that that organization is real, it's merely fiction. And I definitely am not trying to thwart it by inticing people to drink one to TWO glasses.
However, if it were to be real, then one could say that my plan might be diabolical indeed.
> Another trick you can do is to present yourself as a hugger at the party (well maybe not with corona) and hug everyone you meet, that will also produce an upper effect. Also, dancing at parties will produce an upper effect (any aerobic exercise really).
This advice is not very productive for people who drink because they have social anxiety at parties though :-)
Normally people say exponential, but I think that's a silly term as it is quite a specific term since it means that the exponent is a variable (e.g. 2^x, 3^x, for every n, so n^x). For example, x^2 is super linear, but it isn't exponential. Yet, I'm fairly sure that I've heard people say that something is "exploding exponentially" but what they meant is that it's super linear since they got the faintest clue how much faster their projections are going compared to a linear projection.
