Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)
themarginalian.org
themarginalian.org
"All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before."
Note that he has defined all of life as two points about "one" and "oneself". This is why I and I assume many others roll their eyes.
Because Tolstoy, and most essays about alcohol, don't even mention what I think is the point of alcohol. It's a drug that makes it easier to socialize, and socializing is very, very good for people. So good that I will risk it, even though alcohol is bad in many ways: bad for physical and mental health, risky for abuse, etc.
If you are anti alcohol, that is reasonable, but it seems no one will ever admit what it's really for.
This is important, because alcohol is unhealthy and if you want to discourage it, give people other low effort ways to connect.
edit: [0] I learned that irony not really works on a forum. I occasionally drink, but I am get up early enough to bring my kids to school.
So yes, its a social thing, but is it good? It's something. There are other ways.
Being drunk and consuming alcohol is not the same thing. I like to drink a couple of beers but not more than that.
No, alcohol exists for a very simple reason: Clean and sanitary beverage.
Lest we forget, alcohol is alcohol. It is by its very nature sanitary and safe to drink, which is why humanity has long consumed it. Safe and clean drinking water in abundance is a fairly modern phenomenon, and it's still only available in a small part of the world at large.
Given that, alcohol satisfies both aforementioned activities.
Producing and consuming alcohol is harmonious with conscience, that is the desire to "do right" both for yourself and your peers, because beverages that are safe to drink is critically important to yourself and everyone.
It is also denying the brutal reality of the world we live in, that is to say we hide from our desire to "do right" because producing and consuming alcohol is easier than ensuring clean and safe drinking water while achieving the same practical goal.
Alcohol obviously has its problems, but they are far better than ones incurred from drinking foul water.
That’s why distillation was developed: to separate alcohol from water via evaporation and condensation and get a super-clean and super-sanitary beverage - with as little water as possible.
Indeed, for the social aspect, everyone is already fully aware it's not needed, and that they can have fun socialization without it, because of their childhoods.
I think the biggest reason alcohol is used is, to put it bluntly, how painful life is.
As the child grows into an adult, and realizes the real nature of life and the world, baseline pain increases. And it's hard to be social when you're worried about things or down about things.
But alcohol is a cheap, readily available blunt instrument against this pain. No matter how bad you feel, if you down a litre of booze, that pain will definitely, and quickly, stop.
Still enjoy a beer a bit too much. When I'm super happy and then have a beer it just adds to it.
It also can help me relax if I'm working to much. One can argue it's not needed, but at times nice.
See the wiki:
> According to a 2011 report by the World Health Organization, annual per capita consumption of alcohol in Russia was about 15.76 litres of pure alcohol, the fourth-highest volume in Europe.
> Alcoholism has been a problem throughout the country's history because drinking is a pervasive, socially acceptable behaviour in Russian society
I've done the maths on that and it comes out at 39.4 litres of 40% spirits a year, 750ml a week, or 108ml a day. In the UK that is basically two double spirit drinks.
Four UK units a day is above the recommended 14 per week and I'm sure isn't great for your health long term but most people wouldn't notice they are drinking at that level.
I appreciate this is the average so many will be way above that, but interesting to extrapolate it out.
Never happened to me. I'm not a drinker but I have of course consumed alcohol. Life is as painful as usual with or without alcohol in my body. If any, life is more miserably with alcohol because I look more pathetic than usual (classic drunk face), my voice is not clear, my mouth smells like shit, and I walk funny (if I can walk at all).
Not sure about other drugs, though (never tried).
It has always scared me what my life would be if I did tolerate alcohol well. Really, really scary thought!
People are not rational, that's just a very thin layer on top of emotions dictating most of our lives. Some almost don't have them, some are more rational (me too). But its important to recognize these aspects of us, and be at peace with them, easier to work with them like that.
Huh. I don't think I would have seen OP's point about people being strangely dismissive to the idea of alcohol as a social lubricant until you provided an example.
Saying alcohol is not needed for socializing is like saying everybody is fully aware that alcoholis not needed to numb bad feelings because they were happy when they were children.
Sure... you can also learn everything a Stanford class teaches online. You can find alternatives for the networking aspects, etc. Still... universities tend to be how people do this. You can bodybuild without a gym. Indomitable willpower & a DIY ethic are admirable, but "hacks" are still the way 90% of people get the job done.
I think you are downplaying how hard it is to be social, in various contexts. Alcohol can be used to dull pain. This definitely does occur frequently, especially once substance abuse is the pattern.
