Going home alone. Or accompanying a date back home but feeling alone. Or sleeping int the same bed, wondering how I got here and still feeling alone. But I'm just doing what I'm told to find someone, don't be picky, "you're not getting younger." Forging intimate moments like taking a trip to Montreal in July, go visit a botanical garden or go skydiving like what I'm told by Hallmark and merchants of the USA, I feel nothing but my CC swiped to the max. Keeping an overpriced apartment in downtown like a dumb bird nest-building for the sole purpose of mating and trying to fit in.

So I have to keep working and running round and round in the hamster-wheel to pay for my student loans, car loan, credit card debt, insurances, save up for a mortgage so I can take on even a bigger loan to convince someone that I may or may not like to start a family with me, so that we can both be indebted for the kids' college education loans.

But still everyday I wake up, and I keep braving it through. Because I'm hoping maybe just maybe, I can be like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Hit it out of the ball park, that is the American Dream, work hard and if things don't work out, keep working even harder and harder, and one day freedom will come for me. I have to believe and try, after all this is the American way.

You need to find what defines you, what you are about. Then, you'll need to make your peace with it. Own it.

I'm not sure the people you have mentioned feel any better about themselves than you do. Normal people reach a point where they have enough money and they stop and learn to paint or something. It's a particular kind of dysfunction to earn billions.

If you are not a downtown type, leave. There are plenty of bored potential partners in other places. Focus on joining organizations that will put you with other people of like interests. Shared experiences drive friendships. Drinking at pubs doesn't count. A group that hikes every weekend, does. Find a group that says important things.

You seem to dislike the shallowness you feel around you, so don't be shallow. Nothing you wrote says anything about you, just some vague ideas about success that feel thrust on you by what you've read. If you were really all about success and that junk, I don't think you would feel so miserable about pursuing it. You have freedom, much more than you think.

OK, let me try; I really like computers back in the day when you typed in a terminal screen 1:Print "Hello World" or the first HTML page with the CSS or figuring out for the first time how object-oriented programming class inheritance working, or referencing and dereferencing C pointers or DirectX buffer-swap or socket multicasting, or reading a really profound novel for English class for that matter or catching a late night movie with sexy scenes and heavy themes that you can't put your finger when you're young but the excitement of lust and wanderlust lingers on ("Eyes Wide Shut"),

When real life happened was told by parents directly and peers implicitly to "pursue" passion and "be serious" at the same time lest you be judged, so I got a job feeling independent, hell even making six-figures for the first time, feeling a million bucks but initial euphoria eventually gave away to daily grind, fixing tickets after tickets to the tyranny of "agile," "daily standup," and "JIRA burndown chart/project tracker"; more importantly, I want to learn and dig further and further down into stack, get into Linux kernel, hardware circuit design, cryptography, Bioinformatics not to have some BS on my LinkedIn and collect trinkets, but have that rush of hacking at it, like a shot of cocaine straight into the brain blood-barrier; instead, I'm here cranking out tickets for an A/B test on how to make a button to have a single round bevel or double round bevel and seeing which one will boost 0.01% on the user conversion rate to add a product to a shopping cart or to keep user "as engaged" when I could hardly care less about social media, e-commerce and iOS apps about a product or infographics that I don't need but is shoved to my face; I feel cheated and robbed at the lies that the startup industry pumps out for "meaningful work," more importantly, I sacrificed my love for learning academic-oriented computing for a meaningless momentary compensation and the trendiness of startupdom because I watched some stupid video on Steve Jobs or Peter Thiel on some late lonely night and it filled up my emptiness in college,

Socially, was an awkward computer nerd and on the bottom of the sexual and social totem-pole in college. But had a few friends whom I can have late night conversations with, who listened to me, whom understood when I say something in Chinglish (English-Cinese combined) and understand instantly what it's like to grow up Chinese in suburban Maryland and going to a Chinese evangelical christian church in the late 90's, and debating what porn clip we saw on porn sites back then, whether it's sanitary or gay for the guys involved for the porn girl in a blowbang to suck one cock and then go off to suck on another cock and also discuss different movies, The Smashing Pumpkins, "Catcher in the Rye," "On the Road," the alienation and the exhilaration of being on the road or constantly searching and wandering and the explicit sexual yearnings,

