Alcohol is a placebo

[xoggoth]

I am still looking for homeopathic vodka, something that will make me drunk for the price of pure water.

PS Does anyone else notice different things have different effects? On wine I get even more right wing and ranty but with vodka I get all liberal.

[PAH]

rubbing 25%+ out of that time doesn't make sense.

The solution is to bring back weak ales that can be consumed at work. It got the industrial revolution going as it was safer to drink the ale than the water, so less sick days.

Today weak ale at work could be used to anaesthetise people stuck in dead end jobs on crap money, who can't afford the bills or a decent place to live, and are worse off than those on benefits.

Alcoholism then death cures 99.99% of all known problems.

[PAH]

Yep, the webcam has a lot to answer for...

As does walking the dog.

[Zoiderman]

Having children is a great cure for drinking too much. The little monsters don't give a tulip about your state when they wake at 6.30 am and want to sit on your head.

I was going to put this across. Having one is not too bad, as you can absolve yourself of all responsibilities and just get a bit of a bollocking. Have two and you're in trouble, have 3 and you just have to give up. As you say, they don't give two shoots Dady had a little too much grog the night before. One even snuck in to jump on me when the wife told them to leave me, after returning very under the weather after a stag night out.

Simply not worth it now, you rub out at least half of the next day, and working mon-fri quite hard means you only really get to spend time with them at the weekend, quality time, and rubbing 25%+ out of that time doesn't make sense.

[Churchill]

Not just the older generations, the youngsters are apparently going out "on the pull" less and less as internet dating and facebook take over.

Yep, the webcam has a lot to answer for...

[sasguru]

It does seem to be going out of fashion (except in cardiff naturally)

About time.

Only an infantilised culture would think that getting drunk is cool.
Or that buying things they can't afford, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't know is normal.
Or that eating too much is fine...


Oh wait ....

[Spacecadet]

Could that be the real reason so many pubs are closing?

It's been blamed on the smoking ban and not being able to compete with supermarkets, but maybe the older generations are finding other ways of entertaining themselves at weekends.

Not just the older generations, the youngsters are apparently going out "on the pull" less and less as internet dating and facebook take over.

[doodab]

Having children is a great cure for drinking too much. The little monsters don't give a tulip about your state when they wake at 6.30 am and want to sit on your head.

This is very true.

[PAH]

It does seem to be going out of fashion (except in cardiff naturally)

Could that be the real reason so many pubs are closing?

It's been blamed on the smoking ban and not being able to compete with supermarkets, but maybe the older generations are finding other ways of entertaining themselves at weekends.

Save the pub, ban X Factor!*

* and all the other reality shows that are on one after the other. There's tuliploads of them:

List of reality television programs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[alreadypacked]

I thought alcohol had an effect on different parts of the brain at different times. Making people behave in different ways, depending on how much alcohol they had.

[sasguru]

Having children is a great cure for drinking too much. The little monsters don't give a tulip about your state when they wake at 6.30 am and want to sit on your head.

[Spacecadet]

I must admit I'm getting bored of the hangovers and feeling the next day.

It does seem to be going out of fashion (except in cardiff naturally)

[PAH]

Turns out we don't need alcohol to be violent, promiscuous or anti-social.

BBC News - Viewpoint: Is the alcohol message all wrong?

Pick up any newspaper and you will read that we are a nation of loutish binge-drinkers - that we drink too much, too young, too fast - and that it makes us violent, promiscuous, anti-social and generally obnoxious.

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It does not cause us to say, "Oi, what you lookin' at?" and start punching each other. Nor does it cause us to say, "Hey babe, fancy a shag?" and start groping each other.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.


Our beliefs about the effects of alcohol act as self-fulfilling prophecies - if you firmly believe and expect that booze will make you aggressive, then it will do exactly that. In fact, you will be able to get roaring drunk on a non-alcoholic placebo.

And our erroneous beliefs provide the perfect excuse for anti-social behaviour. If alcohol "causes" bad behaviour, then you are not responsible for your bad behaviour. You can blame the booze - "it was the drink talking", "I was not myself" and so on.

Alcohol education will have achieved its ultimate goal not when young people in this country are afraid of alcohol and avoid it because it is toxic and dangerous, but when they are frankly just a little bit bored by it, when they don't need to be told not to binge-drink vodka shots, any more than they now need to be told not to swig down 15 double espressos in quick succession.

... and that's the edited short version.

I must admit I'm getting bored of the hangovers and feeling the next day.