This does not negate the earlier comment about lubricating social interactions. That's generally the starting point for alcohol use. Flirting in high school. Being socially adventurous in college. Getting intimate with coworkers.
Substance mediated mind alteration is not new. It's not just escapism or "opium for the masses." There are many real reasons people use mind altering substances. Escapism & "opium for the masses," is, however, usually the mode when/once we're talking about addiction.
If you look at why alcoholics drink, and why high schoolers drink.... the reasons are just different.
I think you mean you're a little introverted or awkward. Some other people tend like that too though, don't be too hard on yourself. We also need to socialize.
These are desirable on their own, but they are also very useful specifically for socializing.
What they didn't understand is that "I think you're cute. Wanna go on a date?" is much easier in text. That's why kids always passed notes in class.
These things lubricate high friction social interactions... the kinds of things that people agonize over, regret, etc. You're right, this is alcohol's primary purpose. Most people stay here.
The same generation you're talking about was also the generation that would write letters and keep diaries, in addition to phone calls. The generations before that didn't have phones would write letters or telegrams. TL;DR, text based communication wasn't a novel concept, but what changed was that it was short and instantaneous.
For example, as a 90 kg man, for me drinking a single 33cl bottle of beer has pretty much the same effect as drinking water, i.e., I don't feel anything at all (note that I don't drive, in that context it would probably still be relevant). So when I have a single beer with dinner, there is zero intention of socializing, stupefying myself or whatever. I just like the taste (and don't order alcohol-free beer, which is healthier, because I hate its taste).
Similarly, having a red wine with a strong sheep milk cheese is an amazing experience, just because the tastes combine so well and enhance each other.
If there were alcohol-free versions of the beverages that tasted the same, I'd probably use them most of the time (except in some social contexts). There is no such thing, though.
does not compare to the drinking culture of poms, aussies, or yanks
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/indones...
There seems to be disagreement over this.
To me, alcoholic beverages have a distinctive taste in common (stronger in spirits and weaker in beer or wine), which I always assumed was the taste of the alcohol itself.
Some sources describe pure ethanol as 'tasteless', albeit strongly odoured; if this is true, then I guess what I interpret as a taste is really the combination of the smell & the burning sensation.
But other sources describe it as having a taste -- e.g. CAMEO Chemicals (via PubChem) says ethanol has a 'pungent taste', and a paper I find when googling says 10% ethanol tastes bitter to everyone and sweet to some (and I know that's not exactly alcohol 'by itself' but they do attribute the taste to the ethanol).
It could be that my local beer brand uses old tech, though.
I'll keep trying from time to time, but at the moment nothing comes even remotely close to the real thing for my taste.
Similar to my advice on vegetarian food - you don't want it to be 'the vegetarian version', de-meated from the normal one. You want the vegetables to become the star, so you want an XYZ (what are the vegetables) lasagne, not a 'vegetarian lasagne'.
It’s absolutely beneficial there’s no chance of hangovers though.
For me, there's nothing 'principal' about it btw, it just works, for now. The upside is of course no negative effects (ie hangover) and much less threshold to open one, even on the rare occasion we have a warm meal during lunch time (I work from home).
* usually means < 0.5%
What kind of beer though? 33cl is nothing but we still have to compare apples to apples.
Mystery of Beer vs something like Budweiser is a no-no.
But on a more affordable level I recommend checking out https://www.cognac-expert.com. They do have the incredibly expensive stuff, but at a also a reasonable-price range that goes well beyond the standard Remy, Hennessy, etc. VSOP or even XO. A world to explore!
> don't order alcohol-free beer, which is healthier, because I hate its taste
I make quite a lot of cocktails and have some quite decent alcohol free ones in my repertoire, but compared to the alcoholic ones there are a very poor imitation.
Isn't this justification you bring your activities into harmony with conscience?
But is unconscious socialization the same as conscious socialization? IMO all socialization is not equal. If you're "engaging" with people who are intoxicated themselves, while you are intoxicated, does that truly yield the same benefits as a genuine, no-barrier interaction? In my experience, no.
No one is “unconscious” after one or two glasses of wine lol
Your fist statement is a rather disingenuous and a contrived, false premise. Further, this very OP links to a prominent drinker arguing the opposite of your other point.
The point is really that all existence is filtered through the lens of the mind. This is related to the idea of solipsism, to which I think Tolstoy subscribed to some degree. I haven't studied any of that stuff since college though, maybe a philosophy PhD is lurking around HN...
I mean, you know what people also use to "hide from oneself the indications of conscience"? Reading long novels, like the ones Tolstoy wrote.