So in my mid-twenties, got finally frustrated due to hormones and that fear of missing out and that parental pressure to "settle down". So I got an downtown apartment and stocked it up with IKEA furniture like Edward Norton did in "Fight Club," shopped at H&M and Brooks Brothers for "snug-fit" jeans, befriended and went out with a carefully curated group of "young professionals but yet boheme" and eventually went on dates that led to a steady girlfriend. At first I felt like a million bucks, felt like I finally made it with "meaningful such yuppie weekend activities" as rock-climbing, hiking and carousing with friends and SO but eventually gave to the daily grind of the socializations, to the pettiness of who's who in office politics, whose next great startup idea to apply to what accelerator and what band to see in which cool fresh new venue that's just opened in the city but that's just the same as the one that we just sat at discussing it, the decor, names and hair are different but the characters all the same, that obligatory feeling that I don't want to but I should,

I want to have a feeling of mastery, follow through with something tangible and tactile with my hands, like building a nice outdoors deck with a nice varnish finish, learn how to take a Eric-Clapton-esque solo with all of the chromatic tones and sixteenth notes at a blues jam, to pull off a cross-over and a spin-move to evade the first and second defender in a rec-league basketball and finish at the hoop. Instead I trivialized my personal goals as unrealistic and impractical and instead gave into the social pressure of "practical nest-building and social networking". Learned only later that all my "friends" in trendy yuppie network were more in love with the idea of themselves being involved in a trendy yuppie network than the other people (especially moi). I don't feel like a man, or specifically a human being with any agency, but was re-assured by everyone else that "[I was]. Because [I] had my own apartment and had a great job, a great social network." I rushed to relationships and friends to fill a void of personal inadequacy but found associating or possessing other people that I liked the idea of did not change me and if anything else made me more insecure and co-dependent on them.

I gave up everything to go pursue that goal. (It turned out that I was giving up much less than I had thought.) My new career didn't work out like I had hoped, but I was doing something that I felt was meaningful. I was about something.

I met my wife when I was about something. And she married me even though I was poor. But I was a hell of a lot happier and that was attractive.

I came back to tech but with a whole different outlook. What am I about now? I am a family guy, everything I do is for them. I don't think my adventures are over (sure hope not!) but they make even dealing with daily bullshit at work meaningful.

We are lucky that we can apply our field to other industries. We can choose nearly anything we want to go into. We have enormous privilege. Life is a fucking playground. Want to help cure cancer? I'm sure they need tech guys for something. Believe in libraries or helping poor or veteran's care or internet access for rural areas? It's a choose your own adventure game. Even those billionaires you mentioned didn't set out to make billions. They had a mission, computers in every home, connecting social graphs online, etc.

Finally, I would just say that those people that you feel are so shallow are probably trying to fill the same hole. They're not terrible people, they're just doing what they think will make them happy.

My email is in my profile if you want to chat. Just know that everything ends. Good things and especially bad things. This time you're going through will also end and something new will start.

Money doesn't really equal women as much as A) If you're destitute, dating can be more difficult (but not impossible, lots of homeless people get married.) and B) If you have a lot of money you can pay other people a lot of money to have sex with you.

If this sounds like you, I would start descalating your career, your yuppie lifestyle and start escalating your pursuit of things that really interest you and finding connection with other people.

"Once, there was a fisherman with his single fishing boat toiling and netting and gutting his daily haul at sea; then one day, a Silicon Valley VC came on his boat and made a business proposition, 'I can make you a rich man; I can give you a funding to scale your operation so you can hire 40 people with 40 fishing boats to catch more fishes and make more money!' The fisherman laughed, the VC trying to push him with the startup enthusiasm immediately said, "think of all of the money you can make and you can then retire, and think of what you'd be able to do afterwards with that freedom!

