Alcohol reduces your emotional inhibitors and lowers your ability to think rational while simultaneously doing fuck all for your cortisol level. You are more likely to act on your dark thoughts under influence.
The only “benefit” for your mood is a short increase in serotonin levels, but that high only lasts if you keep drinking, otherwise your level normalizes in the next hour or so.
If a shot or two of Bourbon really affects your mood to a significant degree, then you are already dependent on alcohol and you were on edge cause you didn’t get your fix for the day.
Fair enough, and there are certainly better habits. But booze has been a counter to working-class stress for a long time, hence vodka being the national spirit of Russia and the Soviet Union.
By my understanding, harm reduction is a process. It’s a matter of steps, and the first one (switching from acting out to drinking) might not look like a great leap forward.
But you’re supposed to keep going.
~ If eating junk food and watching reality shows keeps you from needing to drink, you eat the snacks and watch the tube.
~When you can substitute the junk food with fruit, or something easier on your body, you do.
~When you can move away from reality shows, say Saturday morning cartoons, you do that too.
Essentially, you move away from harmful habits and towards healthier ones in small steps.
But that’s not represented in the first step, which is to what I was referring in the first place.
Sadly, serious problems are not always easy to escape, especially when we have crises such as housing and affordability that make it difficult to escape. It was something that I had to talk about with my roommate during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 since it was clear that some of our dynamics were not healthy.
On occasion stuff got smashed. It wasn’t direct violence directly against each other, but it was violence.
In the end, we considered two factors. One, that things got that heated rarely, like maybe once a year. And two, that we were both proactively working on our respective shit. In therapy, changing our bad habits for better ones and so on. And so we decided to stay in place. It didn’t escape that we were in a rent-controlled flat in San Francisco, and if either of us moved, we’d likely have to move out of SF.
(Eventually, the neighborhood gentrified and the landlord became hostile, really wanting to swap us out for the high rent Google techs could afford, but that’s a different story.)
Anyway, serious problems often come with serious circumstances that need to be weighed. And yes, I think we should live in a society without social crises that force dysfunctional people to stay together when they need to separate. But that is not what we have here in the US in 2026.
Harm reduction. If a shot of bourbon keeps a fellow from battering the wife and kids, or shooting up a school, then it’s doing its job.
Alcohol reduces your emotional inhibitors and lowers your ability to think rational while simultaneously doing fuck all for your cortisol level. You are more likely to act on your dark thoughts under influence.
The only “benefit” for your mood is a short increase in serotonin levels, but that high only lasts if you keep drinking, otherwise your level normalizes in the next hour or so.
If a shot or two of Bourbon really affects your mood to a significant degree, then you are already dependent on alcohol and you were on edge cause you didn’t get your fix for the day.
Fair enough, and there are certainly better habits. But booze has been a counter to working-class stress for a long time, hence vodka being the national spirit of Russia and the Soviet Union.
I feel like this is following the letter of harm reduction and not the spirit of harm reduction…
By my understanding, harm reduction is a process. It’s a matter of steps, and the first one (switching from acting out to drinking) might not look like a great leap forward.
But you’re supposed to keep going.
~ If eating junk food and watching reality shows keeps you from needing to drink, you eat the snacks and watch the tube.
~When you can substitute the junk food with fruit, or something easier on your body, you do.
~When you can move away from reality shows, say Saturday morning cartoons, you do that too.
Essentially, you move away from harmful habits and towards healthier ones in small steps.
But that’s not represented in the first step, which is to what I was referring in the first place.
spirit, yeah I need to drink more of those
If those are your choices then there are some serious problems. She should probably leave and take the kids
Sadly, serious problems are not always easy to escape, especially when we have crises such as housing and affordability that make it difficult to escape. It was something that I had to talk about with my roommate during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 since it was clear that some of our dynamics were not healthy.
On occasion stuff got smashed. It wasn’t direct violence directly against each other, but it was violence.
In the end, we considered two factors. One, that things got that heated rarely, like maybe once a year. And two, that we were both proactively working on our respective shit. In therapy, changing our bad habits for better ones and so on. And so we decided to stay in place. It didn’t escape that we were in a rent-controlled flat in San Francisco, and if either of us moved, we’d likely have to move out of SF.
(Eventually, the neighborhood gentrified and the landlord became hostile, really wanting to swap us out for the high rent Google techs could afford, but that’s a different story.)
Anyway, serious problems often come with serious circumstances that need to be weighed. And yes, I think we should live in a society without social crises that force dysfunctional people to stay together when they need to separate. But that is not what we have here in the US in 2026.
Damn bro that’s dark. Fun time making users uncomfortable