Except (some) people take in more alcohol than is necessary to accomplish that result. He's talking about stupefying, and refers to more than just alcohol:
> What is the explanation of the fact that people use things that stupefy them: vodka, wine, beer, hashish, opium, tobacco, and other things less common: ether, morphia, fly-agaric, etc.?
Does taking hashish and opium allow for easier socializing?
Further:
> The cause of the world-wide consumption of hashish, opium, wine, and tobacco, lies not in the taste, nor in any pleasure, recreation, or mirth they afford, but simply in man’s need to hide from himself the demands of conscience.
> A drunken man is ashamed of none of these things, and therefore if a man wishes to do something his conscience condemns he stupefies himself.
Stupefies is a negative term because he is against alcohol but socialising is easier because of exact same reason. It removes the filter and we could do things which we are "ashamed" of, even if there is nothing to be ashamed of. e.g. I am ashamed of talking to stranger or discussing details of my life when sober.
YMMV. If you have real social anxiety, the above is just about impossible. People who haven't experienced it just don't know. It's extremely difficult to understand if you haven't been there. Normal shyness is a different animal. It's sort of like depression. Although people may think you should just snap out of it, you can't.
And alcohol definitely can help. Believe me, I know. My life was pretty much dominated by social anxiety in my college years and 20's. Gradually it's gotten much better. I never drank a lot, but in those social situations where my self-consciousness made it pretty much impossible to do as you suggest, having some alcohol really made a positive difference. (This was long ago, I'm 67 now.)
I don't recommend using it that way if you also have any other characteristics that could turn you into an alcoholic, because it's possible you'll stop using it and it will start using you. It's dangerous. It can destroy your life. But for me, in specific situations when I needed some help in order to be less self-conscious and more out there, it did help. (Therapy pretty much didn't, for me, but in recent years, meditation does.)
* Not having the chance to go to a party. (i.e. never being invited, or being in government-mandated house arrest for years to accomodate for other people who might die of a certain disease. Or both.)
* Having the chance to go to a party, but still refusing because of the dread going to a party induces. (Possibly related to trauma caused by previously going to a party, see below. (Or any trauma caused by other humans, really.))
* Actually going to a party, but not having the communication skills to naturally start a conversation with some random person.
* Starting a conversation nevertheless, only to come to the same conclusion (also traumatizing yourself in the process after you get ignored).
* As an extension: trying to join a conversation, but being ignored by all participants for being uninteresting, annoying, weird, or simply ugly. (Or all of the former.)
* Sitting/standing alone for most of the party because of the aforementioned problems, then after a few occasions deciding that surely this wasn't worth the time and never going to a party again.
Alcohol may or may not help with these problems. (It doesn't for me, so in the end I just gave up.)
lol.
>Are you at a party? Approach people you don’t know
LOL.
My man, if only you had a shred of an idea of how things really are for many people.
Well, no. Alcoholism can start regardless of the reason you start drinking. There are plenty of "social lubricant" drinkers who became alcoholics because of the pernicious GABA regulation cycle.
You might start drinking to have a better social life, but eventually you drink to cure the hangover, to cure the shakes, to cure the anxiety that alcohol withdrawal gives you. Then it's just a cyclical pattern of poisoning yourself to cure the effects of the last poisoning.
When your addiction becomes physical, it doesn't matter why you started drinking in the first place. Now the only reason you drink is to function.
I would know.
Edit to add: I don't meant to encourage drinking as a tool for managing ADHD. It works but it's a blunt and dangerous tool. If you're at that point, you'll absolutely love the results you get from the healthier strategies: Understanding yourself; developing a suite of tools that don't involve a slippery slope; and curating your social and physical environment carefully.
Oh wait, that isn't fun at all.
ADHD is real and untreated it can (and often does) destroy lives.
(Also: People with untreated ADHD have 3x the gen-pop rate of car accidents!)
Many current ADHD medications cause increased levels of dopamine. This is a leading theory on why they work.
Wanna guess what a lot of other drugs, including alcohol, do in your brain?
It’s been amazing since I got diagnosed relatively late in life exactly how many other things suddenly made so much more sense and clicked into place. And amazing how quickly decades old substance abuse habits started to taper off once my brain chemistry was less fucked.
Can you expand on this. Do you think think engineering schools select for ADHD? Just curious, haven't heard this before.
In engineering, tenacity is absolutely required to make any progress at all, but there are also seemingly infinite threads to pull on.
If you’re in hyperfocus mode and you’re working on something, you don’t run out of interesting side tracks or ways to keep digging down through the foundations under what you’re working on.
