Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk.
That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
--Ernest Hemingway

Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there is something wrong with him.
--Art Buchwald

Excellent writeup on a recent study, here: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/07/02/why-do-some-teens-become-binge-drinkers-algorithms-answer/.

Cocaine and booze
are the eggs and bacon
of the addict's world,
the perfect combination.
--Ozzy Osbourne
(in The Week 7/4/14 p8)

absorption iz stomach (25%)
metabolized to acetaldehyde by stomach and LI
rate limiting enzyme: gastric alcohol dehydrogenase
men have more of it than women, per pound body wt
metabolism of ethanol-->acetaldehyde-->acetate
one NAD+-->NADH with each of above oxidation rxns
drinking binge w/o food intake-->high NADH relative to NAD
and of course you remember that NADH is made from niacin, vitamin B3
alcohol abuse is the most common cause of thiamine deficiency, B1

( biochemistry, nutrition and pathology notes, merged with black book feb 2013Collapse )

"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol. In a community lacking pure-water supplies, the closest thing to "pure" fluid was alcohol. Whatever health risks were posed by beer (and later wine) in the early days of agrarian settlements were more than offset by alcohol's antibacterial properties. Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties. Many genetically minded historians believe that the confluence of urban living and the discovery of alcohol created a massive selection pressure on the genes of all humans who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Alcohol, after all, is a deadly poison and notoriously addictive. To digest large quantities of it, you need to be able to boost production of enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases, a trait regulated by a set of genes on chromosome four in human DNA. Many early agrarians lacked that trait, and thus were genetically incapable of "holding their liquor." Consequently, many of them died childless at an early age, either from alcohol abuse or from waterborne diseases. Over generations, the gene pool of the first farmers became increasingly dominated by individuals who could drink beer on a regular basis. Most of the world population today is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol. (The same is true of lactose tolerance, which went from a rare genetic trait to the mainstream among descendants of the herders, thanks to domestication of livestock.) The descendants of hunter gatherers--like many Native Americans or Australian Aborigines--were never forced through this genetic bottleneck, and so today they show disproportionate rates of alcoholism. The chronic drinking problem in Native American populations has been blamed on everything from the weak "Indian constitution" to the humiliating abuses of the U.S. reservation system. But their alcohol intolerance most likely has another explanation: their ancestors didn't live in towns."
--Steven Johnson, in The Ghost Map, pages 103-4.

We're leaving tomorrow and I'm to row a raft again. How did everybody find out that I can row? I guess I better read the guidebook about the river. I'm mostly packed and ready to do the pre-trip garden harvest and cooler pack in the morning. The temperature is going to be in the 100's. I have a big hat from Africa, a long sleeved shirt and an umbrella for shade. I have a lot of water freezing in the two house freezers. The meat (for a taco meal and a curry) is precooked and frozen solid. I went to the big local beer store (John's) and picked a sampling of beers, mostly IPA's but also a couple of porters and stouts. Will brought a German lager. Hopefully it won't be too hot to drink beer. Is that possible?

Bruises fade and skin heals, but the mind remembers. Physical punishment is still prevalent among US families. This study found the prevalence of physical punishment without "more severe child maltreatment" was 5.9%. Boys get physically punished more than girls, 59.4% to 40.6%. Blacks get beat more than whites. Asians and Pacific Islanders (including native Hawaiians) were the least likely to get whupped by their own parents.

The harsher the physical (or emotional) punishment was, the higher the odds of an axis I or II diagnosis. Axis I diagnoses include major depression, dysthymia, mania, mood disorders, phobias, anxiety disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse or dependence. Axis II diagnoses include several individual personality disorders and cluster A and B disorder diagnoses. The researchers concluded that 2-7% of all mental disease is attributable to childhood abuse.

SOURCE
http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/767353?src=cmemp
( the statsCollapse )

It's called Omission. Good name. Haven't tasted the product yet.

http://thedrinknation.com/articles/read/7271-Introducing-Widmers-Omission-Gluten-Free-Beers