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What's the longest you've gone without a beer/drink?

It's an interesting thought whether alcohol (or Ethanol to give its proper name) would be allowed as a foodstuff if it was to be introduced today as a new product.
I've read people saying that about processed/refined sugar too tbh, due to the effects over consumption has on so many people.

I have a drink maybe 3 or 4 evenings per week, this week I haven't had one since Sunday.
I don't usually drink all that much in a single day under normal circumstances, but sometimes a few more when there's something to celebrate or we have friends or family round, or I just feel like it. I keep toying with knocking it on the head for a month or two just to see if I felt any different, but I haven't done yet. Right now I don't feel it's doing me any great harm in all honesty and the rest of my diet is pretty decent.
 
1 week sober, and i'm still hung over :)

1-2 years a long time ago.

A few years ago, I was on antibiotics (amoxicillin) for 5 days. For the first 4, if ate or drank anything, even a few sips of water, I'd start vomiting within 5 min.
 
2/3 days unless feeling a bit sickly. find it difficult to enjoy grub without a glass of wine these days.
 
I used to enjoy drinking, but I'm not sure if it was the drinking or the socialising I enjoyed. Much to my initial surprise, I enjoy socialising sober just as much as I did drinking. I was always under the impression the drink is what made it fun, I really believed that since I started as a teenager.
Either way I had to stop as I had to constantly control my drinking. Then one day I realised it's the drink controlling me, and I thought no, fxxk that, I'm stopping. End of problem.
But I'm not judgemental at all, each to their own. Most people are really funny after a few drinks, others turn into assholes, some become incredibly boring. One other thing I was surprised to find was that people are only really interested in getting there own drink on, they couldn't really give a toss if I'm not getting pissed too.
 
It's an interesting thought whether alcohol (or Ethanol to give its proper name) would be allowed as a foodstuff if it was to be introduced today as a new product. Lethal in not very high doses, addictive, depressant, prone to causing violence, damaging to organs. We are socially conditioned that it's a bit of a laugh, but really, if we could step outside ourselves for a minute we'd probably view it with the same distain as heroin.
Of course, without question if it were discovered today.

Maybe, but people have been consuming alcohol and other inebriants since records began, and for the same reasons they are consumed now; as a relaxant and (partial) escape from reality. It's never really been a 'foodstuff', except for when weak beer was used as a substitute for water when water itself was unsafe to drink.
As you say every society has a way of escaping the general misery that was daily existence for most of our history. If it's not alcohol it's opium, tobacco, coca, mescal, mushrooms, frog poisons and God knows what. Didn't the Vikings get their warriors stoked up on something noxious so that they went into battle ready to fight anything?
 
I drive a lot for work, very early starts most days so no drinking in the week. I sometimes have a few over the weekend but not always. But just like snacky food, if it is in the house then booze will get drunk so I tend not to have it just lying around and only buy it when I want it.
 
As you say every society has a way of escaping the general misery that was daily existence for most of our history. If it's not alcohol it's opium, tobacco, coca, mescal, mushrooms, frog poisons and God knows what. Didn't the Vikings get their warriors stoked up on something noxious so that they went into battle ready to fight anything?


Vikings smikings. Jews were ceremonially consuming jazz tobacco over 3000 years before The Beastie Boys.

Archaeologists Identify Traces of Burnt Cannabis in Ancient Jewish Shrine - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cannabis-found-altar-ancient-israeli-shrine-180975016/
 
Of course, without question if it were discovered today.


As you say every society has a way of escaping the general misery that was daily existence for most of our history. If it's not alcohol it's opium, tobacco, coca, mescal, mushrooms, frog poisons and God knows what. Didn't the Vikings get their warriors stoked up on something noxious so that they went into battle ready to fight anything?
Carlsberg?
 
Maybe, but people have been consuming alcohol and other inebriants since records began, and for the same reasons they are consumed now; as a relaxant and (partial) escape from reality. It's never really been a 'foodstuff', except for when weak beer was used as a substitute for water when water itself was unsafe to drink.

I wonder if it's also been used as a way to control the working classes. Build the houses, get the workers in, send them down the pit, live in shit conditions, and drown their sorrows every night down the pub spending their pittance wages.
 
Vikings smikings. Jews were ceremonially consuming jazz tobacco over 3000 years before The Beastie Boys.

Archaeologists Identify Traces of Burnt Cannabis in Ancient Jewish Shrine - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cannabis-found-altar-ancient-israeli-shrine-180975016/

& it's possible-to-really-rather-likely that the hallucinatory imagery of that most problematic text that the ChristoFundies cling to, the whole all-end-of-times and tongues-of fire-and-damnation fun bit -id est, The Revelation of St John of Patmos - are simply the result of Ergotism. An LSD-like state. Which resulted in a text which is a mystical call to war - '**** the Romans' and the place suggested - Har Megido, yes it really exists, has been excavated - was simply the nearest Roman garrison. The Place of the End of the world on a rather smaller scale than expected.

Har Megido got translated as Armageddon, the whole metaphor for a bit of local Resistance to Roman rule, subsequently blown way out of proportion ...anyway, even at the Council of Nicea, CE329. it was very controversial as to whether the text should even be included in the Bible 'canon' because - well, it just doesn't really fit, at all. ...and yet the prospect... still gets some weirdos really, really excited.

Now, without it we'd be left with the gospel message of peace and doing the right thing by one another; Paul's fervent & slightly weird exegesis of sim with his own views added.. and that'd be it, for christianism. More Carrot, no Stick.


Think just how different that might have proven.
 
I wonder if it's also been used as a way to control the working classes. Build the houses, get the workers in, send them down the pit, live in shit conditions, and drown their sorrows every night down the pub spending their pittance wages.
Maybe but the upper classes drank just as much, if not more than the working classes,
 
I wonder if it's also been used as a way to control the working classes. Build the houses, get the workers in, send them down the pit, live in shit conditions, and drown their sorrows every night down the pub spending their pittance wages.


...those were the days

hogarthsginlane.jpg
 
Maybe but the upper classes drank just as much, if not more than the working classes,
It isn't either-or. There's enough to go round, after all. We'll keep beer because it's the only stuff fit to drink, the poor can be sedated with plenty of gin, and the rich can keep a glow on with the claret and sherry coming off the ships. That are themselves made just about tolerable by seeing to it that the sailors get a good slug of rum every few hours in the day to keep the workrate up.
 
...those were the days

hogarthsginlane.jpg
Hogarth was showing the deleterious effects of gin being free of tax (drunk for a penny; dead drunk for tuppence) whereas his beer street image showed a happy, healthy and industrious community.
 


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