In that sense it reminds me of Alan Watts writings on LSD. Get the message and then go away and work on it, don't get fixated on getting the message. As a transient thing some drugs are neat, but to become dependent on them is a dangerous thing.
It's possible that's what we're after when we drink: stop the flow of ideas. That's one meaning of "stupefy".
>Alcohol has played a central role in the creative lives of some of the most famous authors of the last few centuries. Lewis Hyde notes in his essay Alcohol and Poetry that four of the six Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature were alcoholics, namely William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/booze-as-muse-write...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/henrydevries/2018/12/11/ernest-...
9:00(pm) starts snorting cocaine seriously
10:00 drops acid
11:00 Chartreuse, cocaine, grass
11:30 cocaine, etc, etc.
12:00 midnight, Hunter S. Thompson is ready to write
12:05-6:00 a.m. Chartreuse, cocaine, grass, Chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin, continuous pornographic movies.
No, drinking drowns your creativity.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/806499/threading-vs-para...
This is not the case for the vast majority of alcohol use throughout history. Historically, for lower class professions like farmers or factory workers, drinking was just something you did. It was something your father did, and his father did, etc. It was an inherited cultural trait, not a decision that an individual ruminated over.
Adding to that were exploitative practices against these workers by the providers of alcohol, in a way not dissimilar to the recent opioid crisis.
Landlords had monopoly on producing and selling alcohol, and they extracted as much additional income from that as they could. Which meant each of them had an inn which he rented out to someone. The inn was buying landlord's alcohol and encouraging or forcing peasants to buy it.
It was a common trick to have "all you can drink" passes for farmers. There were even attempts to force peasants to buy if they didn't wanted to - by introducing quotas and they had to pay for the whole amount even if they drank less.
When it comes to Slavic countries before 20th century - think American South before civil war, just both slaves and slave owners are white.
Serfdom was also widely present in Europe, not unique to Slavic countries at all.
They could in Russia. And when direct trade and trade with land were eventually prohibited, they were "rented out" to the same effect.
I’m hoping you might simply be biased by the fact that most of what we know about history, and even in more recent times most of what gets mindshare, comes from the upper class.
For one, many religious movements across the world preached against alcohol use - and while you can argue in some cases the doctrine was set by the upper classes, that doesn’t hold as much water when looking at the many popular Protestant movements which were pretty grassroots. Temperance in the US was hugely driven by middle and working class women, not just elites. And alcohol use was highly controlled by such elitist movements as Leninist Russia.
> Throughout the first 1,800 years of Church history, Christians generally consumed alcoholic beverages as a common part of everyday life and used "the fruit of the vine" in their central rite—the Eucharist or Lord's Supper. They held that both the Bible and Christian tradition taught that alcohol is a gift from God that makes life more joyous, but that over-indulgence leading to drunkenness is sinful.
"I called on Dr. Johnson one morning, when Mrs. Williams, the blind lady, was conversing with him. She was telling him where she had dined the day before. "There were several gentlemen there," said she, "and when some of them came to the tea-table, I found that there had been a good deal of hard drinking." She closed this observation with a common and trite moral reflection; which, indeed, is very ill-founded, and does great injustice to animals—"I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves." "I wonder, Madam," replied the Doctor, "that you have not penetration to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
'What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to shew even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths."'
Kinda basic psychology but it's helpful to just put the bottles away in an a cabinet - if I don't see them I don't even think, "oh - I could go for a drink". The difference is expending the willpower to not drink vs not to even think to drink.
The overwhelming shift in the social sciences from the political to the personal, and the related shift from the moral to the psychological over the course of the twentieth century, has led us to the point where we are no longer able to even conjure up language necessary to condemn excessive drug and alcohol consumption in terms of moral failure without sounding like a religious lunatic.
It makes one wonder what Tolstoy would have to say about harm reduction.
I feel like my mind is by default "extra sober", and drinking helps bring it to a normal level of sobriety.
But the sun, like alcohol, isn't so bad in moderation
The risks of alcohol are quite well known (e.g. what drinking & driving often does). It's also addictive, which means some people really struggle to stop or can't. It's not harmless at all.
Sun: can I live forever in a cave so I don't get any sunlight? No, you can't (in practical terms). But you can use sunscreen and you can limit the number of hours you get exposed to sun (don't be a dick and lay down on the beach 5h straight during hot summer days). Problem fixed.
Alcohol: can I live forever without drinking any alcohol. Yes, you can. Problem fixed.
