Alcohol

Person_one

emsywoo123 wrote: »

You said "You can't go without drinking for days without having unpleasant withdrawal symptoms."

This is not always true! Where could wires be crossed?

Maybe not always, but for truly dependent drinkers it does tend to be the case. Withdrawal doesn't have to mean the DTs, sometimes its headaches, or nausea or feeling shaky. A hangover is basically withdrawal, hence 'hair of the dog' as a cure.

I thought wires were crossed because you said "going for days without withdrawal symptoms." which isn't quite what I was talking about.

emsywoo123

Person_one wrote: »

Maybe not always, but for truly dependent drinkers it does tend to be the case. Withdrawal doesn't have to mean the DTs, sometimes its headaches, or nausea or feeling shaky. A hangover is basically withdrawal, hence 'hair of the dog' as a cure.

I thought wires were crossed because you said "going for days without withdrawal symptoms." which isn't quite what I was talking about.

I lived for long enough with someone dependant on alcohol. This does not mean whiskey on the cornflakes, nor the requirement to drink every day. 3 days could pass with him not touching a drop, nor displaying any sort of withdrawal symptoms. This made him no less an alcoholic. Perpetrating the myth that one dependant on alcohol has certain characteristics or obvious signs does not help anyone.

Person_one

emsywoo123 wrote: »

I lived for long enough with someone dependant on alcohol. This does not mean whiskey on the cornflakes, nor the requirement to drink every day. 3 days could pass with him not touching a drop, nor displaying any sort of withdrawal symptoms. This made him no less an alcoholic. Perpetrating the myth that one dependant on alcohol has certain characteristics or obvious signs does not help anyone.

Fair enough, I'm surprised by that but I've never lived with one thankfully. I hope that experience hasn't caused you any lasting harm.

However, calling everybody who drinks an alcoholic, and suggesting that people who have a drink at the weekend or every now and then with friends are addicts doesn't help anyone either. Which was the content of the post I was initially responding to.

pukkamum

Gingernutty wrote: »

Ah yes, extrapolating and generalising from personal experience.

Just coz, don't mean......

It all depends on genetic make-up and predisposition as well as length of use.

Cannabis hasn't been as widely available in such variety as it is today. There hasn't been enough time to assess the long term effects of prolonged use across a wide cross section of the population.

As with alcohol, some people are absolutely fine, others become paranoid and potentially self destructive or violent - there's no way of telling who'll dno what before they take the first dose.

Lung conditions? Some rarely seen in younger patients are being seen in
increasing numbers decades before they should be noticable especially since there is less heavy industry and fewer life long smokers out there - what that could be down to is anyone's guess.
Just coz you've never seen/heard of it, don't mean it can't/hasn't happened.

Of course it doesn't mean it doesn't happen I am merely saying that in my experience of both types I would take the stoner yes some can smoke to excess and suffer mental problems as well as physical but although I do not know the exact numbers I would be willing to bet that the percentage of heavy cannabis users developing serious mental and physical ailments is small compared to the heavy drinker.
Not every smoker is smoking super skunk.

pukkamum

As for the lung conditions I would be more inclined to look at car pollution and the tobacco used in joints, something many old school smokers do not use, my dad has been smoking weed since the age of 16 he is 65 and fit as a fiddle he has never used tobacco in his joints.

miss_independent

NAR wrote: »

Good for you for making a stand. Of course you don't need alcohol to have a good time, being out for a meal with your favourite man will do. As I drink you could drive us home! :rotfl: :rotfl:

Lol just saw this. I like that you are so supportive of my being teetotal. Are you also ok with me being celibate? Cos I've kind of sworn off men for a while. Well, as of yesterday...

System

I think i've seen my parents tipsy twice in my life :eek: (both times as an adult)

In regards to weed, personally i'd rather be stoned than drunk. Alcohol has a very bad effect on me. Weed just makes me chilled out and mellow. But i can't afford it so don't smoke it. I've seen people turn into pretty nasty people when drunk but never whilst stoned. In regards to MH it think it (like any other drug) can cause problems in people who are pre-disposed to it. But that said i'm sure i read somewhere even with bipolar that in the states i could actually get a card for medicinal marujarnia. So i'm not sure.

inkie

I am teetotal and it doesn't impede my enjoyment of life

bitemebankers

Person_one wrote: »

If you are truly addicted to alcohol its a physical dependency. You can't go without drinking for days without having unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.

Its ridiculous and trivialises real, devastating, alcoholism to pretend that everybody who ever drinks is an addict.

Really, you need to do some reading up on this. It is now widely recognised by drug workers that many functioning alcoholics are binge drinkers. They frequently go several days without a drink. Just because you are personally unfamiliar with this form of alcohol abuse doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or that it doesn't kill a lot of people.

I've personally witnessed both this and the more commonly recognised form of alcoholism. Both are very serious and almost always end in premature death. The major difference, though, is that the former group are typically in denial that they're both addicted to alcohol and that they're killing themselves with it.

Recognising that there are different patterns of abuse is not the same as saying "everyone who drinks is an alcoholic". What I am saying is that there are some people who drink very heavily who are in denial. If you don't drink very heavily then obviously I'm not referring to you, am I? :j

bitemebankers

On cannabis vs alcohol. It should be pretty clear by now that no recreational drug is 100% safe. Well, not yet anyway (a small army of organic chemists are working on it though, I can assure you). However, it is possible to scientifically measure the relative harm of different drugs and cannabis is much less harmful than alcohol. This is undisputed fact.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm

When you choose to get high, whether it's with alcohol, cannabis or something else, you take your chances. What we do know for sure is that illegality makes any drug, including alcohol, much more dangerous for users and the general public alike.