Random quote on the internet:

[conuly]

I've never been a heavy drinker; in fact, I can't really handle more than six or seven drinks. But the nagging desire for a drink every night (which turns into 3 or 4) has been bothering me increasingly

I'm not sure what your definition of "heavy drinker" is, buddy, but I think you just might be one!

*************

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Comments

[wpadmirer]

Six or seven drinks? Wow. Yeah, he's already a heavy drinker. He's an alcoholic and hasn't realized it, yet.

[conuly]

With a three drink minimum every single night, which evidently he can't just decide not to do.

[malada]

The social stigma to having 5 minute sneezing fits will make anyone anxious. Sheeesh.

And then the OTC medication makes you dopey. :-P

-m

[conuly]

True enough.

[adrian_turtle]

Allergy symptoms interfere with sleep, and sleep deprivation contributes to depression as well as anxiety. A lot of allergy meds also interfere with sleep (daytime sleepiness, night wakefulness, or just getting in the way of really deep sleep.)

[conuly]

Many of the common OTC allergy meds, if taken regularly, are associated with a high risk of dementia later. I can't help but think that the effects might start earlier in some ways.

[havocthecat]

...wow, yeah, that's some self-delusion or an adult child of an alcoholic with a skewed definition of "heavy drinker" who was set up for failure from the start.

[conuly]

Yup.

[moon_custafer]

Is this person living in 1948? Seriously, one of the things I find both fascinating and slightly worrying in the novels of Frederic Brown is the frequent narrative denial of what, from an early-twentieth-century PoV, is pretty definitely alcoholism in many of his protagonists. I don’t know whether it’s deliberate irony or whether his society just had a way narrower definition and as long as you only went on a binge every couple of years, it didn’t count?

[moon_custafer]

OK that stylus is delightful.

[conuly]

I know!

[breathedout]

Is there info about where this person is from? Normative alcohol consumption definitely varies culturally. I've hung out in groups of Russians & Australians for whom not being able to handle 8 drinks stretched out over a night would definitely qualify you as a lightweight, especially for a cis man in his 20s-50s. (Some fairly horrifying dinner parties resulted from the addition of ACTUALLY lightweight Californians into this milieu.)

[conuly]

He may be from Australia, but he also states that he's troubled by his increasing desire for one drink every night - which always ends up at three or four drinks (or more, most likely). It's the twofer that gets me.

[breathedout]

Yes, definitely agreed on the one-two punch of needing to drink every night + not being able to stop at one.

[adrian_turtle]

Normative alcohol consumption definitely varies culturally.

This is true, and the relevant culture can be awfully local. If a person raised by alcoholics grows up and moves into a heavy-drinking fraternity or somesuch, and then hangs out with buddies who all drink...they might not notice what's normative for the people across the street. Not unless there are people across the street talking explicitly about not drinking at all, or about how 3-martini lunches are so expensive these days.

I remember my high school debate coach explaining that he hadn't been drinking to excess the night before, he'd only had 6 beers. I later found out he had been lying--he'd had 15 or so, but many of the people at the adult party had more than 20. I think those people only drank on weekends, though.

When I was in grad school, there was a lab group upstairs from me where the researchers often went out for lunch together. They'd talk about biology, and everything else, over pizza and beer. And beer. And beer. And beer. (Or maybe scotch, if the PI came along.) It seemed like a lot to me, but was it normative? I knew I was kind of a weirdo for not drinking at all.

[alasse_irena]

Yeah, no, as an Australian I definitely know a bunch of people who would consider having two-ish drinks every night perfectly reasonable. So if the writer's two drinks is creeping up to 3 or 4, and that's worrying him, that makes sense.

Also worth noting, the US standard drink is 1.5 times bigger than ours, so depending on how we're counting drinks, three or four may not be that much! There's 2 Australian standard drinks in a large glass of wine.

I don't know what Americans drink like, really, but while I wouldn't do it often, 8 standard drinks is well within my comfortable limits over the course of an evening in with friends, and I am a cis girl who doesn't drink a heap by Australian standards, so I imagine men in more alcohol-focused social groups have wildly different views of what's normal.

I definitely had dinner parties when I was in Japan where my Japanese friends got absolutely hammered on an amount that I barely noticed, so - cultural & social expectations!

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Amazing how the possibility that the most innocuous things in your environment might kill you at any moment correlates with anxiety. Hit me with a four-by-four and call me astonished.

[conuly]

Yup!