> Alcohol: can I live forever without drinking any alcohol. Yes, you can. Problem fixed.
No you can't. Nobody lives foverer.
Personally a theoretical increase of 0.001% is kinda moot, even 1 or 2% would be something I'd see as a small risk given the sheer enjoyment I'd get out of alcohol (for instance, in comparison, moving to a greener city would probably decrease my overall cancer risk by much more)
I am interested in why Tolstoy feels the need to be so reductive. Sounds to me like he might also be "hiding from himself what he doesn't wish to see". Which is a human activity so I don't begrudge him his own chosen blind spots, I just think it's interesting and I'm wondering if he is being fully honest with himself about why he hates alcohol so much.
He tells exactly this. You and him are looking from different sets of axioms, so you come to a different language, but it is just outside appearance.
Tolstoy uses axioms like Freud's: human is an animal inside and human needs to work hard to subside his/her animal nature and to become a Human. So human is inherently bad, but it may become good if tried hard enough.
From other hand you start from different premises (I allow myself a little guessing here, sorry): human is inherently good, but may become bad due to bad experiences. So if one feels the need to become good, they need to dig inside themselves, find out what happens, accept it, and learn how to live with it. Humanistic psychology like that.
But the funny thing, that it doesn't matter much where you begin to think what it means to be a human, the most complicating thing is a communication between people using different sets of axioms about human nature.
I think in this case it isn’t the axioms but the “style” of philosophical discourse that requires the reader to take the message with a big grain of salt. Like when a YouTuber says, “In the next ten minutes, I’m going to lay out the exact formula for how to write a perfect screenplay,” it’s not literally true. Tolstoy’s musings are a little deeper than your average YouTuber, on par with a good one, similarly overblown and oversimplified, and more moralizing.
"The opposite of addiction is connection" ——Gabriel Maté
I have been "clean" from a past life for 14 years. Every day is a challenge.
Problem after too much the body just craves more.
Drinking with my friends makes me happy in different ways. Alcohol doesn't lose its appeal just because I'm happy while I'm sober.
However, I think your description of external circumstances to argue that you are happy is concerning to me. People are good at ignoring negative things and deluding themselves, and happiness is mostly an internal thing and can't be measured by external success. I don't know you, but people with low self esteem in a narcissist/co-dependent marriage, with "tons of hobbies" to help them escape would still say exactly what you are saying.
Booze, sex, and drugs are just life's cheat codes for giving you more dopamine. The person with fear is the one who is so terrified of judgement by society, too betrothed to the idea that they'd be sinning to actually enjoy themselves, that they deny themselves extremely fun experiences.
Good lord, what a statement.
A higher peak perhaps - but you can't be on MDMA 100% of the time, and taking MDMA effects that other time. Whether taking MDMA works out over the entirety of your life is a personal question - many find the high not worth it.
> You know what rich college students don't have a lot of? "fear, social anxiety, and trauma".
However, I strongly disagree with this. They might even tell you they don't have these issues, but they are unconscious. Hard partying "rich college students" are largely practicing binge drinking, and it is to escape negative emotions. It's not true at all that being rich and privileged protects you from these things. A very common thing is wealthy kids having neglectful or emotionally unavailable parents, and being very afraid of being "unlovable," or being rejected. This is exactly what pushes kids to participate in degrading hazing rituals, binge drinking, drug use, and generally being afraid to enforce boundaries around their own health and well being for fear of being rejected or excluded.
Psychologists are starting to notice that wealthy children often have behavioral issues that look a lot like PTSD, despite being privileged [1]. These symptoms can look like those in refugee children, or war torn areas, and were previously seen as totally impossible with wealthy and privileged children [2]. But kids don't care how much is in their parents bank account: emotional abuse and trauma is what causes this, and wealth doesn't protect you from abuse.
[1] https://addcounsel.com/can-wealth-be-traumatic/ [2] https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/blog/the-undeclared-war-on-...
So it seems the opposite is in effect. People are so vehemently against drugs that they are willing to accept a higher societal burden just to push their ideology.
I think it does make sense from an anti-drugs point of view. Imagine a parent whose child wants to take football as a sport. You have three choices:
1. "Sure, whatever, have fun". Cheap in the short run, but expensive in the long run due to medical bills and likelihood of traumatic head injury.
2. "Okay, but only with protective equipment". Cheaper in the long run, but still requires an investment in protective measures.
3. "No, too dangerous. Do something else". Even cheaper, no investment required.
Of course this is a simplification, but I think it illustrates the point: that society would rather have no drugs at all than investing in safe and controlled access.
