Doctor Recommends Moderate Use of Poison

This article from Bloomberg debunks the propaganda going around that moderate drinking is healthy.

It turns out that studies saying moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers have been including reformed alcoholics in the "non-drinkers" category. If you exclude from "non-drinkers" those who, for example, stopped drinking because they're in a hospice, you get a different result.

The article cites Emanuel Rubin, a pathologist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University, who suggested last year that the evidence was strong enough that doctors should consider recommending that patients start drinking, saying  “the overwhelming evidence suggests that physicians should counsel lifelong nondrinkers at about 40 to 50 years of age to relax and take a drink a day."

This of course is bunk. Alcohol is a psychoactive, addictive, carcinogenic neurotoxin; that is, a poison. No good will come from using it. 

Do we really need to be more stupid than we already are?

A man in Calais, Maine was drinking on the Fourth of July and was killed instantly when he placed a type of fireworks called a "mortar" on top of his head and lit it. In case you don't know what a mortar is, this Youtube video shows some possibly inebriated men setting one off in their garage.

I don't know how stupid such people are when they're not drinking. There's good evidence, though, that however stupid you are normally, drinking makes you more so.

We don't need to be more stupid, most of us anyway. It has been speculated that IQ drops 30 points when you drink. If so, then when Stephen Hawking drinks, his IQ falls from 160 to 130, about the same as mine, so no problem, provided he's not trying to do theoretical physics. If your IQ is average (100) though, it falls to 70, which is classified as "mild mental retardation". I'm sure you have realized from experience that most people become "mentally retarded" when they drink.

Well, so what? What's the problem with a little chemically induced mental retardation now and then to liven things up a bit? Assuming you don't have any fireworks or, more to the point, firearms within reach, what's the harm?

As middle class Americans, we can afford a certain amount of stupidity and not starve. However, here are some things that you should not do after drinking, because stupidity in these contexts can have dire consequences:

• Begin new sexual relationships.
• Have important discussions with your family, co-workers or clients.
• Make investment decisions.
• Make expensive purchases.
• Operate machinery or motorized vehicles.
• Vote.
• Gamble.
• Use fireworks or firearms.
• Fail to follow these rules.

That last one is a problem. Everything will probably be OK if you just remember to not do those dangerous things when you've been drinking. But the problem is, you've been drinking, so you're mentally retarded, so you won't remember not to make life-altering mistakes. Stupid is stupid. When you're stupid, you're also stupid about being stupid.

When you're not drinking, you probably know how smart you are, or aren't. When you drink, you think you're a whole lot smarter but you're actually a whole lot stupider. In fact, it tends to make you feel like Superman or Superwoman. Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound. Able to set off powerful fireworks on your head and live to tell about it.

The only real way to avoid alcohol-induced disaster is: don't drink, unless you're Stephen Hawking.

Bottoms up, Stephen!

The Easy/Hard Game

Let's play a game that I call "Easy/Hard". Make a list of things that are easy and another list of things that are hard. The question is, why do we ever do the things that are hard? Easy is much better, isn't it?

In my experience, people who do hard things more and easy things less are happier.

Some things that are easy:

• Watching television
• Masturbating

Some things that are hard:

• Getting an education
• Marriage and children

Alcohol belongs on the "easy" list of course. In fact it's at the top of the list of "easy" things we do. If we want to be happy, we should be doing the "hard" things not the "easy" ones.

Brain Eating Disease

We don't consume alcohol so much as alcohol consumes us. We don't abuse it so much as it abuses us.

We think we're in control of alcohol, but we're not. Like a brain parasite from some science fiction magazine, it takes control and sooner or later turns us into zombie drinking machines.

Here is a quote from alcoholrehab.com:

Alcohol is a type of drug known as a depressant. This means that it inhibits certain receptors in the brain and the result of this is that there is a depressive effect on the central nervous system. It is hardly surprising then that chronic alcohol abuse leads the individual to develop depression. The irony is that many of these individuals will be using alcohol already as a means to escape depressive symptoms. While they may initially feel like they are getting some reprieve they are actually making things worse.

So it's a vicious cycle. We're depressed, so we drink, which makes us more depressed, so we drink some more. This is why I call alcohol "our unfaithful friend". We turn to it for help but it stabs us in the back.

Made in China

We just finished rebuilding our basement stairs. We bought cheap wooden treads (pine) at Home Depot. They were made in China.

How is it that it's cheaper to make a heavy, low-tech product like a stair tread half a world away and ship it here? If you follow Fox News, you "know" that it's because American workers are lazy, stupid, and overpaid. I would add that they are also drunks.

I'm 65 years old, and I have decades of experience as both an employee and employer. Whatever workers may be, it's a much bigger problem for America when managers and executives are lazy, stupid, overpaid drunks.

OK, I hear you. "If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?" It's because when I had the chance as an owner of a small business, I was a lazy, stupid, underpaid drunk. At least I wasn't overpaid, give me that.

American workers may believe that they are "entitled", but managers and executives believe that in spades. For executives to be casting aspersions on workers is a serious case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Whether you're a worker or management, if you drink, you're likely to believe that someone else is the problem. Alcohol, your "unfaithful friend" as I call it, whispers in your ear that you can avoid responsibility and indulge yourself in fantasies without suffering the annoyance of obvious facts. 

The world does depend on you after all. You can't, as Ayn Rand suggested in Atlas Shrugged, hide out in your protected enclave and let the rest of the world go to pot. In the Book of Luke Jesus says, "But someone who does not know, and then does something wrong, will be punished only lightly. When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required."

Managers and executives, stop drinking now and do your job.

The Last Supper

According to Christian belief, Jesus offered bread and wine to his disciples at the "Last Supper" before he was crucified, and so the drinking of wine has become part of the Christian rite of communion.

If you're in the business of selling alcohol, what more could you ask for than to place it at the center of the world's most influential religion? It is literally endorsed by God.

Does God really want us to use alcohol? I think not, considering that it tends to lead us away from everything that religion tries to teach.

Using alcohol is not OK. It's the principal reason that we act stupidly and make ourselves and everyone around us unhappy. Christianity should reject alcohol use absolutely.

Hornswoggled

You know the feeling. You've just come out of the convenience store and you realize that you gave a twenty but only got change for a ten. Or worse, you discover that you've invested your retirement savings with a crook and now instead of retiring you have to work at Walmart the rest of your life.

You've been cheated. Even when only a little bit of your life has been stolen from you, it's a horrifying and debilitating feeling. If you've lost a lot, it can be excruciating.

Alcohol is a massive scam that robs you of your life every bit as much as the convenience store clerk or the investment swindler. If you stop drinking long enough to see what it has done to you, you're going to have that awful feeling that you've been "hornswoggled". Alcohol is the most vicious con of them all.

That knot in your stomach, the cold chills, when the realization hits you that you've been cheated, I call it the "awakening". It's just about the worst feeling ever, enough to drive you to drink. And that's probably what you'll do, any time you wake up sober with reality staring you cold in the face like your worst zombie nightmare. Have a drink, get back on the train to dreamland, and make that awful feeling go away.

Except it keeps coming back, that hoary ghost of intoxications past. So you drink some more to keep it at bay. You simply can't face up to the cesspool that alcohol has made of your life.

If you do ever manage to stop drinking and struggle through the depression, there is real happiness waiting at the end of that long, dark tunnel. It may take a year, maybe two, maybe more, but eventually you will come out into the light. You will have rescued your life from the great swindler and be on the road to a good life.