The fisherman said 'Well, I'd retire to some place close to the coast, buy a fishing boat there and go out to the sea and go fishing.'"

The people in most European countries will be less welcoming at first, but I can tell you, if you stick through you will find them to be more profound.

It helps that we don't have an American Dream which focusses on financial prosperity through hard work, but rather a joy of life (joie de vivre) which encourages us to enjoy the beauty of life and nature.

Travel to Tuscany or Portugal and see for yourself.

On the other hand I have a feeling that something is pretty fucked with western society in general. And as the western model of society is pretty much expanding everywhere it is becoming a global problem. I can't quite put by finger on it but maybe it has to do with ever growing expectations, the idea that we can be or do everything, that is all in our hands and only depends on us puts an immense pressure on our shoulders and leads to immense pain. The truth, I think, is that luck plays an huge part in our life, on our successes and on our failures.

I am not sure if I made any sense, if I did not, please accept my apologies ;)

I also appreciate your empathy and stating that you also felt the same once. At least for me, there's more to a person who is willing to make fun of themselves or admit freely to their shortcomings than someone who offers eager advice.

Re: Western society criticism; as someone who grew up partially in Eastern society (China), I believe that traditional Buddhist practice is in practice and effect more similar to the Catholic Church than different. And people in China and South Korea see the same alternative appeal in Christianity as people in the West seek Yoga or Zen Buddhism. So perhaps it's not the religion/philosophy content but the person doing the seeking.

BS - there's plenty of shallow people in Europe too.

I met one last year :)

It's good to remind ourselves that you, and me, are not alone in this, and maybe to reflect on those "choices" "we" make and see if we can learn to live more of our own lives, and less of someone elses.

I believe you're also right that you're not alone. For me personally, I've found that it isn't that adults who are older than me have eventually gotten their act together but more so that people retreat to their families and smaller intimate social clique and not reveal their inner lives as much, compared to when they were melodramatic teenagers or college kids on Facebook or YouTube vlogs.

Play a sport you like, work on a project you enjoy (hack on something small and put it out in the world), make a few good friends and maybe work with them (not easy but worthwhile), remain intellectually honest (write down your thoughts / emotions).

Its a cliche to say it, but the gap is creation vs consumption.

The real danger with alcohol is that unlike hard drugs (heroin, cocaine) the destruction takes years and it's very possible to trick yourself into thinking your consumption is fine by leading a normal life alongside the alcoholism... until it's too late, and then there's no turning back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff's_syndrome

In this case I feel like a hopeless addict trying to rationalize his addiction in any way possible, but people who want to drink REALLY want to drink, and they will find any rationalization available. There needs to be unassailable reasons telling them that they shouldn't, in order for them to be effective.

There's also something called kindling that makes each withdrawal episode worse than the last, and is believed to make frequent binge drinking especially dangerous. Besides making withdrawal worse, it's associated with cognitive deficits and mental health problems.

Then, there's the increased risk of traumatic brain injury that comes from being drunk, especially if you're crazy enough to drive drunk; or the increased risk of deciding to play with a flamethrower after a few shots of Everclear.

Definitely get your vitamins if you're feeding an alcohol addiction, but know it's harm reduction, not harm elimination. As far as I can tell, there is no known way to make heavy drinking safe.

The message isn't as mixed as you think.

As a physician I tell my patients that there may be a benefit from such very carefully controlled, modest drinking, but there is almost certainly a benefit from abstaining rather than over-drinking.

Alcohol overuse makes you look old (yes I will appeal to vanity); it suppresses your bone marrow and makes you anemic; it causes dilated cardiomyopathy; it destroys the liver in time and will make you gut dump fluid into your belly, causing you pain until you develop liver cancer or bleed into your throat and die; it causes its own form of brain wasting; etc. It is an extraordinarily dirty drug.