But this isn’t what happens, which is my entire point. Banning drugs doesn’t result in no drugs. It results in drugs going underground where they cause greater harm to society. Prohibition doesn’t work - we figured that out almost 100 years ago. Continuing to push illegality is purely ideological at this point.
Some people
The amount of posters in this thread who seem to mistake a superficial physical co-existence in a social setting for genuine connection is staggering. The Mate quote you've shared seems to address it directly, and better than I could have hoped (and tried) to articulate myself.
Wait how did Tolstoy know this? The studies proving it baseless only came out like a year ago!
Edward Slingerland’s latest research is a deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization — and the evolutionary roots of humanity’s appetite for intoxication. “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization” elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends that surround our notions of intoxication to provide a rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Slingerland shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers.
[1] https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-...
If I am in my normal raw intellect, I will begin going deep on some topic thats outside the range of normal human discourse. It will be hard for me to stop, because of my interest. Alcohol removes that to a large degree.
Edit:
A funny meta observation, the "Peak HN" comment below, and the following conversation, might not have been necessary if I wrote this post very hungover.
To be fair I can barely put a sentence together when sober either.
Talking is a skill like any other.
So, a comparison.
You know how you can picture a car in your head but you can't make draw a car unless you've spent time practicing as an artist? That is because connecting our mental representation of "a car" and making our hand draw a car is a skill that requires a lot of training. This is why artists practice drawing still lives, looking at an orange and copying it down to paper with a pencil trains your brain on how to translate the thing that is visually inside your head to what your hand needs to do to re-create it.
Well, the same for mental dialogue. Going from "idea in head" to "words coming out of mouth" is a skill that takes practice.
There are ways to practice this! Toastmasters is a famous group whose goal is improving this skill, but there are many other routes. I had good luck with table top RPGs, I spent years playing a character who is supposed to be charismatic, and accordingly I had lots of chances to practices being outgoing!
We are good at the things we practice doing!
This is exacerbated by the fact that in my 30s, the amount of alcohol needed for a hangover is quite low.
Peak HN.
But then you don’t because the last time you did something like that you just got a blank stare, and ‘hmmm!’ and a change in topics.
jcims: So what kind of hobbies are you into?
Bob: I love my garden, I planted several new flowers last weekend in fact.
jcims: Oh? What kind of flowers are you growing?
Bob: These latest are Lenten roses, I know a lot of people find the smell a bit unpleasant, but I actually prefer it to the zinnias.
jcims (sober): Isn't it interesting how there seems to be an innate attraction towards the scent of certain flowers. Like what is the electrochemical process that creates sensation in your mind of attraction and beauty and a pleasant experience when a certain set of chemicals bind to receptors in your head.
Bob: I don't know about chemistry, I'm just a gardener.
---
Alternately:
jcims (tipsy): That's cool! I've never heard of Lentil roses. Do they smell different than real roses?
Bob: chuckle Finally, a pleasant party conversation! The last person I talked with must have had a Ph.D. in neurochemistry or something, they started talking about electroreceptors and I just couldn't think of anything smart enough to say.
Really? You don't think that intelligence has multiple components - raw intelligence, social intelligence, etc? And that you could in theory be good at one but not at the other?
I can't see any reason that someone who is really intelligent at technical things couldn't be just as socially intelligent. They probably just don't have as much practice with social environments when compared to technical problems.
Ever notice how SAHPs get starved for adult conversation? Parents have many things in common with their children and they care about their lives. They can certainly connect to their children. And yet, interaction with kids is not a substitute for adult conversation.
STAHP love connecting with adults to... talk about their kids.
I still find the behavior odd. If someone says "I feel awkward around people because I'm short" no one responds with "that's not a problem with being short, that's just social anxiety". But when someone says "I feel awkward around people because I'm smart" suddenly everyone has an issue.
There are many varieties of intelligence in many domains. If you find yourself in the company of someone you feel is less intelligent than you, try finding what they know about or care about. What have they experienced that you haven't? Or perhaps try finding a shared area of ignorance. Who knows, you might find they consider you dumb or naive in some way.
It is indeed very hard for some people to feel comfortable in social situations that are outside their prior experience or interests. But I'm inclined to agree with grandparent comment that this has little to do with 'intelligence'.
I've noticed this with other guys that just need to chill out a bit when socializing -- especially tech folks.
It's more about energy level than smartness.
No need to be hungover -- maybe just relax a bit, take things slower, talk less, go on fewer (or no) tangents, etc., and you might achieve the same result.
