I agree with everything in this article. Drinking alone is the best, particularly if you like to write while listening to music. The flights of fancy I used to go on!
I wish I could still do it, but I found myself waiting for the liquor store to open up at 7:00 am to get rid of the shakes. Then when I tried to stop I couldn't. Long story short, after several rehabs, more stints in mental health lockup than I care to remember, and burning through more sponsers in AA that I can count, I finally was able to stop.
"Cunning, baffling and powerful" is how Bill Wilson, founder of AA called alcohol for those of us who are "real alcoholics" or if you prefer
“Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”
— Stanisław Lem
p.s. There is a tradition of the Drunken Zen Master but it's archaic. We all know better now.
I have very strict rules I follow for alcohol consumption, if for no other reason than I'm the son of a man who was a functioning alcoholic for most of his life.
I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within.
The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges.
From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
We’re not all alcoholics. Substances affect people in vastly different ways. A key problem is that people do not understand this, that substances and substance abuse don’t work the same across the board and one person’s experience does not extend to the rest of humanity. It is more like there are tribes that don’t understand each other.
My favourite way to blow of steam is what I call drunken arma3.
The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks.
It’s incredibly relaxing.
I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks.
Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.
This is poetic, but if you break it down into a syllogism, it's clear that this is totally stupid.
Removing the flowery language, here are the claims and supporting arguments, along with my rebuttals.
* Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
* Drinking alone lets you drink a lot of alcohol fast, in your preferred cocktail or beverage.
- Yes and this is why it is dangerous. Drinking tasty alcohol fast is a great way to get addicted. Or at the very least damage your health, both short and long term.
* Drinking alone provides you with comfortable silence.
- Drinking has nothing to do with this. Alcohol is a non-sequitur. You have to orchestrate the silence regardless of whether alcohol is involved.
That's it. It's just repeating these 3 points in different ways.
This magazine or blog or whatever seems to either be an elaborate joke or bait or something:
>Are you guys for real?
>Yes. While there is some satire involved, we believe to the very core of our >souls every word we write.
>Who are you?
>We are a group of functional alcoholics based primarily in Denver, CO. Included in our ranks are published novelists, filmmakers, English gentlemen, barflies, punk rock musicians, comedians, outright dastards and admitted boozeheads.
>Do you mind the word alcoholic?
>No. We are taking it back from the fascists. Soon it will be considered a compliment.
Instead of drinking, all of these can be accomplished by taking a “spiritual retreat” for a weekend.
It could be a trip into the woods, a religious retreat with other people, or a stay at a quiet hotel far from home.
I’ve done all three. When I have to make the long drive to my parents for a mandatory family get together, I’ll book a hotel halfway to take time for myself.
The idea is to get away from your normal environment and sit down with yourself. I usually bring my kindle and a notebook.
Ethanol destroyed my brother's life and two of my best friends lives, and did serious harm to all of the lives they were connected to. It is a deeply selfish drug. I recommend that everyone never, ever touches it outside of ceremonial use.
I've definitely had realizations drinking alone. It's not a state you want to be in all the time, or even often, but it can be useful. It's sort of like a random jump in the mental search space to get out of local minima.
(Though perhaps I could train myself mentally to be able to enter these more loose states w/o alcohol, and that would be even better?)
Thanks. Alcohol is a poison and getting drunk has nothing to do with finding yourself. I wish people would quit romanticising addiction.
I quit a bit over a year ago. Never properly addicted, but Australian culture has it so firmly embedded it's scary. I'm a better person for it, and I don't miss it.
If I want to feel wasted the next day I'll do 120% in the garage gym. Under the bar I both find myself, experience euphoria afterwards, and retain the ability to be wrecked the next day should I choose to.
>* Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.*
This pre-assumes you can have a honest dialog with yourself sober.
> No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
I've had plenty of interesting insights into all sorts of things while inebriated that remained interesting and insightful long after I'd sobered up. Maybe this doesn't work for you but that doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone.
> * Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
I don’t think that the fact that you disagree with a statement qualifies that statement as a syllogism.
I read those three statements as being distinct (for example “preferred cocktail” is a different subject from “comfortable silence”) though I will concede that all three statements do share a general theme of “the author enjoys drinking alone.” However, discussing various reasons for enjoying something does not qualify a statement as a syllogism.
While I also do not generally agree with the author, I’m not a big fan of “things I disagree with are Wrong in terms of fundamental logic. Anything I don’t like but Others do is wrong because those Others lack the fundamental Brain Power to Understand The World(tm) like me. To disagree with me is to commit an Aristotelian error of the highest order.”
It’s honestly an incredibly depressing attitude to come across, and it’s pretty much universally held by people that spend a lot of energy being “Not Mad” at not getting invited to parties.
Maybe you might feel differently about who is the arbiter of logic if you cracked open a nice beer?
I wish I could source it, but I recall reading an anthropological study of drinking that mentioned that solo drinking is universally shunned across all cultures.
I would never say there is no insight that could be gleaned from this -- people are different, after all -- but I agree with the other comment that this justifies an unhealthy adaptive strategy. We have deeper and healthier modes of self-knowledge than this.
I think being a loner is generally seen as unusual though isn't it?
I enjoy drinking alone, exercising alone, traveling alone, sitting alone, working alone. I don't really think I'm that weird by objective standards, there are also things I like doing with people (I'm married and have a family), but as a sometimes introvert, I definitely value time alone, including relaxing with a beer.
Related, when I went to university, I lived in residence and i remember sitting by myself at meals and having people come and basically think they were doing me a favor talking to me, because only a loser would want to sit by himself. I found it both annoying (because I wanted to be alone) and condescending (because people see you alone and come talk to you like you must have no friends) - all that to say, society seems to look at you funny if you enjoy being by yourself, so I wouldn't read too much into sllo drinking being shunned specifically.
That doesn't surprise me. Going against cultural mores and breaking taboos has a long tradition among gnostics and explorers of our internal landscape. It's not a safe and stable life path but it can certainly be rewarding.
- From "Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking" [0]:
"The most important of these cross-cultural constants in the social norms governing alcohol use is the near-universal taboo on solitary drinking. The fact that drinking is, in almost all cultures, essentially a social act, is recognised throughout the anthropological literature, and ethnographic data from a wide range of cultures indicate that solitary drinking is at the very least ‘negatively evaluated’, and often specifically proscribed."
- Drinking and masculinity in everyday Swedish culture [1]:
""Drinking alone should not be done. To drink alone is to be anti-social (by not wanting to share); it is commonly thought to be an indication of alcoholism. And alcoholism is shameful: to be labelled an alcoholic is a condemnation beyond words…""
- Also touching solo-drinking: "America Has a Drinking Problem" [2]:
"He and his onetime graduate student Kasey Creswell, a Carnegie Mellon professor who studies solitary drinking, have come to believe that one key to understanding drinking’s uneven effects may be the presence of other people. Having combed through decades’ worth of literature, Creswell reports that in the rare experiments that have compared social and solitary alcohol use, drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink."
- From Kasey Creswell, "Drinking Together and Drinking Alone: A Social-Contextual Framework for Examining Risk for Alcohol Use Disorder " [4]
"The context in which drinking occurs is a critical but relatively understudied factor in alcohol use disorder (AUD) etiology. In this article, I offer a social-contextual framework for examining AUD risk by reviewing studies on the unique antecedents and deleterious consequences of social compared with solitary alcohol use in adolescents and young adults."
My 2022 New Year's Resolution is to try out complete sobriety (caffeine excluded; this effectively means alcohol and cannabis). I've never considered myself to have a 'problem' with substances like some people I have known, but I sure have spent plenty of time in my life intoxicated alone. The resolution isn't an ambitious thing because I've been going this way for a while anyway.
