Tag Archives | Alcohol

Don’t Fool Yourself: The Legalization of Marijuana Will Absolutely Lead to More People Smoking Pot

By on May 9, 2013 in News 0

debacle1

One of the strangest things about being an enthusiastic pot smoker is that you constantly meet people who aren’t high all the time, which often leaves you wondering “What the fuck is wrong with these people?” I have no idea, but what I do know is that pot’s illegality absolutely influences this decision for most of them, often subconsciously. Don’t believe me? The second legalization passed in Washington, members on every side of my wife and my family were all of a sudden looking for a hook up. Christmas shopping was super easy. I got weed for nearly everyone, because that’s what they fucking asked for. I’m not joking. Some of these people haven’t smoked in years.

Because of the drug war, pretty much everything said about recreational drugs publicly is essentially insane. About the biggest argument conservative types can come up with against loosening weed laws has always been, but, if we legalize marijuana, more people will smoke it.… Read the rest

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Yearly Ancient Egyptian Festival Of Ritual Binge Drinking And Public Sex Uncovered

By on May 3, 2013 in News 0

festival of ritual

The debaucherous activities were considered a means for individuals to directly voice themselves to the gods, in what seems like a scary, society-wide version of Woodstock 99. Via the Los Angeles Times:

Since 2001, Johns Hopkins University archaeologist Betsy Bryan has led the excavation of the temple complex of the Egyptian goddess Mut in modern-day Luxor, the site of the city of Thebes in ancient Egypt. And the ritual she has uncovered, which centers on binge drinking, thumping music and orgiastic public sex, probably makes “Jersey Shore” look pretty tame.

Bryan, a specialist in Egypt’s New Kingdom (roughly 1600 to 1000 BC), has painstakingly pieced together the details of the Festivals of Drunkenness, which took place in homes, at temples and in makeshift desert shrines throughout ancient Egypt at least once a year.

Bryan [explains], “What’s really distinctive about these rituals is their communal nature, their participatory aspect. The people in attendance were everybody from the highest elites to groups of far more modest members of society.

… Read the rest

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Out of All Drugs Legal And Illegal, Which Ones Kill?

By on April 27, 2013 in News 0
Picture: William Rafti (CC)

Picture: William Rafti (CC)

If we were to have a sane and adult conversation about drug use and abuse in America instead of waging a war on drugs the same way we wage a war on terror, we might come to the realization that  we’re letting the bad ones in our homes freely while some of the most helpful to improving the quality of life of the average person carry some of the highest minimum prison sentences of all, while touting an infinitesimal number of related deaths.  Some of you may have read Thad McKracken’s well thought out article on the state of drugs in society today.  The numbers fall in lockstep with his thoughts.

It turns out that, aside from Alcohol, Big Pharma is the #1 killer  while drugs that have been used traditionally as entheogens hardly appear in the statistics at all.  Drugs like LSD, DMT, Marajuana, Peyote and other psychedelics are used as a religious sacrament in many belief systems around the world, but are vilified because of their tendency to provide people with what Terence McKenna simply called ‘funny ideas’.… Read the rest

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Alcohol Damages Teens’ Brains, But Marijuana Does Not, Study Reveals

By on January 10, 2013 in News 3

Be sure to talk to your kids about staying safe by hanging with the stoners, not the frat bros. Medical Daily reports:

Perhaps in response to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington last month, more teens are lighting up than ever before. However, one study suggests that parents have less to fear from marijuana than from alcohol. The study found that while marijuana had no effect on the health of teenagers’ brain tissue, alcohol did.

The researchers, from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, performed the study on 92 16- to 20-year-olds. The researchers found that, after a year and a half, kids who had drank five or more alcoholic beverages twice a week had lost white brain matter. That means that they could have impaired memory, attention, and decision-making into adulthood. The teens that smoked marijuana on a regular basis had no such reduction.

… Read the rest

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TV Ad Campaign: Weed Is Safer Than Booze

By on May 17, 2012 in News 23

Rocky Mountain HighAn obvious message to some, perhaps, but there are still those who need help believing that reefer madness is a myth. Tricia Escobedo and Jim Spellman report for CNN:

A Colorado advocacy group is spending thousands of dollars to convince people that smoking pot is safer than drinking alcohol. It’s an attempt by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol to rally support for a vote in November that would legalize the drug for recreational use. Colorado legalized marijuana for medical use in 2000.

Last Friday, the group aired an advertisement on a local Denver channel during daytime programming encouraging people to “start your conversation about marijuana.” The 30-second spot features a young woman typing a message to her mother on her laptop, explaining that after spending her college years drinking heavily, she now prefers marijuana because “it’s less harmful … I don’t get hung-over and honestly I feel safer around marijuana users.” The marketing campaign aims to “break down the stereotype about who the typical marijuana user is,” explained the campaign’s co-director, Mason Tvert.

