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I am getting ready to give up beer. Again. I lost 70 lb. on the South Beach Diet in 2005, but it is creeping back. I am trying to get back on the diet somewhat, but come First of the Year, I'm going back to strict Phase I (= no alcohol of any kind). After the first two weeks, I can have a little wine.
But that little memo is true with regard to carbs. In the past, that was a good thing, but for sedentary lifestyle folks, carbs = fat.
Yeah, I'll worry about the occasional beer round about the same time I stop cycling a couple hundred miles every week. Hm, maybe they weren't talking to me.
1. It's a depressant. It slows you down. It saps your energy, energy you could be using to change the world (or at least annoy your fucking prick bastard neighbors).
2. It tastes terrible. Yeah, I'm sure it's an acquired taste. You started drinking a) because your parents told you not to (despite their own habit), b) because your friends were doing it, or c) because you wanted a convenient excuse to give up your dreams (see also: #1). You drank to excess because no one taught you otherwise. Once you get over those first four years of puking in high school and/or college, though, your tastebuds are so shot from stomach acid that you can't tell you're drinking swill. Congratulations, you have acquired the taste!
3. For reasons such as 1 and 2, you've dedicated your life to drinking. It's all you're good at, and it's the only way you know to have 'a good time.' (read: Sitting around with other drunks getting drunker and less active, possibly watching sports and complaining about why player #47 didn't do the thing he should have done, despite the fact that you probably couldn't even make it onto your own two feet from the barstool where you're so precariously perched).
No, seriously, I know you have your reasons. I will just never understand them as anything other than dim rationalizations for a sad and destructive lie you were sold into by society. And no, this isn't directed to the casual drinker, who partakes occasionally. It's meant for the weekly/nightly drinker who really doesn't have any clue how to do any activity that doesn't include alcohol. Whatever you're doing for fun, if it's no longer fun if you exclude alcohol, you have a problem.
I drink beer and I take considerable umbrage at being considered a masochist for my preferred potation.
1. Actually beer has quite a few calories and is a faster electrolyte replacement than Gatorade. That's energy bought and paid for. As for being a depressant, duh. Not everyone is into heerio 'n' G'day brand coffee enemas.
2. I never liked beer until I tasted a proper Belgian Wit. Corn and rice beers are admittedly vile and only recently has a decent pale been available to all cities in North America. But to classify all beer as the equivalent of vomit is a testament to the tastes of the protestant, not the object in question.
3. In vino veritas.
No, seriously, Eideteker, if you actually cared about alcoholics you wouldn't take such a sanctimonious tone. I will just never understand why people couch their concerns for the addicted with dim rationalizations of taste and social influence. And no, this isn't directed to the casual ranter, who partakes occasionally. It's meant for the weekly/nightly complainer who really doesn't have any clue how to do any activity that doesn't include confusing people who have serious problems with their addictions. Whatever you're doing for fun, if it's no longer fun if you exclude high handed vitriol, you have a problem.
I don't, and I wish they'd stay the fuck off my roads.
concerns for the addicted
I repeat.
if it's no longer fun if you exclude high handed vitriol
Oh, it is, but tonight I felt like taking a long pour from the spout marked "I don't fucking understand this, but will muse about it aloud in exactly the wrong place to do so." No, obviously no one's going to change their behavior based on my comment. But I've always been the kind who'd walk into a Klan meeting and say, "I don't see what the hell problem you people have with niggers." I don't understand, and I don't expect to change your mind when I can't even understand it. But hey, at least I can have fun with my misunderstanding. And hey, if I feign an accusation that hits too close to home for somebody and thereby chafes, all the better. Don't protest to much. Are you defending yourself to me, or to yourself? Ignore me and keep drinking; I'll go away eventually.
Smoke another joint
Drink another beer
Let's get one thing straight
You keep it fucking clear
Fuck your brain
Take another hit
I pray to God you OD on that shit
Shoot that fucking needle into your veins
Your brain-dead body is all that remains
I fucking choose to keep my mind clear
Your drugs and alcohol don't belong here
You don't know who you're fucking with!
You're messing with the wrong crew!
Blow that smoke in my face, and God knows what I'll do
Your fucking lifestyle makes me sick
Straighten out your act, and fucking quick
I can't understand why you do that shit
Cause me and my crew won't stand for it!
All kidding and ranty-asshole posturing aside, I find the whole straight-edge movement to be funny. It sort of mirrors atheism in the way many of its 'adherents' (for lack of a better word) are very bitter and hateful. It's a choice, like any other. But I can sort of see how, like growing up in an atmosphere of pervasive theology, the minority choice of sobriety can cause a deep-seated resentment to build up in those who feel marginalized, excluded, and ridiculed by what they see as a huge, unwashed, unthinking conformist mass that is doing harm to itself and society.
Sadly, there are people on both sides who feel the need to push their beliefs on the other. Live how you wanna live, just keep your drunk uncoordinated self off my roads, and keep your drunk whiny "why is my life so bad" self of my internets.
I think I agree with Eideteker here in several ways. Ethanol is a source of misery and early death, it is very easy to slip over the edge from use to abuse with it and it's legal and cheap. My unscientific surveys indicate that it probably ruins lives to a degree that is far out of proportion to its supposed benefits as a social lubricant and tonic for the heart when used sparingly.
But, it's fun to get drunk and good beer and other good boozes taste very good if you have the taste for it, it's not so much an acquired taste as an adult taste (I don't mean that in a dismissive way, it's just the opposite of a sweet tooth kind of taste, people who drink sweet booze just haven't ever changed from a sweet tooth and want to get jacked up).
For me personally it's always a fine line and I can imagine a life where I never drink and am very happy and I definitely take time off from time to time and enjoy it very much, in fact I move closer to being an occasional drinker rather than a consistent as I get older. I might be lucky in that I seem to be able to do that.
The need of some humans for distraction and anesthesia and oblivion is a very interesting topic.
Drunken driving should be punished by severe beatings, I am not a fan of whining no matter what your BAC is.
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