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[BlackHeartKabal]

Spoiler: rant (click to show/hide)

Fuck alcohol, fuck liquor. It's just as addictive and dangerous as any other hard drug. Winerie, stills, and bars are no different than crack houses, meth dens, and other shit. The people that own them are nothing more than sanctioned drug dealers. Prohibition was one of the best things to happen to the US and it should be back. Taking my fucking aunt, she couldn't help herself and now she's just going to die on a fucking cold bed because these glorified drug dealers can't make money honestly. Owners of these industries should be shot and lynched, since the police wont prosecute then for this fucking crime. It's an industry built upon addiction and misery. Nothing more.

[RedKing]

Spoiler: rant (click to show/hide)

Fuck alcohol, fuck liquor. It's just as addictive and dangerous as any other hard drug. Winerie, stills, and bars are no different than crack houses, meth dens, and other shit. The people that own them are nothing more than sanctioned drug dealers. Prohibition was one of the best things to happen to the US and it should be back. Taking my fucking aunt, she couldn't help herself and now she's just going to die on a fucking cold bed because these glorified drug dealers can't make money honestly. Owners of these industries should be shot and lynched, since the police wont prosecute then for this fucking crime. It's an industry built upon addiction and misery. Nothing more.

Even though I've been borderline alcoholic at times, imma have to respectfully disagree. My sympathies about your aunt though. I've see alcholism wither a few people in my extended family too.

[Yoink]

...I will leave the talking to Redking here. I was about to disagree but it wouldn't have been "respectfully".
I'll just add that some of my dearest friends own and/or operate bars, and so I find the idea of such people being shot especially distasteful.

My Sad is that so many poor souls fail to understand the joys of liquor.
Yes, I'm trying to turn this  anger into pity. That's healthy, right? That's what well-adjusted people do, right? Right?!

[BlackHeartKabal]

...I will leave the talking to Redking here. I was about to disagree but it wouldn't have been "respectfully".
I'll just add that some of my dearest friends own and/or operate bars, and so I find the idea of such people being shot especially distasteful.

My Sad is that so many poor souls fail to understand the joys of liquor.
Yes, I'm trying to turn this  anger into pity. That's healthy, right? That's what well-adjusted people do, right? Right?!

You're right, but I just think that the adverse effects outweigh the benefits. As I've seen personally.

[Amperzand]

Given that small quantities of it can be beneficial, and the stuff is extremely useful in various medical and scientific endeavors, I'd prefer it stick around.

On the other hand, addiction is a massive problem, and needs to be addressed in a way other than shooting/arresting all the semi-impoverished people who sell various cherry picked substances.

[IcyTea31]

I'm fine with people drinking a little to relax after a long day or to add some variety to a meal, but I despise drunk people. I just don't see the appeal of knowingly making myself into an idiot for an evening.

Given that small quantities of it can be beneficial

Apropos, the point where the negative effects of alcohol outweigh the positive ones is more than one glass of red wine per day. Other kinds of alcohol don't get even a single portion's worth.

[Helgoland]

I just don't see the appeal of knowingly making myself into an idiot for an evening.

Wait, that's what I do for fun even without alcohol... Maybe it's just an extraversion thing, but it appears to work fairly well.

[penguinofhonor]

I'd say it's less making yourself into an idiot for the evening and more making yourself not care about being an idiot for the evening. It can be pretty relieving.

[Orange Wizard]

I make an idiot of myself without alcohol.

[Yoink]

Wound up having to pay $5 for an iced coffee at the train station. I had been really looking forward to one stop I wasn't about to go without,  but it wasn't even a brand I like. Also the sushi place that used to be here is gone, and for some reason I ended up buying a large box of (also hideously overpriced) KFC chips instead. 
I guess I was hungry? Whatever the case, now I feel like shit. And I can see a sushi restaurant across the street from where I'm sitting. I still have almost an hour of sitting around here before my coach (yes, I'm forced to catch a bus for most of the journey, just in case a long train ride wouldn't be bad enough) leaves. I should have wandered off and bought sushi instead of this salty grease-fest. Ugh. 

The food options at this station are severely lacking. I remember waiting for the train I left Melbourne on last month; there was an excellent selection of fast food joints, ranging from sushi to burritos to the delicious vegan burgers of Lord of the Fries (one of my favorite restaurants), at the same price as anywhere in the city.

