“A man drinks a cup of sake.
The first cup drinks the second cup.
After that, the sake drinks the man.”
I’ve never understood the attraction of getting drunk. I count myself lucky.
As far as pregnancy goes: Remember that homo sap spent centuries using wine as a way of making water safe to drink. That doesn’t mean it’s safe to overdo – not by a very long shot – but does tend to convince me that the risk of one drink now and then is probably close enough to nil as to make no difference.
Oh no! He is missed!
Honestly, the attraction for me was the fact that I was in the Army, stationed in Germany for ten years. Everyone up to, and including, the Base Chaplain drank. Most to excess - Army excess where it wasn’t unusual to see two people (me and my roommate) down a half gallon of Jack Daniels and two or three cases of beer. Every night. Seriously. I have no idea how the hell we lived through that. You’d think my liver would run away screaming but according to my doctor, it’s just fine. If I were to even attempt to drink like that now, I’d most likely die.
Scheiße 
This. I’m no doctor of biologist, but I have a good grasp of most of how my body works, and enough general knowledge to spot idiocy and jackassery. Whenever I need a new doctor or specialist, I tend to go through 2 to 3 before I find one who seems intelligent, and actually tells me what they’re doing and why, and seems to actually hear the things I say to them. For 20 years I had really bad year-round allergies, enough that it interfered with sleep, and my sneezing and nose blowing bothered everyone around me, but my doctors just kept me on claritin and flonase, saying that shots or anything else wouldn’t help me.
Then I went to grad school and worked in a clean room. After 8 hours in there, I felt what it was like to breathe normally. I got another new allergist and when I described my symptoms he immediately said most of them were caused by a non-allergic response. He gave me ipatropium and in 4 hours I felt better than ever before. Later on, he did put me on allergy shots, and six months later I live with a dog and a cat and no year-round symptoms. At peak times (like now) I’m about as bad as an average-or-slightly-better day used to be (and should get better over the next few years as I keep up the shots).
賢しみと 物言ふよりは 酒飲みて
酔ひ泣きするし まさりたるらし
【意訳】さかしらがって、あれこれ言うよりも、
酒を食らって酔い泣きする方が、まだましなのさ。
It seems that saying this and that wise thing is still not as good as drinking sake, getting drunk, and weeping.
– Ōtomo no Tabito
The phrase nobody seems to have mentioned yet is “liability insurance.”
Quoting from Frank Hayes’ song, The Cheap Lawyer:
Ask a housewife how much two and two is
Without hesitation, she’ll tell you it’s four
Ask an accountant, and he’ll say “I’m fairly certain,
But let me run through those figures once more.”
Ask a doctor, and he’ll think about malpractice
And tell you that he’s fairly sure, at the very least, it’s three
But ask a lawyer, and he’ll bar the door and draw the curtains
And whisper to you, “How much do you want it to be?”
In our litigous society, experts are being encouraged to build in safety factors on top of safety factors on top of safety factors. Doctors in particular – it isn’t just about more tests being more income, but about being able to prove more-than-due-dilligence should something go wrong and an insurance company try to blame them for it. So official advice is generally going to err on the side of safety.
What we need is a good expert-but-unofficial channel. “I’d have to advise you to do X. But I’d advise my sister to do Y.”
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