Over the years I've slowly come to a realization: These substances have various effects, but at the heart what they really do is make me less aware. Sometimes I guess it's a good thing. Alcohol makes me less aware of the part of me that is self-conscious in social situations, and of how others perceive me. Cannabis makes you feel more aware of experiences, but it proves to be an illusion. I guess they're really not that bad on the balance, but as I grow older and I have spent more and more time thinking about cultivating awareness - of the present moment; of my body and mind and senses; of things in life that are truly important, and which maybe even make me anxious to contemplate - I find that I simply don't enjoy intoxication as much anymore because there's something I enjoy more about awareness.
More and more I hear this nagging voice when intoxicated. It says: "I'm bored; I'm nervous; I'm scared; I'm sad; I'm worried; I'm self-conscious; I'm restless; Someday I will die. What I'm doing right now is trying to be less aware of these things. But maybe they aren't just to be ignored or avoided. Maybe they're an adaptive part of the human mind. Maybe there really is something worth being anxious about."
I always drink alone these days, Covid killed whatever superficial drinking groups I had joined. Though I tend to prefer to go out, as opposed to being at home. I’m stuck in the apartment for most of the day anyway.
I’ve never been bothered much by it in the past, but I think I’m quickly getting sick of it. It frankly gets boring, hanging out at bars all night aimlessly drinking. Yeah I talk people on occasion, but we’re normally a little a drunk for the conversation to be interesting or mean anything. Still I prefer if to aimlessly doing anything else, especially sitting at home.
I’ve been called out once or twice, by people curious about who I was or why I was always out alone. My relatively young age probably doesn’t help with attracting negative connotations. However, last week, I stopped by one of my regular bars, and the person next to me effectively called me out as a loser (with much nicer language, and beating around the bush). It ended up agitating me a bit because of how blatant it was. I know it, you know it, but does it really have to be announced out loud?
Sounds like a terrible bar, don’t go there.
I’ve had far more positive experiences going to bars alone than I ever had in groups. Despite what people think it’s still totally possible to strike up conversations with strangers. Sometimes getting to know a stinger is more exciting and mentally engaging than small talk with some mild acquaintance.
On the contrary I always hated going to bars in groups. You’re just paying extra to hang with the same people you could have just split a 12 pack with and had pretty much the same experience at home or at a park or beach. The chances of you having any interaction with anyone outside your group at a bar are minimal if not non existent.
Yeah going to bars is pretty boring, it just doesn't achieve anything, plus it negatively affects your mental and physical health. It's like paying to slowly kill yourself.
Perhaps they called you out because they're concerned about you.
Getting called out for drinking alone seems odd and I've never heard of that happening to anyone I know anywhere. Do you live in a college town?
Seemed common in SF and other major metros I've lived in. You're not going to find many people doing it at hipster bars but it's definitely normal at neighborhood watering holes.
Does anyone here enjoy coding after a few drinks? I don't do this often but on a Friday evening if I feel the fancy to work late and am working on a known problem space-- I pour myself a couple of shots on gin, mix with a bit of lemonade and code away.
I get a lot done in this state as I am purely churning out code rather than constantly second guessing myself, looking for a more optimal ways of doing it or refactoring the code I have written every few mins to improve class/package structure, variable names and so on. Obviously I would never merge to master after a session of intoxicated coding.
And this code looks better than you think on a Monday morning when sober.
Before I had to give up alcohol completely, I occasionally enjoyed a glass of wine and a good book on Saturday mornings. Sometimes a shot of scotch once or twice a month. I preferred quietly enjoying a drink alone to drinking with friends. I never needed alcohol to have fun.
I don’t see an issue with the occasional drink. The problem is people talking like the author does, don’t do the occasional drink.
