This was effective in stopping me from drinking til age 20. Too drunk to google it right now, can someone enlighten me about this phrase?

In that vein, I propose another slogan: "Capitalism kills brain cells."

  • RedDawn [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yes, it's settled science.

    No, not everything is a carcinogen. Alcohol is recognized as a group 1 carcinogen up there with abstestos lol. Putting it into your body increases your risk of cancer significantly. It's not some debatable edge case.

    I smoke cigarettes but you don't see me out here making absurd arguments and twisting myself into a pretzel trying to rationalize it with weird arguments about how not smoking is the same as sitting in the corner crying. I just accept that I'm increasing my risk of cancer just like all the drinking I've done increases my risk of cancer.

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Group 1 carcinogen means there is sufficient evidence it can cause cancer, which, yeah, it's true. It's not a category that quantifies how carcinogenic something is, it has to do with certainty. To be precise, acetaldehyde is the substance that is classified as a group 1 carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is also found in fruit btw. If the "no safe level" nonsense is to be believed, then you should probably stop eating fruit too. So yeah, apples are also "right up there with asbestos".

      Nitrates are also considered afaik a group 1 carcinogen or at least a probable carcinogen and you can find them in celery or lettuce. It's fucking ridiculous how many things contain carcinogens. There is no reason to panic about everything, just be careful with the more dangerous stuff. It is safe, like exercise is safe or passing the street is safe.

      • RedDawn [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Acetaldehyde is one carcinogen, ethanol (literally just alcohol) itself is another group one carcinogen, so no, you weren't being "precise", you just didn't read far enough down the list.

        Let me know when celery and lettuce start killing millions of people every single year and you may have a point with all these absurd false analogies you keep making.

        It is safe, like exercising is safe or passing the street is safe

        No, alcohol is a dangerous and addictive drug, this is not a proper comparison. A more apt comparison would be smoking cigarettes or using opiates.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Ethanol becomes acetaldehyde in the liver. Acetaldehyde is the most dangerous chemical related to drinking, it's also what causes alcohol poisoning. Also ripe fruit does also contain small quantities of ethanol, which are probably larger than you imagine.

          Let me know when celery and lettuce start killing millions of people every single year and you may have a point with all these absurd false analogies you keep making

          You're making the absurd false analogy between light drinking and asbestos or any other group 1 carcinogen, don't blame me. Yeah it's obviously stupid to compare eating a ripe apple to radon poisoning, I know that, that's my point.

          No, alcohol is a dangerous and addictive drug, this is not a proper comparison. A more apt comparison would be smoking cigarettes or using opiates.

          With cigarettes maybe, not with opiates, that would also be a stupid comparison. The conversation around addiction is kind of stupid because very few things are particularly inherently addictive unless you are already abusing them. No one gets withdrawal symptoms because they used to drink a few beers a week and then they stopped. Some opiates are different, they require much less use for someone to start craving them, hence why it is kind of a stupid comparison.

          • RedDawn [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            No, alcohol to opiates is an apt comparison. Alcohol is extremely addictive and anybody who uses it at all runs the risk of developing addiction to it. Many people start with a few beers a week and end up addicted and drinking themselves literally to death. You're simply massively understating how dangerous alcohol is as a drug.

            • Pezevenk [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Lol yeah OK I'd say you don't know anyone who drinks alcohol but that would be kind of weird and I don't know how it is even possible. What you are describing isn't how most addictions work BTW with the exception of a few things. Almost invariably alcoholics become addicted because they start drinking a bunch over a period of time to cope with something. It starts as psychological, not physiological. The vast majority of people drinks at least a little bit every now and then. In most countries alcoholism is very rare, except for a few ones where you can pinpoint very specific reasons why it became so common in the first place. Even more interestingly, the countries with the highest rates of alcoholism aren't even necessarily the ones with the most alcohol consumption per capita. Alcohol addiction isn't something that just randomly appears in people who drink a little bit. Alcohol addiction begins when people start drinking larger and larger quantities in order to cope with something (or possibly for some other reason, but that is the most common), until they drink so much and so frequently that dependence sets in. The alternative is peer pressure from a partner or family etc. It literally almost never just randomly happens to some random light drinker.

              • RedDawn [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 years ago

                You're 100% wrong. Alcohol is a physiologically addictive drug that works on the reward centers of the brain which causes craving. Alcoholism is absolutely not rare, 5% of the entire world's adult population is afflicted with it. I have significant first hand experience with alcohol addiction. Do yourself a favor and literally just search up "most harmful drugs" and report back what you find about where alcohol consistently ranks in every single study. At this point you're just spewing ignorance.

                • Pezevenk [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  There is no study that is titled "top 10 most harmful drugs", that is not how studies work, you're just thinking of online articles.

                  You clearly have no clue how alcohol works lol. Even many alcoholics are not physiologically addicted. I know because I literally have people like that in my family. They will stop for long periods of time drinking anything whatsoever and they will be far better than they usually are, no withdrawal, nothing whatsoever. Then they'll go back to drinking all day long just because they think it will make them stop being miserable, even though it makes them more so. It's not nearly as easy as you seem to think for physiological alcohol addiction to set in, usually it comes after the psychological addiction, not the other way around. And yes, it does happen, and yes, I also know what that is like.

                  • RedDawn [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    There literally are scientific studies which quantify and rank the harm caused by drugs, you are once again 100% completely wrong.