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My father is also an alcoholic, went to AA for a while, has had two divorces since because of drinking. My sister is an alcoholic, my mother is a prescription drug addict. The way this manifests in me is that I'm obsessed with Not Being An Alcoholic. So I drink. Because it's Not A Problem! Sometimes I drink too much, sometimes it lasts for months. And then I Prove To Myself that I'm not an alcoholic, and I stop for a bit. And start again, but like a Well-Adjusted Person! And sometimes not, and everything is coming apart, and then I do it again, stop drinking for a bit, and I think to myself, "Well, at least I'm not an alcoholic!"

Edit: Let me mention that the guardrails on this have narrowed since my daughter was born.

You must realize you’re describing relapsing alcoholic behavior, right?

I would think this was sarcasm if not for the edit.

Yes :)

I think it's important to note that he describes a functional alcoholic. He seems to be managing his responsibilities and dependents without egregious carelessness.

This is distinction is important to note so friends and families can identify regressions earlier and thus better manage the resulting behaviors. I don't support strict abstinence or the 12 stepsbut every addict needs a system thatcatches them well before their live disintegrates. By recognizing when someone is slipping from casual use into binges and benders we can all save lives, money, time, and relationships.

> I don't support strict abstinence

This is a strange statement. Is this poorly phrased or do you actually think recurring alcoholics should continue endlessly drinking and relapsing rather than abstaining?

I also don’t think addicts should expect friends and family to be their guardrails. If you cannot drink in moderation without slipping into alcoholic behaviors, then it’s on you to stop rather than expect others to attempt to manage your addiction for you. It’s unhealthy, irresponsible, and inconsiderate to attempt to put that burden on others. Not only is this likely an ineffective strategy, but it drives others away.

You misunderstand me.

I don't support forcing strict abstinence on people. For example, the fake marijuana crisis that ravaged Florida and the rest of America years ago wouldn't have occurred had marijuana been legal. Instead every impoverished broken person on probation had a new fix available to them. This time it was dangerous untested drugs made in sketchy Chinese labs.

If someone swears off (x) then that's their decision. If I tell you to never eat meat, drink milk, or travel via any method that consumes fossil fuels you'd rightly think I'm crazy. Just the same, telling addicts to stop drinking or drugging when just about everyone they know does is crazy. Do I need to explain why?

The expectation is not to have addicts rely on their family to keep them from falling off the wagon. Instead, when you accept the fact that strict abstinence is a pipe dream you have to start actually planning how you live around an addict instead of blithely thinking they'll never relapse you can help them get back on their feet. If that's too much to ask of you then you aren't their friend and should warn them that you're not going to help them when they're struggling. Because there's a solid chance that if someone is relapsing a lot of other shit went wrong. And if you're a close friend or family then you carry some responsibility for not helping them.

AA = Alcoholics Anonymous. [1]

[1] https://www.aa.org

Whoa, great description of this dynamic. Is the desire to drink consistent, or does it vary? Does it vary with the cycles of healthy / unhealthy consumption, or with a different period?

It’s not consistent. It mostly varies with levels of stress and anxiety, but there’s also a strong feedback loop.

My dad lost everything because of alcohol and still to this day will not admit that was the cause. It definitely led me to treat alcohol with care. I have been drunk before and enjoy good beer, wine, and spirits. But, I've also gone long periods without drinking at all. If someone said tomorrow I couldn't drink again that would be fine, although I'd like to drink my aging bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape first :)

My attitude has caused weird things in relationships though. I was in a serious relationship when I was younger and while discussing kids I told her that if I ever had kids I would never drink again. The girl was beside herself and ended up mad at me about that for some reason. She just didn't understand what I saw and experienced growing up. Among other things, there is a smell that comes from heavy drinkers in the morning and it's not something I would ever want my kids to experience.

Possible too much information, but if someone can find comfort or benefit in knowing bits of my story then it's a good thing.

Both my parents were alcoholic which led to bad consequences for both of them. It was hard sometimes, but I think it gave me more empathy for people who suffer with addiction. And it made me extremely cautious with alcohol. I may very occasionally drink a beer or a glass of wine but no more than that.

Besides I read a few rock star biographies. One thing that struck me is that from all the addictions they had, alcohol was for most the hardest to overcome. Because alcohol is so pervasive in our society, I think a lot of people under-estimate the risk.

> (I have suffered incredible emotional and physical pain over the last decade but I have never shed a tear in that time. Hell, I watched a lot of Disney movies and I still didn't. I do it just to prove that I still have control). You lose some of that control when you drink alcohol (from what I've been told).

This sound less healthy than drinking alcohol occasionally. It sounds as if you're glorifying some kind of stunted emotional capacity.

> If my significant other wants a drink, I tell her to put it on a separate bill.

I assume this has worked well for you, and I’m glad if it has.

Are you married, or in a long-term relationship where you have a shared bank account? Will your attitude towards this change under those conditions? Or do you plan to continue asking your significant other to separate it out and specifically use her money to pay?

>I have amazing executive control (I have suffered incredible emotional and physical pain over the last decade but I have never shed a tear in that time.

not to offend, but that doesn't define executive control to me. Generally it's not unhealthy to cry during emotionally turbulent episodes in your life; it's (crying) a method by which you're controlling your stress. Those i've met that don't cry tend to have longer periods between emotional 'episodes', but tend to act out much more aggressively. I tend to think that the supression of emotions does little to satisfy our need to express them, it just puts them on the backburner until they finally boil over much more violently than normal.