Comments seem to be on the moralizing side of things, ouch. I'm sure we're all aware that being an alcoholic is bad, yes, thanks. And yes, I'm sure we can all strive to be paragons of abstinence and Real Zen. But while we're doing that, we might do well to remember not take things too seriously all the time.
The idea that you should only drink socially always seemed odd to me, as though the purpose of alcohol should be easier social interactions (when at times it actually causes problems), and as though enjoying the drink because of its taste & characteristics should only be some distant secondary concern.
But nearly everything in this article came across as a fairly odd way of rationalizing what might be "problem drinking" if not outright alcoholism.
I'm sure personal experiences will vary quite a bit here, but I've never found and greater truth about self identity there. I have found that sometimes it seems to assist in creative thoughts, ideas, etc, but certainly not rational thought that I think would standup in the post-hangover light of day.
About the most insightful thing I've found out about myself when drinking is "That was good whisky, but the last one was too much. Let's go drink a bunch of water, some preemptive ibuprofen, and get the coffee set to make a quick cup in the morning." It's not a vision quest.
"Pantsdrunk (kalsarikänni) is a form of drinking culture, originating in Finland, in which the drinker consumes alcoholic drinks at home, dressed in as little clothing as possible, mainly in underwear, with no intention of going out." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsdrunk)
If it's good enough for the happiest country in the world, it's good enough for me.
It's a way of thinking I went into, and the various recent lockdowns helped quite a lot. I spend good evenings, and enjoyed it thoroughly. But I want to bring up a REALLY STRONG WARNING about it.
It's shunned in most cultures for a reason. You don't want to be the one wasted person in the polite social event, so it helps limiting how much you drink.
The article fail to mentions that alcohol is a VERY addictive substance. Not only you need more to reach the same state, but by enjoying it, you then actively look for it. I went from a few evenings a month, to a daily dose really faster than I expected. When you start to dismiss useful stuff (chores, social commitments) in favor of drinking, you are the definition of an addict. It's also very easy to deny it, but I know very few people who can hold a "dry-january" or refrain from drinking for several weeks.
I was advised to go to an aa meeting, and I went there just to prove myself that I had "no problem with alcohol". That was a huge slap in my face. Seeing others being in denial, can really help you see your own.
So while I understand (and enjoyed) the practice, I would really warn anyone wanting to try that to :
1. Challenge yourself regularly (did I successfully stop for 2 weeks ?)
2. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have the slightest doubt you can't stop.
AA[0] are wonderful people who don't judge, and going to a meeting helps tremendously if you have troubles stopping. I thought it only happenned to others for way to long.
This is a whole lot of very artful words to justify what often leads to very unhealthy coping skills. While perhaps useful to have to fallback on in times of crisis, doing this too often deprives one of the social juice and community that makes solving problems easier and less burdensome.
For me the problem with drinking is that it amplifies all of who I am and not really any of who I want to be. I'm a happy kind person so it makes me happier and kinder which is fine, but then I'm also a very lazy person so it just turns me into the worst junk food eating couch potato. Not to mention the hangovers give me the worst anxiety, waking up in the middle of the night heart racing feeling like I'm on the brink of death.
Alcohol tastes good and feels fun but it's just not worth the tradeoffs imo. Maybe when I'm a much older man I'll enjoy it a bit more regularly
My mother is a highly-functional alcoholic who, in her 60s, still drinks and smokes every day from 6pm to 1am, alone or socially, rain or shine - and she's done that for 30+ years. I'll spare you the gruesome anecdata that the habit produced over the years.
Being an alcoholic is a recipe for hurting people around you. It might not happen today or tomorrow, but sooner or later it will happen, whether you understand it or not. You might think you have a safe routine down, but you're likely oblivious to the human costs of that routine. As coping mechanisms go, it's an expensive and imprecise one. And it's definitely not cool.
When I drink, I tend to see it as a type of deep ancestor worship.