Most of these effects come from sustained heavy drinking, but many people can sustain this level of drinking and still be productive, so that is not a useful gauge of how heavy your drinking is.

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200...

Here is the study itself:

http://courses.ttu.edu/jkoch/ETOH/Readings/Late_life_alcohol...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22152665

CONCLUSIONS: Among older adults who are moderate drinkers, the apparent unique effects of wine on longevity may be explained by confounding factors correlated with wine consumption.

http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/pubs/pop/pop2012-0006.pdf

"Mortality risk is low for light drinkers and many individua ls who abstain from drinking—including those who abstain for religious and moral reasons, have a responsibility to family, were brought up not to drink, and are not social; it is higher among former, infrequent, and moderate drinkers, and individuals who abstain because they do not like the taste of alcohol, are concerned that they will lose control, or are concerned about adverse consequences. Unsurprisingly, mortality risk is by far the highest for heavy drinkers. We reveal that reasons for abstention capture heterogeneity in the risk of death among lifetime abstainers. "

This study did create a variable which is the number of health problems and symptoms a person has. However, people can have one bad health problem/symptom (e.g., COPD on 3L home O2) which affects them more than 10 minor health problems might affect someone else.

As an aside, it is curious that this study did not replicate the repeatedly-observed finding of an association between obesity and mortality (OR = 1.00 in this study).

I will also add that this study is looking at older adults (aged 55-65 at the outset of a 20-year study, so they ended up dead or 75-85), which is different from the people discussed in the original thread (working age adults).

For example: social interaction seems related to mortality as well, and social interaction leads to the very popular activity of consuming alcohol. Moreover, alcohol acts as a social lubricant, helping to fuel back these interactions.

At that point you're trading drinking for all sorts of other things you could be doing on the weekend. It's a "hobby" and a lifestyle and comes with sacrifices.

Having a problem is a continuum and not black and white. I held a job and did progressively better for myself even in spite of drinking, however, I'd be lying if I said it didn't effect me at all. Only you can decide if the risk is worth the reward.

I drink about 2-4 fairly strong beers a night (5-7% ABV), almost every night, and while I certainly feel it, I've only been "shitfaced" (or whatever you call "drinking to the point that you lose control") maybe half a dozen times in my life. The fact that I'm not doing the (apparently) normal thing for young folk and getting trashed every Friday night (or ever, really) gives me some relief, but I often worry about how much damage I'm doing with my less intense but sustained drinking habit.

I have a friend like you, he drinks to unwind, and I don't consider him an alcoholic, I'm just sad that in ten years he 'll be in bad shape.

[1] http://www.institutdanone.org/objectif-nutrition/nutrition-a... (in French)

  And if you're drinking 4 beers you 're not far
  from the threshold for liver disease [1]
  ( 1 liter of beer at 7% = 56 g of alcohol;
  the threshold is 50g).

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/features/12-hea...

Anemia, Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease (many of them), Cirrhosis, Dementia, Depression, Siezures, Gout, High Blood Pressure, Infectious Diseases, Nerve Damage, Pancreatitis

Also: Obesity, and likely higher risk of falling or other blunt trauma, it's really annoying to those around you, and it's a waste of money.

I’ll just leave you with this:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/9-youtube-videos-that-prove-anyo...

Not so much to prove that you can do it, but more for the change that anyone can see. You could hardly tell that it’s the same person in the first videos as the last ones.

P.S.

I found the more relevant article I was looking for:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-things-you-dont-realize-about-...

It goes into more detail about what I mentioned above – how you are a different person while drunk, but you might not realize this until you quit.

What if I think the tipsy me is a better person? He's much more outgoing, interesting, and far less socially awkward.

Beside doing things you regret when drunk - like making an ass out of yourself when talking to more sober people in bars or feeling shitty the next day... it does not make you experience yourself as a better person when sober. You have to be drunk to be that better person. So you drink. It does not help - at least that's my experience. Getting drunk can be fun but...where to stop?