Another point, by which i'm not trying to offend you personally : is it healthy to villanize alcohol? It seems that would take the responsibility away from your father, when in reality he's the one who abused a substance that plenty of people can enjoy casually without issue.

I'm glad your coping with whatever methods you find that work personally, but I think that in a general sense that it is self-damaging to damn things in life based off of the experiences of others. Of course, that doesn't apply to suicidal ventures, but to avoiding common things in life.

My mother is an alcoholic, so I can offer some perspective, perhaps. It is a disease. I can tell for sure I have the same addictive tendencies, I have just had much better success aiming it at healthier outlets. It is fine for the alcohol to exist, plenty of people drink it socially, but it is a drug where very little good comes from it. It has limited medicinal use and significant long term impact like many recreational drugs. When you grow up seeing a parent either under it, it is very easy to be resentful at them and the alcohol. It isn’t crazy to just wish the stuff never existed. Maybe they would never have taken that first drink that set them on that path. At some point early in the process of alcoholism there is definitely an element of choice. If you catch it too late it becomes a full blown disease where the agency of the person with it is significantly reduced. They often need outside help to quit. Some common things in life truly are better just being avoided. So, I get the grandparent poster. It is armor to protect against the highly negative outcome of alcohol and alcoholism.

>Generally it's not unhealthy to cry during emotionally turbulent episodes in your life; it's (crying) a method by which you're controlling your stress

This is modern pseudoscientific nonsense, born in part of institutional crises in academia.

>Those i've met that don't cry tend to have longer periods between emotional 'episodes', but tend to act out much more aggressively.

This is blatant projection of personal bias.

Some people, men in particular, deal with emotions stoically. It's a perfectly valid approach, eastern philosophy has been teaching meditation to a similar end for thousands of years, not to mention this particular gender norm existed until very recent time, while we built civilization.

I challenge you to cite a reproducible, unbiased study that rigorously demonstrates the necessity of crying for all, or at least a sizable majority of, people. The trouble is you're dealing with the softest of sciences, one which is particularly vulnerable to bias from institutional dogma.

I don't think you need studies. Look at who crying hurts, and who crying helps. Crying alone is fairly costless, what are you wasting, time? What's the harm? But it's easy to find anecdata of how crying helps - stress relief, greater self-compassion, and the realizations that come afterwards.

I think it is true that it is not unhealthy to cry. Perhaps some people do not need to cry, but I don't think avoiding crying is an indication of more executive control. I cry all the time, because I'm not trying to avoid it. It feels good to cry for me.

I do try not to cry in front of other people and for the most part succeed. When alone though some times I do cry (eg watching a sad movie), because the effort to hold it in doesn’t seem to be worth it. But the thing is I don’t feel better having cried. Often times I actually feel worse, like a positive feedback loop. The crying makes me feel worse so I cry more which makes me feel worse still and so on.

Males also die five years younger, on average. A large portion of the gap has roots in poor mental health (risk-taking behavior, alcohol/diet, and suicide).

Rather than blaming men for not living longer consider how much less is spent on treating and researching male health issues than female. For example in the UK boys were offered the HPV vaccine 10 years after girls. Yet during that period male death rates from HPV related throat cancer were comparable to female death rates from HPV related cervical cancer.

I don’t really buy this claim. I think there are also examples of this the other way round (eg endometriosis affects many women but little research was done into it for a long time and people were turned away being told they were just imagining their pain instead of being given a diagnosis).

I don’t think I’m in a good position to guess at which sex is treated worse by medical research but I don’t think it’s obviously men.

I’m not sure medical research treats one gender better than the other - not something I have a strong opinion about.

But if the person you’re responding to is truthful, it’s odd that if the rates were similar why we only hear about one of the two groups being affected, isn’t it? I think if you search you can find a lot of these across both sexes, actually. I’m not sure what the cause of throat HPV is, but if it’s oral sex on women maybe that reveals a societies taboo. It’s so taboo that we are willing to let people die rather than admit it.

Anyway just a few thoughts as I was skimming the posts here.

As far a public health is concerned it's settled fact and has been for some years. The main risk seems to be for men that have sex with men rather than oral sex with women. Men that have sex with men can now (finally) get the vaccine on the NHS up to the age of 35.

It is not a 'claim' just google the spending rates.

Understanding cause of death is not "blaming men". The reasons for the gap are, for the most part, known. Big gaps are explained away by the suicide rate for men being 3.54x higher for males vs females and men delaying preventative medical treatment.

If you're arguing for the stoic-ness of traditional masculinity as a way to maintain mental health, as the comment I was replying to was, it's important to understand the real mental health issues and longevity issues associated with that same behavior.

Since you claim that the reasons are know, it seems to miss that a major reason for successful suicide is untreated depression which are well know area in medicine known to discriminate against men.

You can blame masculinity, or you can blame society for how it react to men who seek help.

> men delaying preventative medical treatment.

In the case of HPV caused cancer this is because there is (rightly) a massive screening program for cervical cancer and yet most men that have sex with men don't even know that they are at increased risk of HPV caused throat cancer. Similar programs exist for other diseases that exclusively affect women. They do not for diseases that exclusively or disproportionately affect men.

If living a fuller life through risk costs me five years, I'll take the trade. Perhaps mortality is not the only metric worth optimizing for some people.