Some ancient parts of the brain, such as those that control breathing, are resistant to disruption because when they cease to function, you die. Others, like sex drive or hunger, are more resistant because they needed to function in all of your ancestors or you wouldn't be here. Thus these ancient structures must be robust, and that robustness has evolved over millions of years.
Alcohol selectively disrupts the more recent and and less robust parts of my brain. It brings instincts won at great cost to my ancestors over generations, forward to help guide my actions.
Weed is 100x better alone or with maybe one person you’re very comfortable with. It’s kinda fun out in a group but I much prefer listening to music on my headphones and writing and playing games alone.
As someone who has experienced complete ego removal during psilocybin highs, as well as that Goldie Lock zone feeling that is had after 1-3 drinks in solitude I can reliably say that to me both experiences are important and impactful in different ways.
So neither supercedes the other.
Drinking too much and frequently will though have more health impacts for sure. Just don't do strong psychedelics all alone if you are unused ro them. That can end your life in one go (as it has for some).
This didn’t go in the direction I was expecting, even as pleasant a read as it was.
I love drinking alone, with strict moderation. Once a week. Never to excess. Primarily, it’s to enjoy the drink itself, undistracted by the socialization normally inherent in imbibing. There are many fine beers at my local liquor store that I’d never find at a bar! There is perhaps an element of drifting off into a world of drunken introspection like the article describes, but such is far further down the path than I would go myself.
Its sad that this seems to have such an appeal. We seem to be becoming all so isolated, despite technical advancements that were meant to make us more connected. Going to a bar and talking to people that are outside your friend group, outside your "bubble", and while feeling the happy inhibition that being slightly drunk gives is healing.
[+] [-] okareaman|4 years ago|reply
I wish I could still do it, but I found myself waiting for the liquor store to open up at 7:00 am to get rid of the shakes. Then when I tried to stop I couldn't. Long story short, after several rehabs, more stints in mental health lockup than I care to remember, and burning through more sponsers in AA that I can count, I finally was able to stop.
"Cunning, baffling and powerful" is how Bill Wilson, founder of AA called alcohol for those of us who are "real alcoholics" or if you prefer
“Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”
— Stanisław Lem
p.s. There is a tradition of the Drunken Zen Master but it's archaic. We all know better now.
[+] [-] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloha|4 years ago|reply
I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within.
The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges.
From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
Also, I'm glad for you, that you found sobriety.
[+] [-] colechristensen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noir_lord|4 years ago|reply
The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks.
It’s incredibly relaxing.
I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks.
Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.
[+] [-] throwoutway|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empressplay|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aantix|4 years ago|reply
NAC a couple of hours before your drinking escapade.
A five hour energy drink the morning after. The B’s + folate really help to feel”normal” the after.
Adult drinking is preparing for and mitigating the day after effects. :)
[+] [-] AndyKelley|4 years ago|reply
Removing the flowery language, here are the claims and supporting arguments, along with my rebuttals.
* Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
* Drinking alone lets you drink a lot of alcohol fast, in your preferred cocktail or beverage.
- Yes and this is why it is dangerous. Drinking tasty alcohol fast is a great way to get addicted. Or at the very least damage your health, both short and long term.
* Drinking alone provides you with comfortable silence.
- Drinking has nothing to do with this. Alcohol is a non-sequitur. You have to orchestrate the silence regardless of whether alcohol is involved.
That's it. It's just repeating these 3 points in different ways.
[+] [-] delusional|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayodelycaon|4 years ago|reply
It could be a trip into the woods, a religious retreat with other people, or a stay at a quiet hotel far from home.
I’ve done all three. When I have to make the long drive to my parents for a mandatory family get together, I’ll book a hotel halfway to take time for myself.
The idea is to get away from your normal environment and sit down with yourself. I usually bring my kindle and a notebook.
[+] [-] beebmam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilap|4 years ago|reply
(Though perhaps I could train myself mentally to be able to enter these more loose states w/o alcohol, and that would be even better?)
