> They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad?
Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience.
Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the bad parts, but the good parts come easily.
Alcohol is a cheap, ubiquitous drug that helps us relax today, for a roughly proportionate cost which we can pay tomorrow (plus whatever longer-term costs like liver damage or memory formation which we can ignore or put off for even longer).
It's not confusing or unintuitive. Alcohol helps us relax. That's all it does! Which leads to all the other behaviors that are secondary to suddenly finding oneself relaxed. At first, a healthy relationship with alcohol is a perfectly reasonable transaction. I think it is normal that we would have fond memories of being relaxed, even in the midst of the mild hangover that would necessarily follow.
We easily get addicted to cheap methods for getting relaxed. Why wouldn't we? Especially if everyone around us is constantly using it to get relaxed. It's disgusting to witness! Unless you also use it to relax, in which case it suddenly becomes tolerable or even amusing.
You don't need much to relax (initially). Like with most drugs, eventually it is less potent and you require more. Also, like with any habit, your default baseline (in this case, your default relaxedness) starts to shift, so that eventually you are actively un-relaxed unless alcohol is present in your system. Obviously, as this continues, you need more and more alcohol, which is toxic pretty much in direct proportion to its volume.
Edit: added the sentence about hangovers, for clarity
>Alcohol is a cheap, ubiquitous drug that helps us relax today, for a roughly proportionate cost which we can pay tomorrow
While I like this metaphor I don't think it's really true. As long as you drink in moderation the relaxation benefits easily outweigh the negatives. Of course, the converse is also true, you can drink so much that the negatives dwarf the positives.
> It's not confusing or unintuitive. Alcohol helps us relax. That's all it does!
Alcohol can also carry many flavors and dissolve oils in suspension (it is a solvent, after all). This is one of the reasons whiskies have such diverse flavors. Many vanilla extracts are also around 35-40% abv (alcohol free versions use glycerin?... I think?).
Alcohol (wines for example) can also useful in cooking, where the alcohol is boiled off and some of the flavors and oils are left behind.
The idea that alcohol helps people relax is actually an old (and incorrect) way of thinking about alcohol. The 'relaxtion' that is felt by alcohol is actually due to its addictiveness, and the cycle it puts you in. By drinking, you are entering a cycle where you crave the next drink, which is why it 'relaxes' you, it is actually just removing the very craving it places in you.
I remember when I climbed Guadalupe peak in west Texas. I got to the gate around 3:50, and 4pm is when they close new permits for camping near the summit. Well I start climbing and because I started to late the sun set before I even reached the camp site. So I set up my tent nearly in the dark as the temperatures were dropping. Well, I knew it was going to be cold, but I lived in Texas at the time and didn't really remember what to do in sub freezing temperatures overnight. Stayed up nearly the entire night shivering.
But I'll never forget the sun rise up the flat Texas horizon from the tallest peak in the state. It was so beautiful and peaceful there. Clear skies, everything was perfect. I don't really remember the night before anymore, just that I need to pack some extra layers next time.
The term I've heard to describe things like this (marathons, mountaineering, etc) is type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is actually fun while you're doing it, type 2 fun takes a couple of weeks to forget the suffering and to decide that it was in fact fun.
The term was popularized by alpinist Kelly Cordes, but goes back decades. Used frequently in ice climbing scene, because climbing a pitch of ice is generally a painful horrendous experience for most. But you’re so elated and adrenaline pumped when you reach the top, you get a “climbers high” that makes you want to keep going. Type 2 fun is a unique experience.
I am quite the opposite. I remember bad things quite readily, but have to remind myself repeatedly it wasn't all bad.
As for drinking, it was an excuse to act like an idiot and have some fun when I was younger I think. The hangovers did get much worse as I got older, so I rarely drink now and when I do I don't usually enjoy it that much.
>Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword.
I'm a strength athlete. Minor injuries are the norm, serious injuries are a guarantee if you lift long enough. I tore my meniscus a 14 months ago and kept on lifting and I have numerous friends that have delayed surgeries so that they could still compete in specific competitions.
It tears us up, it's miserable, but man it's worth every second of discomfort, every little bit of pain.
This reminds me of the book Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. There's a section were he discusses how we misremember how stressful and frustrating family vacations can be, and instead remember them as being more enjoyable due to some expectation that they should be.
In On Photography (I believe), Susan Sontag talks about how it has been a quintessentially American thing to ensure everyone was smiling in family snapshots. I wonder if cultures or families that tend to smile in photos end up taking more vacations because they misremember them as being better than they were.
