Have you ever heard or seen something that initially seemed to be totally fine, until you saw just how truly dangerous it actually is?
What is a much bigger threat than initially presented?
Have you ever heard or seen something that initially seemed to be totally fine, until you saw just how truly dangerous it actually is?
What is a much bigger threat than initially presented?
Alcohol
iirc it’s a confirmed, 100% proven carcinogen and is a poison with zero net benefits.
Humanity has a penchant for making “taking some poison” part of social gatherings. This isn’t exclusive to alcohol or tobacco, recreational drugs have been a social lubricant for millenia.
I mean nobody drinks it because it’s healthy.
But but but muh 1 glass of red wine a day study!
Some of the best times of my life in my 20s were enabled through alcohol. I traveled the world using my own money, met countless interesting people in pubs and at festivals.
As I sit, fully sober at my workstation in the office some 20 years later, I can think back to those times and can only smile when someone claims it has zero net benefits.
yeah. people drink it because its a damn good social lubricant.
keyword is “net” – you made friends, but the health risks involved may considerably offset that benefit.
i’m sober and have made countless friends sans alcohol, many of them drink themselves; and if alcohol was a contingent on them being my friend, I’m not sure I’d want to be friends with them.
Hard disagree, but that might have a lot to do with me being Scottish.
“Only the people who prayed lived” is an easy statement to make as the dead ones can’t speak for themselves.
“Alcohol is why I have friends” is understandably believed because you’ll never know the life you’d have had had you not drank it.
I get it’s the pillar of many cultures and a welcome one at that, but the fact it’s a proven carcinogen should not be dismissed, forgotten, or trivialized.
Nobody’s denying alcohol has risks — it’s a carcinogen, that’s just a fact. But risk isn’t all-or-nothing. A weekend drink in a social setting is not the same thing as chronic heavy use, and public health research makes that distinction.
The “you’ll never know the life you’d have had without it” line is basically unfalsifiable — you could say that about anything from coffee to football to religion. Humans bond over shared rituals, and in many cultures moderate drinking is one of them. That social connection has measurable wellbeing benefits too.
It being unfalsifiable is the point because it meant to be a pendulum to your unfalsifiable original point that you’re thankful for alcohol because you see it as the reason you have the outcome in life that you did.
Many people have traveled and made friends, they did not need a carcinogen to do it, which nullifies it from being a positive exclusive to alcohol.
Dial back the sanctimony, Amigo. BBQs are a carcinogen. Do you berate people who invite you to a BBQ as trying to lure you to a carcinogen event?
There’s no berating here or superiority being touted. At least that is not my intention.
The entire point of the question was to provide an example of something that is understatedly more harmful to us than originally presented.
I said alcohol and it hasn’t a “net” positive; meaning whatever benefits people think it has is outweighed by the fact it may give you cancer. Your response— as I read it, as it met my statement with a smile— was dismissive of that because you’ve made friends.
I’m now just arguing that that positive benefit is not exclusive to alcohol and should not be in its “pro” column.
At no point have I meant to imply someone is better than others to abstain from it; however, perhaps this is an example to clarify what I think your point was that this is a negative of being sober or opting to not drink, is that you cannot make friends with some people because they will feel judged by your abstinence.
I did say I wouldn’t want to be friends with those people, but that’s more because I don’t enjoy the social pressure or situation in which someone else in my immediacy.is uncomfortable by my personal choice that only affects me.
No net benefits today.
Various alcoholic drinks of the past were a benefit in helping to provide hydration and calories in an unclean environment.
But doesn’t alcohol dehydrate?
In large concentrations. A lot of beer back in the day was small beer with an alcohol content closer to a light beer today. The drawbacks of the low amount of alcohol was made up for by not getting an intestinal infection.
and addictive
Zero net benefits my ass! 🖕🏻
username checks out