[+] [-] sundvor|4 years ago|reply
I quit a bit over a year ago. Never properly addicted, but Australian culture has it so firmly embedded it's scary. I'm a better person for it, and I don't miss it.
If I want to feel wasted the next day I'll do 120% in the garage gym. Under the bar I both find myself, experience euphoria afterwards, and retain the ability to be wrecked the next day should I choose to.
But it'll be a good kind of wrecked, more likely.
[+] [-] coldtea|4 years ago|reply
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.*
This pre-assumes you can have a honest dialog with yourself sober.
[+] [-] taneq|4 years ago|reply
I've had plenty of interesting insights into all sorts of things while inebriated that remained interesting and insightful long after I'd sobered up. Maybe this doesn't work for you but that doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone.
[+] [-] jayd16|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newbie789|4 years ago|reply
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
I don’t think that the fact that you disagree with a statement qualifies that statement as a syllogism.
I read those three statements as being distinct (for example “preferred cocktail” is a different subject from “comfortable silence”) though I will concede that all three statements do share a general theme of “the author enjoys drinking alone.” However, discussing various reasons for enjoying something does not qualify a statement as a syllogism.
While I also do not generally agree with the author, I’m not a big fan of “things I disagree with are Wrong in terms of fundamental logic. Anything I don’t like but Others do is wrong because those Others lack the fundamental Brain Power to Understand The World(tm) like me. To disagree with me is to commit an Aristotelian error of the highest order.”
It’s honestly an incredibly depressing attitude to come across, and it’s pretty much universally held by people that spend a lot of energy being “Not Mad” at not getting invited to parties.
Maybe you might feel differently about who is the arbiter of logic if you cracked open a nice beer?
[+] [-] spurgu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akprasad|4 years ago|reply
There's also something perverse about associating this with Zen given that abstaining from intoxicants is the fifth precept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_precepts#Fifth_precept).
I would never say there is no insight that could be gleaned from this -- people are different, after all -- but I agree with the other comment that this justifies an unhealthy adaptive strategy. We have deeper and healthier modes of self-knowledge than this.
[+] [-] version_five|4 years ago|reply
I enjoy drinking alone, exercising alone, traveling alone, sitting alone, working alone. I don't really think I'm that weird by objective standards, there are also things I like doing with people (I'm married and have a family), but as a sometimes introvert, I definitely value time alone, including relaxing with a beer.
Related, when I went to university, I lived in residence and i remember sitting by myself at meals and having people come and basically think they were doing me a favor talking to me, because only a loser would want to sit by himself. I found it both annoying (because I wanted to be alone) and condescending (because people see you alone and come talk to you like you must have no friends) - all that to say, society seems to look at you funny if you enjoy being by yourself, so I wouldn't read too much into sllo drinking being shunned specifically.
[+] [-] theNJR|4 years ago|reply
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america...
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SyzygistSix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pelagicAustral|4 years ago|reply
"The most important of these cross-cultural constants in the social norms governing alcohol use is the near-universal taboo on solitary drinking. The fact that drinking is, in almost all cultures, essentially a social act, is recognised throughout the anthropological literature, and ethnographic data from a wide range of cultures indicate that solitary drinking is at the very least ‘negatively evaluated’, and often specifically proscribed."
- Drinking and masculinity in everyday Swedish culture [1]:
""Drinking alone should not be done. To drink alone is to be anti-social (by not wanting to share); it is commonly thought to be an indication of alcoholism. And alcoholism is shameful: to be labelled an alcoholic is a condemnation beyond words…""
- Also touching solo-drinking: "America Has a Drinking Problem" [2]:
"He and his onetime graduate student Kasey Creswell, a Carnegie Mellon professor who studies solitary drinking, have come to believe that one key to understanding drinking’s uneven effects may be the presence of other people. Having combed through decades’ worth of literature, Creswell reports that in the rare experiments that have compared social and solitary alcohol use, drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink."
