It's confusing for us, too A unit of alcohol is not a drink. For instance, a pint of typical pilsner has 3 units of alcohol in it.
Whatever alcohol does for your health can people please stop pretending that stopping drinking for a month for "Drytober" (or whatever it's called) for charity is some sort of great feat or act of charity?
Have to admit I chuckle at most people when they go on about how hard it is for them to stop drinking for a month or so. By people I mean an average drinker.
it's kind of ridiculous. or at least i find it ridiculous also. not just the slowing down and drinking like a normal person, but not binge drinking when one goes out. i'm not friends with a bunch of people i knew in my 20's, because these people got offended when i would go out and only have 2 drinks before calling it a night. we were still all in our 20's and i just had a revelation after another hangover, like hey, maybe this binge drinking isn't working for me. part of what helped to straighten me out was grad school. it's not fun to have to do homework all day on saturday and sunday (because i was working 9-5, then going to school at night) with a hangover. it was actually a good thing. i really found out who my friends were.
Dude, I drink far more then them, and I don't have a problem, I mean I can stop at any time can't I, jack and Jim......
You'll note I said "average drinker" ? Thereby specifically indicating that I wasn't talking about people who have serious difficulties with alcohol. I did that because I'm very aware that some people are in the situation where alcohol has an extremely detrimental impact on their life.
New advice released today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35255384 I am perplexed how people (average drinkers) find it so hard to abstain from alcohol. My last alcoholic drink was in June or July last year, I think. Possibly further back than that. Do any MAP members find the consumption of alcohol particularly appealing?
I have never, ever found an alcoholic drink that I thought "Yum that's lovely I must drink that regularly for the rest of my life". Some alcohol is about drinkable but most of it is horrible. Nothing alcoholic comes close to a nice glass of fresh cool orange juice. So I'd rather drink that instead. Now cue some MAP'ers saying "Alcohol is an acquired taste". Well I'm glad I've never acquired it because it's generally not very good for you and really expensive.
I enjoy the occasionally cocktail - they have to be sweet and not taste alcoholic! I also like the occasional G&T and certain beers. When I say occasional, I drink, on average, 3 or 4 times a year, if that.
Accidentally had an alcoholic drink at a Christmas uni outing last year (I thought it was non-alcoholic). It was a bitter coffee/alcohol thing, pretty nasty. That was the first drink I'd had since 2007*. I always hated the taste of booze. Beer, stout, wine, spirits... never liked the taste of any of it and never enjoyed it so I never really did it. *2007 was somewhat of an emergency. We had got lost in Berlin in January and it was freezing, so after several hours of wandering about we stumbled in to a pub that had no tea/or coffee, so I had a hot rum to regain the feeling in my toes.
I love it. A beer in the evening, or a whiskey, some red wine at lunch. But I can easily go 2-3 months without it. I drank quite heavily over the holiday periods. But had my last drink on New Years Eve, I THINK im going to go 2016 alcohol free. Hasn't been an issue whatsoever.
It wasn't an acquired taste for me, I just liked it from the get-go. What I don't like is alcoholic drinks made all sweet and sickly to cover the taste of alcohol. I can easily go weeks without a drink and not give it a second thought though. But, on the subject of people acting like giving up alcohol for a month is a massive sacrifice; as long as their ego-trip is resulting in money given to a good cause, they can whinge all they like for all I care. Just to put it in perspective, a quote from that same article: "Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, an expert in understanding risk from the University of Cambridge, said it was important to put the 1% risk in context. He said an hour of TV watching or a bacon sandwich a couple of time a week was more dangerous."
That was sarcasm, hilariously fuelled by drinking Kraken rum - [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z50GWEYPDcs"]The Kraken Rum: "Black Ink" - YouTube[/ame] which makes me a pirate, not a drinker.....