It might also be related to the peak-end rule[1]. The most intense feeling of a hike can come in many places, probably at the end if the goal is to get somewhere in particular or to complete a specific goal. Although it might be mostly bad/hard, you remember the end (satisfying) and the peak emotion which is the good feeling.
My experience is of course anecdotal, but that’s not how I feel about alcohol.
I got drunk twice in my life. Once intentionally to see what it was like, and once by accident (thought I was having a couple beers, turns out they all had double the usual alcohol content so I was having twice what I thought I was having). Both experiences made me feel so bad that they were sort of traumatizing.
I’m not talking about the hangover (though that was awful too). The feeling of being drunk feels terrible to me. I feel like I’m losing control of myself. My face feels numb. People say that’s how it is, and I don’t understand how they can look forward to that.
Neurological diversity is a thing. I have no scientific evidence, but based on anecdata from friends, I think people can experience ethanol intoxication in very different ways.
One of my friends is a former alcoholic; he says that the sound of an aluminum can popping open feels like a religious moment. The sound is apparently so thoroughly associated with endless drinking and partying from his teenage years, that it triggers a brief rush of euphoria, followed by an immediate craving to drink a beer. He's talked about how the first time he was moderately intoxicated, it was the best feeling he'd ever had, both in an immediately euphoric sense, and in a deeper, comforting sort of way. "I just had this feeling that life was going to be all right," he says.
Scary stuff - and so very different from your experience.
Even when you think of the worst (physical) pain you've ever experienced... it never seems all bad (even when it was life-threatening!) - I actually remember it kind of fondly?! Is it some sort of Stockholm Syndrome for bad things?
I had my arm 90% severed in an industrial accident, judging by the amount of morphine they had me on, I must have been in a lot of pain. But I can't remember the feeling of the pain at all, but I can remember all the things I was doing to try and reduce the pain.
Every injury since (broken leg, broken collar bone, dislocated finger) has seemed like the worst pain I've ever experienced, but I know logically it can't be. And once I recover I forget the pain again.
I dunno man, I used to be addicted to heroin, and the feelings of withdrawel still haunt me.
Don’t get me wrong, I had some fun times on the stuff, but whenever I think about it all I remember is the worst and most terrible pain you could ever possibly imagine.
I know everyone is recommending the book Why We Sleep, but I'll pile on and say that I found it to be a fantastic read, and the consequences of alcohol consumption are devastating. Stats like 40+% reduction in retained information from just a few drinks the night after learning new facts. Or the night BEFORE learning new facts. And how the ill consequences occur even if you abstain for several DAYS after learning new facts, then have several drinks 3 days later.
That's interesting.. I wasn't aware this was studied. I stopped drinking years ago because I noticed that alcohol reduced the amount of code I could hold in my head, even up to a week later.
I would posit that enough adults drink often enough that society is generally structured to allow people to function with whatever impairment occasional drinking creates, since that would be the baseline capability for the average person.
That doesn't mean you couldn't benefit from doing better than that, though.
Interesting question - continued learning is directly linked to statically better cognitive function and fewer brain disorders in elderly people, but that doesn't necessarily mean that learning as an adult is important for operating effectively in society. So, I guess that would mean that it's not really necessary to retain new information at a certain point in your life. As long as you can still access information that you've already obtained (which I believe alcohol exposure over a prolonged time can affect)
I suppose this could extend to all kinds of things -- remembering to pay a bill, remembering appointments, peoples' names, project tasks, directions to new places, social obligations, where you parked your car, etc. But of course it's more relevant to things that need to be committed to long term memory, and I'm not familiar enough with how the brain works to opine on whether recurring things (bill payments) would be impacted.
It's this kind of thing... Trying not to sound preachy, but it just doesn't make sense that people, especially people who work with their brain, drink alcohol 'because it's fun'. Sorry, but that is stupid. No better way to put it. You have an incredibly complex and sensitive instrument, and you choose to bang it around a bit because it causes a funny effect. What more can you really say. There are loads of ways to have fun in life, alcohol is not necessary. Sorry for the blunt truth.
All drugs of abuse — alcohol, opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine — have adverse side effects. They make people nauseous or they give people hangovers, so why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember the good things about them and not the bad?
This seems like a weird question, at least in relation to alcohol. The pleasurable experience of alcohol is not only remembered but enthusiastically attested to by people currently under the influence. People have no problem remembering hangovers and talk about them frequently, and the other negative health effects are separated in time from the consumption experience, which weakens the association. I suspect this person has an unusual personal reaction to alcohol, but if it leads him to original discoveries, more power to him.
