[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Those clinical trials *are* targeting lessons that can be learned/applied about/within sober life. Plus, it's naive to even disjointly separate sober life from drunken life ... any more than it would be to separate, say, Ca+-deficient life from Ca+ life. Alcohol (and opiates) is used by humans similarly to the way many animals use mind-altering substances. This sober-drunk dichotomy you're assuming is paper thin, if it exists at all.

It's almost as if you're saying that, for example, depressed people should just buck up, smile more, and behave like non-depressed people. This is why we have a "disease model of alcoholism" (with which I *disagree* but *support*) ... because for so long, what it seems like you're calling Apollonians argued that alcoholism is a *moral* failing. That disease model would not be necessary if we would simply abandon the false sober-drunk dichotomy.  Maybe we extend it to those of us with cancer. If we just had the right attitude, maybe we wouldn't have gotten cancer? I don't know. It just seems that your argument is kinda weird.


On 2/24/20 11:58 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> I don't think Eric is talking about the reliability of what happens when one get's drunk;  I think he is talking about the applicability of lessons one might learn while being drunk to life when one is NOT drunk.  I suppose one might ask why am I privileging sobriety?  Isn't it also the case that the lessons I learn while NOT drunk have limited applicability to life while drunk? Why not focus on that?

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☣ uǝlƃ