I agree with what you are saying about energy levels but take issue with these suggestions. How does an inherently anxious and energetic person "just relax" and "take things slowly"? I mean, the phrase "just relax" generates (for a younger version of me) a thought bubble that would read: I thought I was relaxed!!
> talk less, go on fewer (or no) tangents
What's worse, someone babbling about something they're excited about? Or sitting in awkward silence because they're mentally keeping score of who's saying more words in the conversation?
Again, I am 100% with you on the excess energy levels making someone annoying. I am just looking for actionable, less generic suggestions. To bring it back to the start of your post:
> I prefer my husband's company when he's tired
How does your husband get tired enough to be tolerable?
I've been thinking about this too.
My plan is to just sit down and really put the hours in — work hard, and really grind through all those meditation apps and podcasts and books.
And I think, if I just grit my teeth and keep at it, nonstop, then eventually I'll master the secret to relaxing and taking things slowly.
I’m much more chill and relaxed after that
I feel far more peaceful and centered when I am hungover. I don't have a thousand things flying around the edges of my brain, nipping at my consciousness. I just _am_.
Drinking can do that for me too, but it shuts off so much of my brain that eventually, it's like being what I imagine a dog is. Completely reactive, with almost no higher thinking. Not that that is bad. I enjoy it.
If not for how bad it makes me feel physically, I'd probably spend most of my waking hours either drunk or hungover. What that says about me, I hesitate to think about, hah.
I also found that in my limited experience with meditation, I could sometimes find that place of tranquility and "simply being". But it was so rare, and the experience of meditation so frustrating and seemingly impossible to progress in, that I gave up. But I still hold that what I am after in meditating is the same thing that I am after in a night of drinking. Single-threadedness, peace, acceptance.
I've tried meditation, could never reach a high enough level with it to feel sustained peace/calmness. I should put more effort into it though
no significant other in my life, until I started drinking
My best friend from uni did not start drinking until his 30s. He never had a girlfriend before he drank. Something bothers me so much when I think about it. He is married now and a very decent husband -- really cares about his wife. What if he never started drinking and never met anyone? Sheesh.
Assuming hetero-normative for a moment, what do women think about this?
In summary, it helped some and hurt others!
"Alex, 30, lives in New York City. He says he has depression, anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD. His experiences sound similar to Dylan’s, with a heavy night of drinking making way for a newfound sense of self. “I was calm, empathetic, emotional, not anxious,” he says. "
Is similar to me, even live in nyc and a similar age
Sounds like a crutch. What you describe here is a fairly common response by people suffering from social anxiety.
I’m not implying that’s you, but it seems like you have the capacity to act the same way without booze so it might be worth to observe how and what you feel when that happens.
Not sure what to make of a statement like this. But what seems missing in this analysis is that by this point (and it sounds like it's taken you years to get here) you've probably completely forgotten what it's like to just be completely sober and to completely forget about drinking altogether.
Which is very different from the low-functioning refactory state (that is -- post-hangover, pre-next-drink) within the cycle of long-term regular alcohol use.
A man when sober is ashamed to go after a prostitute, ashamed to steal, ashamed to kill. A drunken man is ashamed of none of these things, and therefore if a man wishes to do something his conscience condemns he stupefies himself."
- Tolstoy (from the article)
modern western societies shame is placed upon many activities that are normal and necessary for a human to enjoy a good life
Centuries ago, another such interesting figure said similar things as you see here… Blaise Pascal:
Lose them continually and there's no life left.
Was "tobacco" at the time different from what it's now? I have been a smoker for years (stopped a long time ago) and in my experience, as well as others', tobacco does not stupefy, at all.
Is it possible that what Tolstoy called "tobacco" involved other substances as well?
> Nicotine is unusual in comparison to most drugs, as its profile changes from stimulant to sedative with increasing dosages, a phenomenon known as "Nesbitt's paradox" after the doctor who first described it in 1969.
> All human life, we may say, consists solely of these two activities: (1) bringing one’s activities into harmony with conscience, or (2) hiding from oneself the indications of conscience in order to be able to continue to live as before.
> Some do the first, others the second. To attain the first there is but one means: moral enlightenment — the increase of light in oneself and attention to what it shows. To attain the second — to hide from oneself the indications of conscience — there are two means: one external and the other internal. The external means consists in occupations that divert one’s attention from the indications given by conscience; the internal method consists in darkening conscience itself.
Sounds oh so much like a somewhat veiled Teror Management Theory, like the premise TMT starts from. We fear the end of our meaningfulness. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/terror-management-...