I probably have an “unusual reaction” to alcohol, since I don’t find it great. I’ve only gotten drunk twice in my life and it felt horrible, even kind of traumatizing. Not just the hangover, even the feeling of being drunk is very unpleasant to me.
Weirdly enough, at certain amounts of alcohol, I start to think about memories I haven't had in years. Nothing traumatic nor nostalgic, but just mundane memories from school or childhood. I suppose it's just the mind wandering to thoughts it normally doesn't think about while inebriated, forming unusual connections.
There's even pop culture references for such a phenomenon. As an example, in the movie Beerfest, they get one of the characters drunk so he can recall the way to a secret place that he had only previously experienced drunk before.
I actually once had a situation like this- in the village in NYC there is a secret club/lounge my friend took me to one night. That area is just filled with bars that these days are overrun with tourists and the post-college crowd. I went out to dinner with a friend one night about two years later, we had a few, and were looking for a night cap, and I was like ugh, lets just leave the neighborhood to avoid these loud places you have to fight for space in.
But... then I walked by this almost suspectly non-descript steel door at the bottom of a few stairs, and some part of my brain said "there is a secret club/lounge behind this door." It was kind of surreal. I hesitantly opened it, and what do you know... there we were.
So does 10 mg zolpidem tartrate. As in, totally prevents memory formation. Gotta be careful with that stuff.
And prototypically, marijuana. Back in the day, I'd always see movies stoned. That way, if I liked them, I could see them again freshly. And if I didn't liked them, I could forget about them more easily.
Brain injury can also obliterate memory abilities.
I've had a single moderate concussion, where one of my first memories afterwards is of sitting in the hospital emergency room with a couple friends. I had a notebook with my handwriting, containing several pages of questions/answers that my friends had me write down so they could stop repeating themselves to me.
Hey, but at least you had friends and something to write with :)
Overwhelmed as one would be, placed in my position
Such a heavy burden now to be the one
Born to bear and bring to all the details of our ending
To write it down for all the world to see
But I forgot my pen
Interesting that so many others in this thread experience the same side effects on their learning capabilities caused by even just a few drinks and/or lack of sleep. I feel significantly slower and much more mentally "foggy" for days after I drink more than 1-2 drinks in a sitting. I'm definitely still a social drinker, but this affirms my opinion that I need to further reduce my alcohol consumption (preferably remove it altogether).
> I feel significantly slower and much more mentally "foggy" for days after I drink more than 1-2 drinks in a sitting.
If it only takes 3 drinks and has this effect you clearly can't metabolise alcohol well and have a genetic difference to others, because that's not a normal westerner's experience. Perhaps you have an enzyme difference along the chain of breakdown
There is emotional pain and then there is physiological pain.
Drugs and alcohol alleviate emotional pain and have physilogical "pleasure" effects in some cases. But most of the negative effects that are frequently talked about are physiological.
Apples shouldn't be compared to oranges. A good comparison would for example be to compare the pleasures of drugs against the emotional toll caused by the negative sociological effects (can't get jobs,stigma,less friends in some cases,unintended harm to loved ones,etc...)
People take medical drugs like anti-depressants all the time knowing full well long term use can have side effects and even in the short term there can be severe side effects.
I think, because of how society views alcohol, it's possible for not drinking to have a negative sociological and emotional effect. For example, someone gets passed up for a promotion because they don't go out to happy hour.
Not drinking can have a negative sociological and emotional effect regardless of how society views alcohol. I've had numerous interesting/strange life experiences that probably wouldn't have been possible without alcohol. I'll gladly pay the price of having a few bad hangovers and worse factual recall to (hopefully) continue to have those kinds of experiences.
This. This is huge for me as well. There is definitely a societal expectation to drink in certain situations, and if you don't, you're viewed as one of the un-cool guys. Probably another thing that will require change at the leadership level to be really corrected over time.
If alcohol were invented today, I don't think there's any way it would be legal in most nations. The only reason we tolerate it as a society is millennia of inertia.
Geez, lighten up. Yes, some people definitely develop alcohol addiction but about 80% do not and are free to enjoy good quality drinks that not only give you a buzz, but also potentially taste great like good wine or whisky or mezcal.
I think there is almost a neo-Prohibitionist attitude coming from some, of late. Though this is largely anecdotal, I think it got ratcheted up by the movement to see marijuana legalized, where weed has often been compared to alcohol.