Being outgoing for me is strongly connected to my self-esteem and feeling of self-worth. If it's down the drain I hardly leave the house and run away from social interactions without alcohol. If I accumulated some self-worth and feeling fine with myself I enjoy going out and being social in a sober state even more.

I doubt that you are more socially awkward for other people when sober but your anxiety makes you so uncomfortable that you have this urge to grab a drink and have a feeling of relaxation. After a few beers you feel better...

Be careful it's a vicious circle and it's worth to spend some energy into forcing yourself into social situation in a sober state. It can be fun to sit sober in a bar and watch all the people getting more and more drunk.

Amazing how such a relatively small guy could be that coherent after 17 beers....and could put away 40 in one sitting.

I can barely handle it anymore; which is arguably a good thing. I still enjoy a good beer, but other than that, have basically lost the taste for all other alcohol.

I'm not sure why you think we need more research about the harmful effects. There are a long list of known harmful effects, and they kick in at much lower levels than the triggur-levels for English drug and alcohol services. (40 units per day or 20 units per day if you also have severe MH problems (one unit is 125 ml at 8% ABV etc)) - harmful effects can be seen if people regularly drink more than 25 units per week.

Because if you sit up front and listen hard, all the speakers' stories of decline and fall and surrender are basically alike, and like your own: fun with the Substance, then very gradually less fun, then significantly less fun because of the blackouts you suddenly come out of on the highway going 145 kph with companions you do not know, nights you awake from in unfamiliar bedding next to somebody who doesn't even resemble any known sort of mammal, three-day blackouts you come out of and have to buy a newspaper to even know what town you're in; yes gradually less and less actual fun but with some physical need for the Substance, now, instead of the former voluntary fun; then at some point just very little fun at all, combined with terribly daily hand-trembling need, then dread, anxiety, irrational phobias, dim siren-like memories of fun, trouble with assorted authorities, knee-buckling headaches, mild seizures, and the litany of what Boston AA calls Losses - ... (here DFW interpolates part of a monologue from an AA speaker) -then less mild seizures, D.T.s during attempts to taper off too fast, introduction to subjective bugs and rodents, then one more binge and more formicative bugs; then eventually a terrible acknowledgment that some line has been undeniably crossed, and fist-at-the-sky, as-God-is-my-witness vows to buckle down and lick this thing for good, to quit for all time, then maybe a few white-knuckled days of initial success, then a slip, then more pledges, clock-watching, baroque self-regulations, repeated slips back into the Substance's relief after like two days' abstinence, ghastly hangovers, head-flattening guilt and self-disgust, superstructures of additional self-regulations (e.g. not before 0900h, not on a worknight, only when the moon is waxing, only in the company of Swedes) which also fail - ... -then unbelievable psychic pain, a kind of peritonitis of the soul, psychic agony, fear of impending insanity (why can't I quit if I so want to quit, unless I'm insane?), appearances at hospital detoxes and rehabs, domestic strife, financial free-fall, eventual domestic Losses - ... -then vocational ultimatums, unemployability, financial ruin, pancreatitis, overwhelming guilt, bloody vomiting, cirrhotic neuralgia, incontinence, neuropathy, nephritis, black depressions, searing pain, with the Substance affording increasingly brief periods of relief; then finally no relief available anywhere at all; finally it's impossible to freeze what you feel like, being this way; and now you hate the Substance, hate it, but you still find yourself unable to stop doing it, the Substance, you find you really want to stop more than anything on earth and it's no fun doing it anymore and you can't believe you ever liked doing it and but you still can't stop, it's like you're totally fucking bats, it's like there's two yous; and when you'd sell your own dear Mum to stop and still, you find, can't stop, then the last layer of jolly friendly mask comes off your old friend the Substance, it's midnight now and all the masks come off, and you all of a sudden see the Substance as it really is, for the first time you see the Disease as it really is, really has been all this time, you look in the mirror at midnight and see what owns you, what's become what you are - ... -and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool-, and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and centerless eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/f8me0/favourite_sente...