- Pandemic related, "When Drinking Alone Becomes A Problem" (2021) [3]
- From Kasey Creswell, "Drinking Together and Drinking Alone: A Social-Contextual Framework for Examining Risk for Alcohol Use Disorder " [4]
"The context in which drinking occurs is a critical but relatively understudied factor in alcohol use disorder (AUD) etiology. In this article, I offer a social-contextual framework for examining AUD risk by reviewing studies on the unique antecedents and deleterious consequences of social compared with solitary alcohol use in adolescents and young adults."
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[0] http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking5.html [1] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97802030... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america... [3] https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/psychology/news/2021/creswell-a... [4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096372142096940...
[+] [-] bourgoin|4 years ago|reply
Over the years I've slowly come to a realization: These substances have various effects, but at the heart what they really do is make me less aware. Sometimes I guess it's a good thing. Alcohol makes me less aware of the part of me that is self-conscious in social situations, and of how others perceive me. Cannabis makes you feel more aware of experiences, but it proves to be an illusion. I guess they're really not that bad on the balance, but as I grow older and I have spent more and more time thinking about cultivating awareness - of the present moment; of my body and mind and senses; of things in life that are truly important, and which maybe even make me anxious to contemplate - I find that I simply don't enjoy intoxication as much anymore because there's something I enjoy more about awareness.
More and more I hear this nagging voice when intoxicated. It says: "I'm bored; I'm nervous; I'm scared; I'm sad; I'm worried; I'm self-conscious; I'm restless; Someday I will die. What I'm doing right now is trying to be less aware of these things. But maybe they aren't just to be ignored or avoided. Maybe they're an adaptive part of the human mind. Maybe there really is something worth being anxious about."
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|4 years ago|reply
Having a drink alone is pretty harmless. Getting wicked drunk alone is depressing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america...
[+] [-] the_only_law|4 years ago|reply
I’ve never been bothered much by it in the past, but I think I’m quickly getting sick of it. It frankly gets boring, hanging out at bars all night aimlessly drinking. Yeah I talk people on occasion, but we’re normally a little a drunk for the conversation to be interesting or mean anything. Still I prefer if to aimlessly doing anything else, especially sitting at home.
I’ve been called out once or twice, by people curious about who I was or why I was always out alone. My relatively young age probably doesn’t help with attracting negative connotations. However, last week, I stopped by one of my regular bars, and the person next to me effectively called me out as a loser (with much nicer language, and beating around the bush). It ended up agitating me a bit because of how blatant it was. I know it, you know it, but does it really have to be announced out loud?
[+] [-] WD-42|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pattle|4 years ago|reply
Perhaps they called you out because they're concerned about you.
[+] [-] almost_usual|4 years ago|reply
Seemed common in SF and other major metros I've lived in. You're not going to find many people doing it at hipster bars but it's definitely normal at neighborhood watering holes.
[+] [-] iJohnDoe|4 years ago|reply
Second, it’s never cool to call someone a loser. Maybe they were self projecting. Find another bar.
[+] [-] avl999|4 years ago|reply
I get a lot done in this state as I am purely churning out code rather than constantly second guessing myself, looking for a more optimal ways of doing it or refactoring the code I have written every few mins to improve class/package structure, variable names and so on. Obviously I would never merge to master after a session of intoxicated coding.
And this code looks better than you think on a Monday morning when sober.
[+] [-] kayodelycaon|4 years ago|reply
I don’t see an issue with the occasional drink. The problem is people talking like the author does, don’t do the occasional drink.
[+] [-] elric|4 years ago|reply
Comments seem to be on the moralizing side of things, ouch. I'm sure we're all aware that being an alcoholic is bad, yes, thanks. And yes, I'm sure we can all strive to be paragons of abstinence and Real Zen. But while we're doing that, we might do well to remember not take things too seriously all the time.
