What's your favorite stout or any beer?

I must admit to having a much greater appreciation for wine and hard ciders than beers, but I do enjoy a belgian wheat beer now and then.I really don't like the taste of hops.

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Are you an alcoholic?

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No.I drink wine, at most, one or two evenings a month in the form of having one or two glasses of wine with a meal. I've drunk a Belgian wheat beer maybe once or twice a year for the last several years.It never occurs to me to use alcohol to relax or relieve stress; I have never used alcohol at the end of a difficult day, for example.I grew up in a house with a violent, vindictive alcoholic, and I am lucky that I do not seem to have the same drives as that person.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-14-2005 08:31 AMThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-14-2005 08:39 AM

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Later I came to understand that the state budget depended heavily upon DUI fines, so we were being encouraged to drive to bars. Now they have liberalized and close at 9, so the hazardous driving time starts an hour later.

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It's so nice to know that you take the lives of everyone you encounter on the roads when you are driving under the influence so lightly.

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You mistake me utterly, schraf.

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I did mistake you utterly and am delighted that you take the issue of driving while under the influence as seriously as you obviously do.Please accept my sincere apologies for the confusion. Since you were talking about the time of "hazerdous driving" combined with your tales of all-day drinking, I came to an erronious conclusion.

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If their drinking does not affect others what is the harm?

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A high-functioning alcoholic is still impaired when they are drinking.An employer is taking on a HUGE amount of liability with a someone who is under the influence of a drug like that, that impairs judgement, every day.The problem is, if they are constantly under the influence of the drug, for years, there is no way to tell how someone might have fared in life without it.Sure, your parents' careers might have not been affected, but you really can't say, because there is no controll set of parents who weren't drinking all the time to compare to.

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Also, my older sister was a high-functioning alcoholic until she was caught drinking vodka from a water glass in her office. When she learned that the family was planning an intervention, she killed herself. She was only 38, and one of the kindest and brightest people I've ever known.

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Perhaps she was self medicating a clinical depression with alcohol.This sort of thing is apparently not uncommon.I am very sorry to hear of your sister's death, but it's just not a normal thing to kill oneself just because you fear that your family is going to sit you down and have a serious talk about some health or behavior issue.

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The logical fallacy is that a high functioning alchoholic could still be a better functioning person than a teetotaler that just doesn't have the ability to reach the top levels of whatever {profession\job\task} is involved.

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That's true.But there is no way to tell, for individual people, if they would have done better with or without alcohol constantly in their systems.

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Certainly if the issue is mental ability this is the real question here: subset{high functioning alchoholic} overlaps the ability spectrum of subset{non-alchoholic} within any {profession\job\task}.

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Sure.

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And if you are dealing with creativity at any level in the {profession\job\task} then all bets are off.

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Sure.

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BTW - they both reached the top levels in their fields of study, and that is a good enough criteria for competence and success in my book.

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Well, everybody has their own criteria for success. And I'm not saying that they weren't successful. It's just that you have no way of knowing how much more (or less, for that matter) successful on numerous levels they might have been without all the drinking.There was no control group living a parallel life.

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Might they have done better without? Can't say. They might have gone crazy too (heck, they might be crazy too ).

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Exactly. You can't know.But the general history of lifelong constant drug use is not often touted as a way to succeed in a given field of study or career, for good reason. It impairs brain function. There's no getting around that.

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We measure success by what is rather than what might have been.

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If person {A} does the {profession\job\task} better than person {B} and no one is adversly affected by person {A} being some level {intoxicated\drugged\influenced} then what is the harm?

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I'm not saying that there is any harm. But we also don't know how much better they might have been had they not been under a chemical influence all the time.Might not have made any difference, or it might have even made things worse (unlikely), and it might have been detrimental to cognitive functioning and long term mental abilities.We just don't know.

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Presumably they were hired because they were the better choice, and presumably the reason they keep the job is because they are at least adequate for the tasks involved. Once you cross the line into "adequate" then you are no longer "high functioning" eh?

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Right.

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as a general rule but not as an absolute rule. if there is overfunctioning of some paths within the brain structure it is entirely possible that some impairment is needed, and is in fact prescribed. that is what some medications do.

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Well, there's a difference between how most theraputic psychoactive drugs affect the brain and how alcohol affects the brain.Theraputic psychoactive drugs tend to be designed to pinpoint certain kinds of brain cells, or certain pathways, or certain receptors, whereas alcohol works in a much more broad fashion.Alcohol affects all sorts of brain cells, all over the brain, willy nilly. It's the opposite of "pinpointed."So, it's highly inaccurate to even roughly equate the effects of constant alcohol in the bloodstream on the brain to the effects of most theraputic psychoactive drugs on the brain.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-16-2005 08:48 PM

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I didn't know that. Maybe I will switch to something else. Does anybody have any suggestions other than mango juice?

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How about water? Sparkling water if you like the fizz.If you need flavor, then put a squeeze of lemon or lime juice in it, or make iced tea, herbal or regular.You know, stuff that isn't made in a factory.

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which is naturally why prozac (etc) is just as likely to cause worsened depression and contribute to suicide. oh wait...

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My point wasn't that all theraputic psychoactive drugs are 100% perfectly effective or 100% perfectly safe for all people at all times.My point was that RAZD's comparison of the effects of psychoactive theraputic drugs on the brain and the effects of alcohol on the brain is not a good one....which is what I explained in my last message.To me, in light of what RAZD and I have been talking about, is seems as though you are saying that everybody who is depressed should not take any theraputic psychoactive medications and should instead just drink a lot of alcohol.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-19-2005 10:30 AM