The other side of the coin is: What is the total cost of successful industry lobbying that makes harmful products seem normal to the public?

I suspect that fascination with experiments in optimizations is what drives interest in things like Soylent.

It's not just a price issue, but all sorts of things like not being able to buy alcohol on a Sunday, despite not being religious. Or one that I personally still experience from time to time - being asked for ID despite being 12 years over the age limit.

These are all quality of life issues in my mind. If we were to solely go on doctors guidelines, life would be pretty boring. No sport - too dangerous. No drinking - too much liver damage. No sailing, no cheerleading, no mountain climbing, etc...

There comes a point at which you just have to tell the doctors that it's all well and good pointing out the risks, but ultimately, life is about risks. I can barely see the point in living if we deny ourselves all the slightly risky things just because of the potential downsides. It's cowardice wrapped up in a fresh new label for the modern age.

Also things like free-soloing (corrected as per comment below), and for that matter things society frowns on like needle-drug use, are self-limiting and have orders of magnitude less impact than binge drinking. That's where prioritization washes out pursuing ineffective optimizations.

Any sane doctor won't tell you to stop playing soccer if you like it, even if is a rather dangerous sport in the lower leagues.

To a personal extent, everyone respects free will. That's not the problem. It's certainly on another caliber, but the dissonance actuated in your arguments remind me a lot of anti-vaccine arguments.

Not all issues boil down to "economic impact". Nor is it the only determining factor when deciding on such matters. You have to take into account peoples willingness, or lack thereof to do these things you speak of. Otherwise, you'll have to concede that all you're trying to do is maximize peoples' output for the purpose of benefiting the country, as if it were a farm.

Arguably, they really do, but you have to remember that economics is about the distribution of scarce things (both material goods and services) connected to experienced utility (money is just a -- rather poor in many respects, but also very convenient -- proxy for utility.)

But even if you were right, and "economic" was just a code word for "political", it would be even more true (though for a different reason) that all issues of government policy boil down to economic impact.

(such a chemical would, in practice, be immediately banned in most countries)

Doesn't seem to fit the bill to me, it has strong withdrawal effects and makes people do reckless things, according the link above.

Turn it around: what do we expect to be the causes for those adults between age 20 and 64 who die? I really should read up on the relevant actuarial facts, but isn't it the case that by and large those from 20 to, say, 50 plus or minus are fairly healthy?

If person died from diabetes, but drank, this goes into the "alcohol deaths" count, even if the person would have suffered from it without the alcohol.

Same thing for smoking. Yes, there are people who die of lung cancer without smoking or being exposed to specific carcinogens.

And of course everybody dies, but if the person has a heart attack at 80 and drank it is likely it will be considered an "alcohol related death"

    If person died from diabetes, but drank, this goes into
    the "alcohol deaths" count, even if the person would have 
    suffered from it without the alcohol.

It's also worth noting that a good chunk of all deaths among working age adults are preventable. Miscellaneous accidents, suicide and homicide are the most common causes of death at the younger end of the adult spectrum. Towards the older end, cancer and heart disease skyrocket and dwarf them.

See "10 Leading Causes of Death by Age Group": http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10lcid_all_deaths_by_a...

I would hazard workplace & automotive accidents are also high on the list. We can prevent those entirely, very simply...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...

Still, since not much else is likely to kill the average American 20-something, car crashes rank relatively high, and alcohol remains involved in about a third of all fatal crashes in the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruno

The catch is that these conditions assume severe limitations of personal liberties, voluntary or imposed by force. Obviously this is not a realistic model of a society I (and probably you) would like to live all my life.

Metabolic syndrome is the killer (often leading to cardiovascular disease, liver or kidney failure, blindness, amputations, and, perhaps, dimentia/Alzheimer's [the studies on this are early and not yet cinclusive]), but our society is so focused on weight that thin people automatically assume they are immune to it and everybody carrying any extra weight is assumed to have one foot in the grave. If you eat like crap (a sugar-laden, high trans fat diet of processed food-like substances), you are at risk unless you won the genetic lottery (and those genetics may just buy you time, not immunity).

