I think being shitfaced every time you drink is probably not moderation. Doing it occasionally is different than doing it habitually. No one can tell anyone the precise number of drinks moderation means for them. It has a lot to do with metabolism, size and whether one is partaking with a meal or on an empty stomach. I think it’s silly to get riled up about it.
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
I’ve been conducting a very anecdotal survey over the past several months, asking friends what they have been told by doctors about drinking. One friend was counseled to limit her intake to 3 glasses a day.
Obviously Katie is British: every American doctor or publication I’ve ever seen either considers any alcohol excessive, or pushes for one glass a couple of times a week.
I think doctors in general advocate for abstinence because they are doctors, not scientists. They assume their patients will do anything and everything to excess, and as most doctors see themselves as health advocates, they take the stance that it’s best to push for the minimum.
We also see this in the long list of things pregnant women should abstain from. Sure, the science says that pregnant women can generally do everything a normal woman can do, with some minor caveats, but if you ask a doctor, they would prefer you to stay bedridden on a restricted diet.
Where’s the buzz?
We want the buzz! We want the buzz!
It goes beyond that with the Pfizer-robed pushers, take nasal sprays for example.
Afrin creates dependency, Google it and see how many people suffer from this, have been slaves to their nasal spray bottle for years, else the breathing passages seize up. Try sleeping while breathing through your mouth because your nose feels like it’s full of sand, a horrible thing.
Steroid sprays will achieve the same effects as Afrin, but takes a few days of usage to build up and kick in.
Almost every single doctor will prescribe steroid sprays and take you off the Afrin, you’re gonna have to go through hell for a week or more, as a lowly patient, obey and deal with it. Then doctors are terribly surprised when the relapse rate is something along the lines of 98%, “I don’t understand, I told the patient the correct thing to do”.
Here’s what a doctor can tell a patient: Start taking the steroid, go home and throw away all your Afrin except one full, brand new bottle and keep using it. When it’s half empty, fill it up with saline solution, then again when it’s halfway, and again, and again, until it’s almost homeopathic. By then the steroid will have long kicked in and the Afrin withdrawal was free of suffering.
My point is, a bit of creatively humane thinking can do the trick, but the nasal spray 98% fiasco gives away the fact that the Pfizer-robed salesmen simply do not function that way.
I call shenanigans! Typical portion size: “8-ounces of malt liquor” – I guess that I need a few more friends with which to share… (Does Mickeys still make the little 8 oz bottles?)
But that way they open their patients up to the unintended consequences of devaluing a medical opinion. Like how DARE and Nancy Reagan in the 80s suggested that having an occasional toke would inevitably lead you to hard drug addiction, insanity, and homelessness; once kids discovered this was bullshit, everything else we were told on the subject became suspect, even the stuff that was true. They were lying about pot, so they were probably lying about heroin and speed too, right?
A responsible doctor knows about human behavior and thus doesn’t give “easy” advice like that. A responsible doctor might say something like “You really shouldn’t be downing a sixpack every evening, but if you must, consider something with a lower percentage ABV, and eat some food first.” A doctor who says OMG YOU WILL HAVE A FLIPPER BABBY IF YOU DRINK A GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE AT ANY TIME DURING PREGNANCY accomplishes nothing but losing credibility.
The white Pfizer robe does not grant moral authority nor superiority, yet doctors dish out guilt by the handful.
But like you say, not all doctors are like that, although my experience is that the majority are lazy thinkers like that.
A doctor recently told me that if, let’s say you’re gonna go out on a Friday, first have a solution of Sorbitol and B-complex, it’ll protect a bit from damage and the hangover. A doctor that doesn’t preach moralistically, how refreshing!
That’s a great point, and as someone who is a happy Fluticasone user I know exactly what you mean. It took me about a week or so to become fully used to fluticasone, and ever since then my allergies have been mostly non-existent. I can breathe normally practically all the time, something I didn’t realize was normal!
But yeah, my doctor didn’t say much about it other than “you need to have a checkup every year so we can review your nasal passages and mucus membranes.” She said “Two sprays every day” and when i said, after a 3-month checkup, that it didn’t seem to be doing much, she asked if I was doing it every day. I said “no, I forget some days, it’s been more like every other day when I feel a little allergic.” She just reiterated “Do it every day.”
It would have been nothing special for her to spend 10 seconds saying “This drug requires a build-up in your body for it to function, so if you skip days, it reduces its effectiveness.” Instead, I just got a rule that I was told to follow with no real explanation.
I’ve had one doctor who was really, really good, and sadly I only saw him twice. I went for a checkup, and when he asked about my exercise level I told him I had just run a marathon a month ago. He said “Why didn’t you tell me that at the beginning and we could’ve skipped all of this! Why are you even here? You don’t need a physical!” That’s when I told him I needed to have a physical just for the fluticasone… I did see him again to get a prescription for anti-malaria medicine, and he told me about the 3 current ones, the side effects, when to start taking them, and after selecting one he said “this will make you feel a little crappy. You should take it for 3 weeks after you get home, but if you don’t go out in the countryside and you’re feeling crappy, just take it for a week after you get home.”
It used to be easy to tell what “moderation” was. I would just drink until Anitous told me to stop. Now I’m all confused and I keep puking on myself.
My doctor switched me from Allegra (which stopped me from sneezing, but I still had a runny/stuff nose most of the time) to Flonase and it was like magic … I remember being stunned at how much easier my breathing had become. I don’t remember it taking very long to build up, but I also had been living in allergy hell for years and years so a week or two would not have made much of a difference. I did wonder, however, why she had not given me the stuff before.
Is Antinous gone?
Not only is the advice massively contradictory, the reasoning behind each individual level set is fairly dubious as well. I recall reading an interview with the medical advisor behind the previous UK weekly alcohol guideline, who said that the figures that they set were more or less plucked from the air, because politicians wanted some guidelines.
And in all the recent “moderation” worrying, I think I detect a nasty little streak of neo-puritanism. Lots of things are relative risk factors, but the ones that get talked up as threats are the ones that people enjoy.
Excellent question, one I’ve been asking myself for weeks.
Where the hell is the gruff yet loveable all-seeing eye?
He resigned a little while ago 
I remember attending a meeting of health and marketing professionals years ago where the topic of discussion was where to set the definition of “binge drinking”. The goal was to ensure that it encompassed a large enough percentage of the population to provide alarming headlines, while not making the percentage so large that the newly-defined binge drinkers would find themselves in the majority.
man, that’s why we’re all turning into a bunch of tinfoil hats lately. “authorities” straight-facedly serve us bullshit right and left. we know it’s bullshit, but in the absence of actual knowledge we collectively make up a bunch of folklore to explain why they’re bullshitting us. it’s exactly the point @L_Mariachi made about DARE. god, Idiocracy was a prophecy, I swear. Terry Crews for president! Terry Crews STRONG!
I had my annual physical last week and the nurse told me that whatever people put on the form as to how many drinks they have in a week, their staff doubles that amount as everyone (according to her) lies about it. Things like that tend to screw up any drinking statistics that are based on what people tell their doctor.
By the way, I also see a spinal surgeon every few months and he says that he automatically triples whatever the patient tells him - most long term patients of his are on maintenance dosages of narcotics due to spinal problems like mine: three surgeries on the same disk that resulted in a fusion and can no longer be operated on since there isn’t enough bone left to do anything with.
Now THAT was a SENTENCE!