Aside from this, I agree that the vast majority can enjoy these substances without destroying themselves, leading very productive lives with some of the evident downsides that even casual consumption can bring.
The entire point of this thread is that even small doses of alcohol -- doses well within what we consider to be moderate drinking -- have fairly extreme negative effects on memory. This is a problem even for the 80% of drinkers who do not develop alcohol addiction.
As we start to actually study the effects of alcohol, it really looks like it is a hard drug with no net positive effects at anything over a minuscule dose.
You'll find that alcohol is a lot like cigarettes. Cigarettes used to be everywhere, even doctors would prescribe cigarettes to their patients. Then people started slowly waking up to the idea that nicotine is a highly addictive and toxic substance. People started looking at cigarettes differently, they stopped putting cigs in movies, and people stopped glamorizing cigarettes in the media. Now we have big warnings on all cigarettes saying how bad they are for you. In some circles it is even uncool to smoke cigs.
I think outlawing it now would be about as successful as the first Prohibition in the USA (i.e. not at all) but I do think it should be regulated more closely (e.g. very strong restrictions on alcohol advertising and perhaps plain packaging and black box warnings similar to cigarette packaging) and that the dangers of alcohol should be taught more widely.
In the Clean episode of "How we got to now" with Steven Johnson, Steven states that the beer-brewing process kills disease. Although no-one realises this in the middle of the 19th century, it means if you live in an unclean environment,
beer is a very sensible drink.
>At mealtimes in the Middle Ages, everyone could drink small beer, including children, while eating a meal at the table. Table beer was around this time typically less than 1% ABV.
Readit News
Is this not generally true? I like to hike, but a lot of times climbing a mountain is absolutely miserable, and I might be sore for some time afterword. Yet I always remember it as a great experience.
Or with past relationships, I have to try to remember the bad parts, but the good parts come easily.
Alcohol is a cheap, ubiquitous drug that helps us relax today, for a roughly proportionate cost which we can pay tomorrow (plus whatever longer-term costs like liver damage or memory formation which we can ignore or put off for even longer).
It's not confusing or unintuitive. Alcohol helps us relax. That's all it does! Which leads to all the other behaviors that are secondary to suddenly finding oneself relaxed. At first, a healthy relationship with alcohol is a perfectly reasonable transaction. I think it is normal that we would have fond memories of being relaxed, even in the midst of the mild hangover that would necessarily follow.
We easily get addicted to cheap methods for getting relaxed. Why wouldn't we? Especially if everyone around us is constantly using it to get relaxed. It's disgusting to witness! Unless you also use it to relax, in which case it suddenly becomes tolerable or even amusing.
You don't need much to relax (initially). Like with most drugs, eventually it is less potent and you require more. Also, like with any habit, your default baseline (in this case, your default relaxedness) starts to shift, so that eventually you are actively un-relaxed unless alcohol is present in your system. Obviously, as this continues, you need more and more alcohol, which is toxic pretty much in direct proportion to its volume.
Edit: added the sentence about hangovers, for clarity
While I like this metaphor I don't think it's really true. As long as you drink in moderation the relaxation benefits easily outweigh the negatives. Of course, the converse is also true, you can drink so much that the negatives dwarf the positives.
Alcohol can also carry many flavors and dissolve oils in suspension (it is a solvent, after all). This is one of the reasons whiskies have such diverse flavors. Many vanilla extracts are also around 35-40% abv (alcohol free versions use glycerin?... I think?).
Alcohol (wines for example) can also useful in cooking, where the alcohol is boiled off and some of the flavors and oils are left behind.
That's just silly. (I'd go into detail but I think it's sufficiently obvious.) Have you ever tried it?
Dead Comment
But I'll never forget the sun rise up the flat Texas horizon from the tallest peak in the state. It was so beautiful and peaceful there. Clear skies, everything was perfect. I don't really remember the night before anymore, just that I need to pack some extra layers next time.
Have some porridge and you'll feel great entire morning :)
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/images/4/40/FunComic.png
As for drinking, it was an excuse to act like an idiot and have some fun when I was younger I think. The hangovers did get much worse as I got older, so I rarely drink now and when I do I don't usually enjoy it that much.
I'm a strength athlete. Minor injuries are the norm, serious injuries are a guarantee if you lift long enough. I tore my meniscus a 14 months ago and kept on lifting and I have numerous friends that have delayed surgeries so that they could still compete in specific competitions.