[+] [-] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
But nearly everything in this article came across as a fairly odd way of rationalizing what might be "problem drinking" if not outright alcoholism.
I'm sure personal experiences will vary quite a bit here, but I've never found and greater truth about self identity there. I have found that sometimes it seems to assist in creative thoughts, ideas, etc, but certainly not rational thought that I think would standup in the post-hangover light of day.
About the most insightful thing I've found out about myself when drinking is "That was good whisky, but the last one was too much. Let's go drink a bunch of water, some preemptive ibuprofen, and get the coffee set to make a quick cup in the morning." It's not a vision quest.
[+] [-] throwaway984393|4 years ago|reply
If it's good enough for the happiest country in the world, it's good enough for me.
[+] [-] mattnearing|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ahub|4 years ago|reply
It's shunned in most cultures for a reason. You don't want to be the one wasted person in the polite social event, so it helps limiting how much you drink.
The article fail to mentions that alcohol is a VERY addictive substance. Not only you need more to reach the same state, but by enjoying it, you then actively look for it. I went from a few evenings a month, to a daily dose really faster than I expected. When you start to dismiss useful stuff (chores, social commitments) in favor of drinking, you are the definition of an addict. It's also very easy to deny it, but I know very few people who can hold a "dry-january" or refrain from drinking for several weeks.
I was advised to go to an aa meeting, and I went there just to prove myself that I had "no problem with alcohol". That was a huge slap in my face. Seeing others being in denial, can really help you see your own.
So while I understand (and enjoyed) the practice, I would really warn anyone wanting to try that to :
1. Challenge yourself regularly (did I successfully stop for 2 weeks ?)
2. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have the slightest doubt you can't stop.
AA[0] are wonderful people who don't judge, and going to a meeting helps tremendously if you have troubles stopping. I thought it only happenned to others for way to long.
[0] : https://www.aa.org/
[+] [-] Aloha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warent|4 years ago|reply
Alcohol tastes good and feels fun but it's just not worth the tradeoffs imo. Maybe when I'm a much older man I'll enjoy it a bit more regularly
[+] [-] weird-eye-issue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|4 years ago|reply
Being an alcoholic is a recipe for hurting people around you. It might not happen today or tomorrow, but sooner or later it will happen, whether you understand it or not. You might think you have a safe routine down, but you're likely oblivious to the human costs of that routine. As coping mechanisms go, it's an expensive and imprecise one. And it's definitely not cool.
[+] [-] pontifier|4 years ago|reply
Some ancient parts of the brain, such as those that control breathing, are resistant to disruption because when they cease to function, you die. Others, like sex drive or hunger, are more resistant because they needed to function in all of your ancestors or you wouldn't be here. Thus these ancient structures must be robust, and that robustness has evolved over millions of years.
Alcohol selectively disrupts the more recent and and less robust parts of my brain. It brings instincts won at great cost to my ancestors over generations, forward to help guide my actions.
[+] [-] jayski|4 years ago|reply
a night by yourself on shrooms could change you more than 100 nights drinking alone, without the hangover or liver damage
[+] [-] redisman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrDresden|4 years ago|reply
So neither supercedes the other.
Drinking too much and frequently will though have more health impacts for sure. Just don't do strong psychedelics all alone if you are unused ro them. That can end your life in one go (as it has for some).
[+] [-] mortenjorck|4 years ago|reply
I love drinking alone, with strict moderation. Once a week. Never to excess. Primarily, it’s to enjoy the drink itself, undistracted by the socialization normally inherent in imbibing. There are many fine beers at my local liquor store that I’d never find at a bar! There is perhaps an element of drifting off into a world of drunken introspection like the article describes, but such is far further down the path than I would go myself.
[+] [-] waingake|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|4 years ago|reply
"No bartender to cut you off" - if that happens to you regularly and avoiding it is a big reason to drink alone? That sounds like problem drinking.