Don’t believe those who say they can handle If someone tells you they can handle their liquor because they drink heavily and frequently, don’t believe it, a new study suggests. They are may be more impaired than they know
  • SDK@midwest.socialEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    Holy shit. It is way too easy, living in Wisconsin, to normalize alcohol use disorder. Damn. So many people in my life meet the definition of “heavy social drinker”. I’m not far off. I really need to dry out.

    • nutlink@beehaw.orgEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      I didn’t realize how much I, or my family, drank before we left Wisconsin 20 years ago. We always had alcohol, and in hindsight, were often pretty drunk. I thought having 3-5 beers at dinner at a restaurant was normal. I thought having a 6 pack while driving from Green Bay to the cabin was normal. I thought a bottle lasting through a weekend was “taking it easy.”

      I thought all that because that’s how my family, friends, and coworkers were. It’s how I grew up. How I saw my wife’s family do it. How work functions went.

      Best thing I ever did for my liver was leave that state. It opened my eyes to how normalized it all was.

    • MeowKittyWow@beehaw.orgEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Grew up in the Maritimes in Canada and that sort of culture was there for me, too. I definitely had some bad alcohol habits in my early to mid 20s. At one point, I could go through a 1.5 litre of wine solo, no problem.

      I’ve dried out somewhat. Still a few drinks a week, but moderation is good (and cheaper)

  • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I think a better headline would be something like “Limits of alcohol tolerance.” After the 4-5 drink-equivalent drink, the heavy drinkers did well on the cognitive test even though they didn’t do any better than the light drinkers at the manual dexterity test. It looks like tolerance does affect certain faculties, up to a point.

    They also didn’t test the light drinkers at the 7-8 drink dose, so I’m not sure we can draw any conclusions there. The heavy drinkers did badly, but they still might have out-performed light drinkers. (If you gave me seven drinks in half an hour, I don’t think I’d be able to read the test.)

  • probableigh@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Still blows my mind that alcohol is so culturally normalized. And that’s as a light drinker myself. The amount of damage it causes is so disproportionate to how it’s handled and advertised.