Agreed, I have a pretty horrible panic attack that starts with the takeoff roll, eases a bit when we're in the air and will return with any turbulence. Alcohol helps this significantly.

I’m glad that helps but just wanted to point out that there are ways of dealing with anxiety and panic attacks that don’t involve self-medicating.

Someone on HN many years ago recommended the book Learned Optimism saying that it changed their life. It did the same for me.

I have a therapist and currently am medicated through a psychiatrist, she recommended breathing but also said if having a beer or two helps that she's not going to tell me not to do it.

I can take a look and give that a read though.

Going to be pretty hard to stop people bringing their own flasks of vodka or whiskey.

I enjoy drinks too much on flights, would be better off without them.

Also it's kinda public space, occasionally with little kids - I'd prefer them not to be around alcohol.

Finally, having different areas of economy kinda solves this - half plane for young and ready to party, other half - for quiet and chill. Separate area for kids too. All of this is trivial to solve in booking software.

> occasionally with little kids - I'd prefer them not to be around alcohol.

It took me a moment to avoid the typical criticism of “think of the children”.

This is the real world. People drink. People do drugs. People do a lot of things.

In my opinion putting blinders on your kid is bad parenting.

I really don’t care what kids see me do. Keep the drinks coming for me!

Drinking on a plane always seems like a great idea, but despite only having one or two I invariably feel worse after flights where I’ve drank than ones where I haven’t. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be one of those veteran, pickled business travelers that can pound the drinks.

My rule of thumb after flying is that I owe myself 500cc of water for each hour of flight time, and that's after drinking carry on water and the complementary (soft) drinks: flying itself is severely dehydrating, and hauling luggage around may be light exercise but I'll usually end up sweating at some point in it.

Having two drinks on the flight just means another 500cc of water, but yeah, skip rehydration after flying and you're going to have a bad time. Add booze, it will be a worse time.

I’ve found that it makes absolutely no difference. Even flying first class, no difference. Flying is just miserable regardless of how you do it.

I love flying first class. The seats are just so much more comfortable. I can’t justify the extra $300-500+ per ticket for what is at most 5-6 hours though.

I’ve only done it once but we sat on the runway for over an hour and I didn’t care at all.

The other time I was on the runway for awhile I had to take a spirit or southwest flight and that was awful.

I’m always so uncomfortable and I’m not even a big person, 5’11” and 200lbs.

The only thing that has ever made a flight decent besides first class was taking etizolam and being knocked out the whole way through the flight.

Drinking on a flight makes me feel like crap. It only makes my miserable experience worse. If I drank a lot on or before a flight, I’d be so grumpy I’d probably get kicked off too. But this is obviously not everybody’s experience, as I hear people say a lot that it’s the only way they can bear a flight.