I was briefly excited to see some takeaway Indian on offer here, but then I saw the price- I'm pretty sure you could buy two far nicer meals for the same price from most places.
...Anyway, I think I'll go for a walk or vomit or something. Bye.

Edit: In hindsight this probably would have fit better in the Rant thread. I mean, it certainly did make me sad, but that thread could really use some more activity. Alas, it is too late. I do plenty of ranting though, mostly under my breath. It's just a matter of remembering said rants to post later on.

[scriver]

Given that small quantities of it can be beneficial, and the stuff is extremely useful in various medical and scientific endeavors, I'd prefer it stick around.

There exist no conclusive evidence on this matter. For every research for one type of alcohol there's another against, or one that "proves" that another kind of alcohol is the one that's beneficial. Most of them are likely paid for by businesses selling the supposedly healthy product or the respective lobby, as research endorsing a single type of ware tends to be. Apart from that there's also the criticism that a lot of these studies don't account for the correlation/causation problem, ie that there is no checking if the "one beer/some/whatever per day" lifestyle simply often coincides with other aspects that might lead to improved health situations, such as the obvious one of having well-to-do or prosperous life conditions in the first place.

Edit: for reference, I have nothing against alcohol or it's use, just had to argue against this often repeated statement.

[Reelya]

<snip>

Prohibition was objectively awful:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 If it was so great, they never would have repealed it. The law was in place nationally, why do you think the same people who put that law in subsequently got rid of it?

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/unintended-consequences/

If you stop legal alcohol availability, people will drink methylated spirits, which is more toxic. If you get rid of that, people will start illegally distilling alcohol (also likely to be less safe than mass-produced versions due to methanol), or make it from other chemical products that contain alcohol. You just can't ban all potential substances that can get someone high, basically everything would be banned. Ban sugar, corn, potatoes and yeast.

The trade in unregulated alcohol had serious consequences for public health. As the trade in illegal alcohol became more lucrative, the quality of alcohol on the black market declined. On average, 1000 Americans died every year during the Prohibition from the effects of drinking tainted liquor.

You can make alcohol out of just about anything organic. If you ban the commercial creation, you open the doors for a substandard black market. There's no way to ban something people can make at home out of potato peelings they saved up.

Alcoholics Anonymous is also objectively awful.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They teach you helplessness + dependence on prayer + abstinence. About as effective as you'd expect a faith-healing approach based on non-science to be. In controlled trials, the group sent to AA binge drank 5x the n-treatment-at-all group. AA claim, e.g. 80% success rates, but the "success" group are self-selected: people who stayed in the AA meetings for a certain amount of time. In the control group (who received no treatment) a similar number of people just gave up drinking by themselves, no group needed. e.g: sending people to AA does not increase the chance that they will stop drinking, but the people who already wanted to stop drinking will keep going to AA. That's only 5% of the original group however, so AA "works" for the 5% of people who would have stopped drinking anyway, and is useless for 95% of people you send there.

In a meta-study comparison of 48 known programs to help drinkers, AA's effectiveness scored 38/48. And it was even below "attention placebo", which is giving the patient anything at all to keep their mind off drinking. e.g. "do nothing" scored better than AA, that's how bad their religious doctrine "addiction science" is.

Apparently, giving anti-depressants to alcoholics works to get them off drinking better than almost any behavior-based treatment. This suggests many alcoholics are actually "self-medicating" to mask other psychological problems. People are too quick to only see the surface problem of drinking, and the AA-originating belief where "alcoholic" is considered a type of person you are for life has lead to people with alcohol problems not being directed to the right sort of mental health professionals to sort out the real reason they drink. AA basically teaches you that the "devil drink is controlling you" and that AA is the only treatment. They're like a low-level cult.

[Yoink]

Oh man, today was awful.
Now I'm finally sitting down and having something to eat, not on a train or in a car or anything.
There were things I was wanting to be upset about, but right now it's time to relax.

[itisnotlogical]

I have to have a tribute speech written and ready to deliver in less than three days for class. I just can't seem to turn on the sincerity. Everything I write feels very phony. Almost like I'm doing it because I have to do it for a class, rather than from the bottom of my heart, talking to an audience that will mostly forget what I said the second I stop saying it. RIP GPA.

[Reelya]

Read other speeches for inspiration. Or, write a tribute speech about your favorite thing, then change the nouns as needed.