Drinking and Health

[uwe]

This is not to sound callous to people to whom alcohol poses a threat. Everyone has his own poison. If you have issues with it stay away.

Me, I drink wine mostly. To food. When there's no food with it, I curiously prefer a coke. If I'm eating several courses on a night out, I can have 3-5 glasses and still not be drunk or chatty. Nor do I have a craving for another glass. And after, say, two days of having had more than a glass of wine to a home dinner, I don't feel like having wine on a third night and resort to coke or still water again.

I don't enjoy being drunk at all (not because of loss of control or any such thing, I just don't feel happier or better drunk) and I detest hangovers or throwing up (hasn't happened to me in decades).

[Chaser001]

I think drinking must have a tendency to make me drowsy more than it does with most other people.  For that reason, I tend to avoid it most of the time.  However, in the Netherlands, I found a drink called Beerenburger which hardly made me drowsy.  If I had access to something like that in the U.S., I might drink more. 

[the mojo hobo]

I don't enjoy being drunk at all (not because of loss pf control or any such thing, I just don't feel happier or better drunk) and I detest hangovers or throwing up (hasn't happened to me in decades).

I totally agree with the above, but I love bourbon whiskey, and as they say "too much whiskey is just enough".

[Dave W]

[Freuds_Cat]

Wine.  Hard to think about it in a bad way when nearly every facet of it has been arround almost my entire life.

[Basvarken]

I hardly ever drink any alcohol when I'm at home. Floor doesn't drink at all and I don't see the fun in drinking alone.

But when I'm with company who likes a beer or a glass of wine, I really enjoy a few drinks.
I do like to get a little drunk / a bit tipsy now and then.

When I was in my twenties I really drank a lot. Everybody seemed to drink an awful lot back then. That's what students do I guess.
We used to have parties until six in the morning. Then go downtown to the first pub opening, for a cup of coffee (not that it helped any). And then straight to the Arts Academy to present/discuss our work... totally pissed of course! 

[Dave W]

Same with me. I'll have a couple of beers or occasionally wine when I'm out with friends. At home, almost never.

[Barklessdog]

Mankind was built on alcohol.

I saw an interesting show on the food network about beer. The show was about how almost everything in mankind (except religion) was done so because of, or with beer. Early man discovered making beer from grain, so they needed to have farms, thus created agriculture (no longer nomadic hunter gatherers). Because they had to stay put, so they created towns & cities. They then needed a way to keep track of it, so the math was created. Beer was not so much an alcoholic pastime but more as a nutritional supplement (low alcohol, high nutrition) that sustained families. Ancient Egyptian workers were paid in beer. Later currency was created to buy & sell beer rather than barter.

[rahock]

And somehow there was beer in almost every civilization long before travel and ability to share such information was available.
Rick

[Barklessdog]

[Dave W]

It's a hypothesis, nothing more. And it's not widely accepted. It's just one study from a Canadian anthropologist that was published last year.

Anyway, time for some Tom T. Hall.

[Barklessdog]

It's a hypothesis, nothing more. And it's not widely accepted. It's just one study from a Canadian anthropologist that was published last year.

Anyway, time for some Tom T. Hall.

Like evolution?

[Dave W]

Like evolution?

No, not even remotely like evolution, which is widely accepted by the scientific community and is a theory based on certain evidence, not a hypothesis.

This is one study from one anthropologist in one journal. Because the story got picked up by the news media, somehow people think it's fact.

[Pilgrim]

There is plenty of evidence that agriculture the basic technology of planting food) is the basis of humans exiting the hunter-gatherer stage and establishing the beginning of civilization. Beer is one of those things that takes time to make, so I'd opine from my studies that it followed the establishment of agriculture, not the other way around.

Beer is certainly a constant across civilizations, but I don't buy it as the establishing factor.

[Grog]

I would rather have one or two dark beers once in a while, rather than a whole case of light beer. I found this "Black Ale" last year and am in the process of finding a case locally.

http://www.pointbeer.com/2012-black-ale

It's the beer for the "End of the world, or a New beginning"!