… Read the rest

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Mouth Spray Makes You Instantly Drunk

By on May 4, 2012 in News 13

StarckThe bizarre part about this story, for me anyway, is that the spray was designed by Phillippe Starck, the French designer of expensive boutique hotels, furniture and all sorts of other bits and bobs. From the Daily Mail:

A new gadget is designed to get people drunk INSTANTLY.

The makers claim, however, that the ‘harm’ is limited, because you sober up equally rapidly.

The alcohol is delivered via an aerosol spray, so people feel briefly drunk, then sober up.

But however quickly people might recover, drunkenness can lead to accidents – and it’s also unclear how the device could be misused by alcoholics.

Two American scientists designed the device – a small spray that gives you that instant drunk sensation from less than a drop of alcohol.

The feeling lasts just seconds – but when it fades, you are sober and able to carry on with your day.

The ‘Wahh Quantum Sensations’ delivers just a miniscule dose of alcohol – 0.075ml – directly in to your mouth, but thanks to the aerosol effect, the effect is instantaneous…

[continues in the Daily Mail]… Read the rest

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Does Drinking Make Someone A Better President?

By on April 25, 2012 in News 10

FDR DrinkingTimothy Egan breaks down the drinking habits of past presidents in his opinion piece in the New York Times:

We know from a rare personal admission that Mitt Romney experienced a faint whiff of alcohol, a long, long time ago. “I tasted a beer and tried a cigarette once as a wayward teenager,” he said last November, “and never tried it again …

… The last president to swear off alcohol was George W. Bush, who seems doomed to have his name forever followed by the words, “and we know how that turned out.” During his misspent youth, W. was a heavy drinker and considered quite the cutup, but was also obnoxious, smashing his car into trash cans and challenging his father to go “mano a mano.”…

… Jimmy Carter was a teetotaler, and he earned his one-term status. Were the two connected? Can’t say. But his temperance (though he now drinks wine) was much harder on White House visitors than the White House occupant …

… Franklin D.

… Read the rest

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Sex-Deprived Male Fruit Flies Turn to Alcohol

By on March 20, 2012 in News 4

Fruit FlyReports Bloomberg via the San Francisco Chronicle:

Male fruit flies become barflies when rejected by females, choosing alcohol-spiked food more often than their successful brothers in a study that suggests it may be due to a brain chemical also found in humans.

The spurned flies had lower levels of a molecule in their brains called neuropeptide F than the males who were allowed to mate, according to findings published today in the journal Science. Neuropeptide Y, the version found in humans, has been tied to addiction and mental illness, said Ulrike Heberlein, one of the researchers.

The molecule may begin to explain how experience and environment shape human addictions, said Heberlein. About half of a person’s risk of addiction is genetic, and environment is known to play a role. The experiment may help explain the biological triggers that affect certain behavior or cravings and could help research into treatments for addiction …

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Why Booze Is Barely Taxed

By on February 19, 2012 in News 11
Photo: Clock (CC)

Photo: Clock (CC)

Now you might think that’s a crazy headline, but as Frank Bruni points out in the New York Times, “Congress last revised excise taxes on distilled spirits in 1991, [and] the real value of those taxes has declined more than 35 percent”! (Disinfonauts outside the US, let us know how alcohol is taxed in your country)

… excise taxes on alcohol have gone down over the last few decades, when adjusted for inflation and measured in terms of the percentage they represent of the wholesale and retail price of a bottle or a can. The federal government and many states long ago set those levies in terms of a certain dollar amount per gallon — and then didn’t tweak them much as the cost of living went up.

Because Congress last revised excise taxes on distilled spirits in 1991, the real value of those taxes has declined more than 35 percent, said Alexander Wagenaar, a professor at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine who specializes in alcohol research.

… Read the rest

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Teenagers Are So Boring

By on February 2, 2012 in News 27

CSD 2011 021 smoking womanSo what do teens do to be different from their parents these days? Write code? From the New York Times:

Every few years, parents find new reasons to worry about their teenagers. And while there is no question that some kids continue to experiment with sex and substance abuse, the latest data point to something perhaps more surprising: the current generation is, well, a bit boring when it comes to bad behavior.

By several noteworthy measures, today’s teenagers are growing increasingly conservative. While marijuana use has recently had an uptick, teenagers are smoking far less pot than their parents did at the same age. In 1980, about 60 percent of high-school seniors had tried marijuana and 9 percent smoked it daily. Among seniors today, according to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked teenage risk behaviors since 1975, 45.5 percent have tried the drug and 6.6 percent are smoking it frequently.

… Read the rest

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