It tears us up, it's miserable, but man it's worth every second of discomfort, every little bit of pain.
In On Photography (I believe), Susan Sontag talks about how it has been a quintessentially American thing to ensure everyone was smiling in family snapshots. I wonder if cultures or families that tend to smile in photos end up taking more vacations because they misremember them as being better than they were.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak–end_rule
I got drunk twice in my life. Once intentionally to see what it was like, and once by accident (thought I was having a couple beers, turns out they all had double the usual alcohol content so I was having twice what I thought I was having). Both experiences made me feel so bad that they were sort of traumatizing.
I’m not talking about the hangover (though that was awful too). The feeling of being drunk feels terrible to me. I feel like I’m losing control of myself. My face feels numb. People say that’s how it is, and I don’t understand how they can look forward to that.
One of my friends is a former alcoholic; he says that the sound of an aluminum can popping open feels like a religious moment. The sound is apparently so thoroughly associated with endless drinking and partying from his teenage years, that it triggers a brief rush of euphoria, followed by an immediate craving to drink a beer. He's talked about how the first time he was moderately intoxicated, it was the best feeling he'd ever had, both in an immediately euphoric sense, and in a deeper, comforting sort of way. "I just had this feeling that life was going to be all right," he says.
Scary stuff - and so very different from your experience.
Every injury since (broken leg, broken collar bone, dislocated finger) has seemed like the worst pain I've ever experienced, but I know logically it can't be. And once I recover I forget the pain again.
Don’t get me wrong, I had some fun times on the stuff, but whenever I think about it all I remember is the worst and most terrible pain you could ever possibly imagine.
Do most adults need to retain new information very often?(excluding the typical HN audience who are constantly learning/innovating/reading/etc)
That doesn't mean you couldn't benefit from doing better than that, though.
Studies cited: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683478https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353
This seems like a weird question, at least in relation to alcohol. The pleasurable experience of alcohol is not only remembered but enthusiastically attested to by people currently under the influence. People have no problem remembering hangovers and talk about them frequently, and the other negative health effects are separated in time from the consumption experience, which weakens the association. I suspect this person has an unusual personal reaction to alcohol, but if it leads him to original discoveries, more power to him.
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original Joan Baez version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ST9TZBb9v8
Judas Priest version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OHJP1BSVgM
But... then I walked by this almost suspectly non-descript steel door at the bottom of a few stairs, and some part of my brain said "there is a secret club/lounge behind this door." It was kind of surreal. I hesitantly opened it, and what do you know... there we were.
And prototypically, marijuana. Back in the day, I'd always see movies stoned. That way, if I liked them, I could see them again freshly. And if I didn't liked them, I could forget about them more easily.
I've had a single moderate concussion, where one of my first memories afterwards is of sitting in the hospital emergency room with a couple friends. I had a notebook with my handwriting, containing several pages of questions/answers that my friends had me write down so they could stop repeating themselves to me.
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If it only takes 3 drinks and has this effect you clearly can't metabolise alcohol well and have a genetic difference to others, because that's not a normal westerner's experience. Perhaps you have an enzyme difference along the chain of breakdown
Drugs and alcohol alleviate emotional pain and have physilogical "pleasure" effects in some cases. But most of the negative effects that are frequently talked about are physiological.
Apples shouldn't be compared to oranges. A good comparison would for example be to compare the pleasures of drugs against the emotional toll caused by the negative sociological effects (can't get jobs,stigma,less friends in some cases,unintended harm to loved ones,etc...)
People take medical drugs like anti-depressants all the time knowing full well long term use can have side effects and even in the short term there can be severe side effects.
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Aside from this, I agree that the vast majority can enjoy these substances without destroying themselves, leading very productive lives with some of the evident downsides that even casual consumption can bring.
As we start to actually study the effects of alcohol, it really looks like it is a hard drug with no net positive effects at anything over a minuscule dose.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45283401
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Development_of_a_rat...
I think outlawing it now would be about as successful as the first Prohibition in the USA (i.e. not at all) but I do think it should be regulated more closely (e.g. very strong restrictions on alcohol advertising and perhaps plain packaging and black box warnings similar to cigarette packaging) and that the dangers of alcohol should be taught more widely.
>> https://subsaga.com/bbc/documentaries/science/how-we-got-to-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer
>At mealtimes in the Middle Ages, everyone could drink small beer, including children, while eating a meal at the table. Table beer was around this time typically less than 1% ABV.