2. Problems you cannot resolve and cannot stop thinking about. Again, closely related to the previous issue.
That's it. No need to write 25 long paragraphs about that.
Otherwise, yes, we seriously need more harmless and easily maneageable substances to calm down consciousness/societal brain. This is an issue that we'll keep having a long as we live in societies.
Many spiral out of control like this without their families or coworkers even knowing how far astray from the "path" directed by the conscious compass they are.
Another interesting point is that "stupefiers" allow you to do things your "conscience" wouldn't allow you otherwise. Tolstoy brings up things like murdering or stealing, but there are also beneficial things like socializing or creative process.
Yet, regardless of the positives, it seems like the health detriments of alcohol are becoming more and more accepted by society. I noticed that less and less younger people drink these days, and I'm seeing more and more N/A options in bars and stores, at least in some parts of the U.S.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Do_Men_Stupefy_Themselves...
That's here is the famous mysterious russian culture for you kids.
- I like who I am when I'm sober, and don't expect that I would like 'drunk me'.
- I like being in full control over what I experience and how I experience it.
- I also enjoy remembering (and not regretting) those experiences.
you're worried that alcohol would make you show it? :P
> ... and don't expect that I would like 'drunk me'.
Have you ever tried being drunk? I wouldn't recommend it if you're fine the way you are, but OTOH, I think people don't actually understand unless they've tried it.
(I know that's kind of shitty, but ... that's life.)
Really it's just an easy excuse that doesn't need to be true because the fact remains that this person doesn't want to be a person who drinks and most won't question it.
It's also possible they get drunk quite easily.
It should be. But people tend to get real defensive around teetotalers, maybe because many of them are judgy and preachy because they don't drink for religious reasons.
It seems to me that in western cultures, ex-drinkers get a lot more respect than never-drinkers.
I grew up in a small white trash family who lived on an indian reservation. So I had front-row seats to all of the spectacular consequences of alcohol overindulgence, both in my own family and in my community.
Yeah, that certainly tainted my perspective on the pros and cons of drinking.
I'm humble and rational enough to acknowledge that me drinking would probably bring more negatives into my life than positives.
I would argue you like the illusion of being in control, not that you are actually in control of anything.
Some of the greatest decisions of my life were made after a few drinks (Such as booking flights to other countries, hooking up with people, making lifelong friends). Sometimes our rational, thinking minds aren't as smart as they think they are, and a measured amount of unpredictability can make life better. Of course it's a double edged sword, and has a dark side, but things would be pretty uninteresting if you never had any regrets.
It's worth calling out that meditation can (sometimes, depending on the form) lead to a similar headspace.
Could you elaborate about not how you aren't really any more in control when sober? I feel that you're making an interesting argument, but I don't really share your perspective well enough to understand what you mean.
My aversion to alcohol largely comes from wanting my best judgement intact in order to better survive complex situations. When you talk about the positives of taking more risks, my immediate response is that you should learn to take more risks when sober, rather than dulling yourself so you blindly stumble into them. But I also think I'm not fully appreciating your point.
Not the person you responded to, but I can give it a shot.
I think the crux is that you don't have as much control as you think you do, even when sober. Whether you realize it or not, you're still at the whims of yourself and environment: emotions, time of day, exhaustion, pressure. You can't think or analyze yourself out of that. So sure, you may take more risks when drinking, but so what? Do what feels right in the moment.*
* Y'know, within reason. Buying plane tickets = good, getting a forehead tattoo = bad.
> My aversion to alcohol largely comes from wanting my best judgement intact in order to better survive complex situations.
This really resonates with me, and it's something I'm actually try to minimize. I've been finding being present -- and not attempting to foresee and prepare for uncomfortable situations -- to be a much happier place to be. And should a scary situation arise, I trust my future self to handle it appropriately. Or he won't, and that's fine too!
When I'm sober I feel simultaneously manic and under-stimulated. I tend to exhibit uncooperative or argumentative behavior. This leads me to avoid others and isolate because I don't want them to get mad or dislike me. I have a hard time shutting my mouth. I'm so tired of playing the game of socializing, most people have nothing interesting or unpredictable to say or talk about.
When I'm drunk, I'm actually nice and can lie to kick it. I'm genuinely more loving, forgiving, and fun-loving.
- I like who I am when I'm drunk, and I don't like sober me
- I don't feel a loss of control and my experiences are better when I am able to let go of pretension and disappointment.
- I remember everything that happens to me, at worst I forget a non-important conversation
When one develops mindfulness a bit this becomes quite apparent.