Choices are: exercise really hard (marathon training) or starve yourself of normal food. Most will end up overweight instead. I'm not convinced either of those three choices are healthy in the long run.

Also, by qualifying it as "working-age" it skews the results heavily. What about all the people that did all that drinking and managed to make it past working age?

Lucky for us, automated cars are going to solve most of this problem in a decade or two. So a more honest assessment would answer how many adults are dying from non-vehicular drinking causes.

"About 1.7 million people died from short-term causes such as crashes or accidents, compared to approximately 800,000 who died from long-term health causes like cancer or strokes, according to the study."

There's a lot of denial going on in this discussion.

I don't know you, so I don't know what else to say. Just experiment - try mixing exercise with active social life and new experiences. Go skydive or something like that :)

Dr. David Nutt is working on this: http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/feb/27/david-nu... but there are already a large pile of options, just a lack of political will.

[1] Anti-drug referring to anti-illegal-drug. [2] of which consist of drugs that would never pass the medication approval process, but solely exist due to a history of use and grandfathering

I drank my first beer when I was 18 years old. That was the only beer that year. When 19 I drank two. When 20 I drank four. When 21 I drank eight (yes, really!). Around 23 I started drinking like everyone else. It's funny because I initially didn't drink by choice - thanks to religious upbringing + the general distaste for beer I refused to drink (and, sadly, partying[0]) alcohol, opting for coke instead. What I learned then is that alcoholic beverages just start to taste more the more you drink them.

[0] - It's not the booze I didn't drink that I regret; it's the connections with interesting people of various trades I could make, but didn't, because I haven't attended the university grills, etc.

Hopefully maybe getting out of my current field (devops) and going back into school (have a CS degree to finish) will help a bit.

I was maybe three months from being homeless, and after being out of work for nearly a year (nobody wanted to hire me, go figure. I thought I had things pretty well covered up...) I found a job with a small company writing simulation software. Two weeks into working for them I lost control and went on a binge and didn't show up for a week, and the CEO went by my condo and asked WTF. I told him. Went into detox later that day, did two weeks in-patient at The Camp in Scotts Valley, then did AA really solidly. It mostly stuck; my earlier visits to AA hadn't been absolutely desperate, and I figure I was pretty close to dying through suicide or something a lot more slow and miserable.

I don't work at that company any more, but it took the caring of a CEO who I barely even knew to really wake me up. I'm still sober 15 years later.

Just switching jobs won't help. Nor will making promises, or going to school, or switching majors, or exercising, or moving, or just about anything else that doesn't exactly target what alcoholism is all about. This sounds deadly serious, and it is, but in fact AA was a lot of fun and I made a number of fast friends. (Feel free to substitute the organization of your choice, but AA worked well for me and I don't have experience with another group).

A drunk guy sleeping in a bus shelter who gets struck by a driver who wasn't drinking is still labeled as an alcohol-related car accident, for example.

Even the concept of singular occupant motor vehicular accidents(Drunk or not) are not quite what they necessarily seem.

But first, 5 drinks in 2-3 hrs for men vs. 4 drinks in 2-3 hrs for women isn't that different. Second, women on average weigh less, so that contributes to the difference as you mentioned. And third, there are other ways alcohol affects men and women differently.

Edit: Just saw the 15 drinks/week for men vs. 8 drinks/week for women which is a larger difference. However, to call USA Today 'sexist' because of that is kind of out there. These numbers aren't just made up out of thin air: for example, http://www.icap.org/PolicyIssues/ExtremeDrinking/tabid/91/De...

http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/women_alcohol.htm

Why? Differences in organ sizes, hormones, muscle, etc would surely play a role. E.g. A 35% body fat 65kg woman wouldn't process alcohol the same way a 20% body fat 65kg woman would.