YMMV. I cut out alcohol and my life overall has become better and more enjoyable. Alcohol can become a crutch when it's a pre-requisite to relaxing or having a good time, and then the side effects begin to make other aspects of life much worse. It's nice to be able to have fun without needing a drink first.

I think the biggest thing that made me stop drinking was learning how much even small amounts of alcohol negatively impact sleep quality, and how important sleep is for mental health and mood.

A big part of the problem is that the alcohol industry has had such a profoundly successful marketing campaign that they have actually embedded nonsense beliefs into the culture.

They have convinced society that A) it's almost impossible to really enjoy oneself in a social setting without alcohol and B) anyone who has multiple negative behavioral incidents related to alcohol must by definition be severely genetically deficient (rather than the alcohol having any blame for their behavior).

And C)you relax from a stressful situation by drinking, like going to the bar after a difficult day.

That’s true, along with countless other pleasures which aren’t literal poison. So at some point many of us just stick to the healthy pleasures that make life worth living.

Figurative, not literal poison. Unless you mean poison as in a substance that can cause serious harm under certain conditions. But then avoiding all such 'poisons' would probably not be that healthy.

Pretty literal IMO. Alcohol poisoning kills thousands of people every year.

Then in that case water is literal poison as is just about everything else if too much is consumed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

Alcohol is more poisonous than water but less poisonous than arsenic, the main unresolved question is how much alcohol is "safe", arsenic is regulated to certain amounts in food and drinking water to be considered a "safe" amount.

I think this is a common fallacy. We need water to survive. If there is safer way to survive without drinking water, please let us know. However, I am certain that anyone can survive without alcohol.

We can survive without the being in the sun and the sun gives us cancer, do you want to live without the sun?

Not everything we do should be judged on that basis, many things we do for enjoyment that are not required for living have risks associated with them alcohol included.

I just want good information on how risky alcohol is to make an informed decision.

Yes, if there wouldn't be any issue with Vitamin D I would prefer to live without sun. There is reason why I use sunscreen.

People take drugs for enjoyment too. There are reasons why many drugs are banned. There are few drugs that are less lethal than alcohol.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cocaine-ecst...

The problem I find with alcohol is not some occasional drinkers, but the one who ruins everything for the sake of pleasure. In my country, these people cause a large damage. They speak nonsense in streets, harms pedestrian by reckless driving, waste money on women etc.. I have never seen such behavior when someone drank water. Many things looks okay in ideal state or in philosophy, but in real life people have to face the naunces.

Hence, I think comparing Alcohol with Water in terms of harmful effect is vacuous.

In the same way that cancer is harmless because "we're all slowly dying", sure.

There are so few deaths attributed to water intoxication that each one has its own line in the wikipedia article.

Surely you can agree that there is a major difference here. If alcohol were discovered today it would absolutely be a schedule 3, highly controlled substance.

Salt is over twice as potent as alcohol, should salt be schedule 3? Salt is required for our body, yet is a deadly poison as well. Yes there is a big difference between water and alcohol and a big difference between alcohol and arsenic.

Black and white thinking gets us nowhere, this is literal poison, that is not, no its a continuum of toxicity. You can ingest more alcohol than arsenic safely and you can ingest more water than that, they are each about an order of magnitude away from each other on the L50 scale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose

Salt is also required for us to survive.

Arsenic is a highly controlled substance.

You're really choosing poor arguments.

I am aware that it's a continuum, I am the one acknowledging that. Your argument of "yea well water can kill you too" is ignoring that and is entirely reductive and provides no real value to this conversation. It also ignores that we consume water directly, and only consume alcohol in very diluted forms...because our body literally hates it we have to disguise it going in or else we involuntarily vomit immediately. But sure, comparable...

On the continuum of toxicity - alcohol is reasonably deadly and is very much a literal poison (as evidenced by the thousands of people who die from acute alcohol poisoning every year, not to even mention the thousands more who die as a result of long term usage) and provides no sustenance. As soon as you ingest it your body works to expel it from your body as quickly as it can. The damage it does to human cells is well documented. It is completely unnecessary to human life and even claims of some potential minor health benefits are easily crushed by the health benefits of say, eating an apple every day. And yes, there's certainly a deadly dosage of apples too.

>entirely reductive and provides no real value

Calling alcohol "literal poison" is the same, that was the point.

>because our body literally hates it we have to disguise it going in or else we involuntarily vomit immediately.

Eat pure undiluted Capsaicin and see what happens which is 10 times more deadly than arsenic yet we eat it for enjoyment all the time.

>alcohol is reasonably deadly

More people die from heart disease which sugar and fat is a contributor, same with skin cancer, too much sun, everything in moderation. "reasonably deadly" is your opinion fine, that is not a rigorous definition. We would be at a lot lower risk of health issues if we cut out everything we eat or do only for enjoyment that provides no sustenance that can't be argued.

But water isn't toxic to cells of the body, like alcohol is. It's just that killing or causing DNA damage to individual cells doesn't necessarily create an immediate noticeable effect, so it seems like there's little going on once the hangover clears. The doesn't mean it's doing nothing

>At the onset of this condition, fluid outside the cells has an excessively low amount of solutes, such as sodium and other electrolytes, in comparison to fluid inside the cells, causing the fluid to move into the cells to balance its osmotic concentration. This causes the cells to swell.

Water is absolutely toxic to cells and will absolutely kill you with enough dosage as will just about anything. Caffeine is 3 times more potent than arsenic and 30 times more potent than alcohol.

I used to think like this, including videogames, too, and this still long after reading in Siddhartha that everything is transitory, hah!

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic I stopped habitually drinking alcohol (1-2 drinks/day, pretty much every day for years, because it was customary in our house and with friends, except a started to cut back for a year or so before quitting since I was noticing how I felt). Alcohol no longer has any pull with me, and I've replaced that habit with other, more-enjoyable activities.

It's okay to change, and even better to steer the ship.