
The history of alcohol: From the crack cocaine of its day to craft gin - jeo1234
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/08/history-alcohol?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/fromthecrackcocaineofitsdattocraftgin
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scott_s
I'm reading "Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol", by Iain Gately, and he
covers some of this in detail. In his book, he talks about how unprepared
England was for gin: people primarily drank ale at that time, and they drank
it regularly and in abundance. Some people drank gin like they drank ale, with
disastrous results; people didn't initially believe that doing so was harmful,
and certainly not that it could kill you. It really was treated like an
epidemic among the working class.

I recommend the book to anyone with a curiosity in our history with alcohol -
and it's a _long_ history. The book, however, is a relatively light read. It's
like a brief history of the world (although mostly the West) through the lens
of alcohol.

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amyjess
> Some people drank gin like they drank ale, with disastrous results

I don't see how people even remotely thought this was a good idea. Not because
of the alcohol content, but because spirits _burn your throat_.

I love gin. It's my favorite liquor, and I drink it often. But just _thinking_
about downing a pint of gin like I'd drink ale makes my throat burn. It's very
difficult for me to even do shots of hard liquor.

How did people back then stand to quaff gin like ale?

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sitkack
It isn't exactly literal, but it happens to children (young adults) as well.
Drink beer at a moderate rate for a great long awhile and the drinky bird
action of the elbow learns its own cadence. I actually think booze neurons
migrate down into the arm, somewhat like octopus appendage intelligence. When
the delivery medium changes, the cyclic rate of consumption takes awhile to
update, it is especially hard since there is a positive feedback loop that is
only dampened by incapacitation.

With that in mind, I am training my children on hard liquor from a young age.

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baldfat
In terms of ruining lives I think alcohol does more damage than all illegal
and prescription drug abuse combined.

WHO (World Health organization) stated that 25% of all deaths for 20-35 year
olds is directly alcohol related.
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs349/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs349/en/)

~~~
bro-stick
Overeating food addiction is far, far worse because of dramatically-reduced
lifespan from many forms of cancer, chronic heart diseases and the lost of
limbs and eyesight from Type II diabetes. A neighbor of my childhood home whom
worked at Spectra Physics died within six months of uncontrolled diabetes. I
also lost a great uncle whom went the same way more recently within about 10
months.

In northern Canada and American Indian reservations, that might be true. Some
places, it's heroin and others, it's meth, paint thinner or glue. (Police,
nurses and social workers typically know what's going around.)

From a health perspective, most doctors would probably argue smoking. Philip
Morris International is targeting Asian countries where they are as ubiquitous
in most realms of life as was soda advertisements to kids in schools.

Alcohol abuse culture is prevalent in military, universities and
sales/management.

I think the impact varies with location and social circles, and is hard to
qualtitatively measure (apart from lives, hospital visits/bills, lost wages)
because it's very qualitative.

~~~
baldfat
Over eating absolutely is a HUGE health issue, but it is oranges and apples.

Food is required for life.

Smoking, alcohol and drugs is non-essential and is self induced harm to the
body for self-perceived emotional benefit. (Not to rule out emotional eating
but...)

~~~
xiaoma
Perhaps sugar is a better comparison. It's only in the past few centuries that
most humans have had access to sugarcane, it's definitely not required for
survival and it's behind many many cases of fatty liver disease as well as
diabetes, cancer and a host of issues stemming from metabolic disease.

~~~
baldfat
Refined sugar is but almost everything we eat is sugar aka carbohydrates.
Eating bread is the same as drink sugar to the body some would even say worst
and we have been eating break since before written history.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/is-
it-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/is-it-really-
worth-not-eating-bread-pasta-and-other-
carbs/2015/02/06/cd6d1c38-89e2-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html)

~~~
xiaoma
This is just batty.

Bread doesn't taste at all like sugar does, it doesn't metabolize at the same
rate, and to the best of my knowledge we aren't using it as an additive to
flavor nearly every other food we eat.

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baldfat
Scientifically speaking a atom is a atom. If you get so many atoms of the same
type in your body it isn't batty it is just chemistry.
[https://www2.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty/reusch/VirtTxtJml/car...](https://www2.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty/reusch/VirtTxtJml/carbhyd.htm)

Here is a anti-sugar post presenting the idea that 2 slices of bread has a
HUGE impact on the body similar to soda.
[http://www.vanadia.com/stopbeingsweet/comments/soda-wheat-
br...](http://www.vanadia.com/stopbeingsweet/comments/soda-wheat-bread/)

~~~
xiaoma
Nice broscience[1]. Setting that to one side for the moment, do you actually
claim that bread tastes anything like sugar or that it's used to flavor
practically all other foods as sugar is?

[1]
[http://www.aaccnet.org/publications/plexus/cfw/pastissues/20...](http://www.aaccnet.org/publications/plexus/cfw/pastissues/2012/opendocuments/cfw-57-4-0177.pdf)

~~~
baldfat
Not Bro science If you have diabetes eating bread, sugar, pasta, or any other
high carbohydrate food/drink raises your blood sugar. That is the issue is
blood sugar levels in your body not what it starts out as.

I down voted due to "Bro Science" remark that is something not for
communication sake but to just make someone mad. Not a fan of that technique
in communicating ideas or debating.

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wahsd
It's still kind of the crack cocaine, we have just developed more damaging
versions of drug that pale the impact of alcohol. It's really a matter of
resource and attention prioritization. If we somehow were able to immunize all
of humanity against all drug addictions besides alcohol, we would then start
realizing the damage to society alcohol causes. When your house is on fire you
really aren't too concerned with the damage being caused from burst pipes.

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dionidium
I think the retort here is that alcohol is actually the house fire and the
scarier sounding drugs are the leaking pipes

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bro-stick
Paywall. Alternative link?

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justincormack
A private browsing window should work for the Economist

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bro-stick
Thanks. They must be tracking article views via cookies.

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ch4s3
They do, but they make it easy to circumvent.

