DCP' two faces on the word of wisdom...

[_I have a question]

The point of the OP was to highlight that it's a tad two-faced (one-eyed?) for a self confessed glutton to be pointing out that drinking alcohol could be bad for you if not done in moderation. Because God.

[_Maksutov]

The WoW is the Mormon version of kosher or halal. It's a tradition that has survived as an identity marker, not as a valid approach to health care.

[_EAllusion]

You just can't tell a person "don't be an alcoholic" and whalaa, problem solved. It's also not obvious in advance who is going to develop alcoholism from attempting moderate drinking and who isn't. It isn't obvious who is going to become disinhibited and overdo it one night and who isn't. That's the risk. A doctor who recommended moderate wine drinking for health benefits would be egregiously irresponsible.

To be clear, I'm not saying alcohol is a bottle of sorrow. It's a complex risk/benefit decision. I am saying that, "It's perfectly fine if you just do it in moderation," is a naïve statement.

We all have self-discipline, if we didn't then your thoughts on drinking alcohol would also apply to everything in life. If one person over-eats does that mean that everyone will over-eat - of course not. People make choices every day and alcohol consumption is one of them; some abstain, some drink moderately and some abuse alcohol.

M.

Avoiding addiction isn't simply a matter of "self-discipline" and not everything is equally addictive. This statement reminds me of when Bob Dole, trying to defend the tobacco industry, argued that milk also is harmful if you drink too much of it. Smoke in moderation, folks. It's your choice.

Some people have the right physiological characteristics and background of experiences to become quickly (or eventually) addicted to the substance. No amount of "self-discipline" is going to determine the shape of D1 and D2 receptors in your nucleus acumbens.

Alcohol is highly addictive and some people who think they can just be social drinkers will fall into compulsive drinking. About 10-15%, in fact. There's different, related ways of thinking of how addictive a substance is, so it's hard to get you a simple ranking. But, simplifying, it's about on par with cocaine. And, on top of this, it is easily the most harmful addictive substance we have once chemical dependency sets in. Would you be writing your comment about just needing self-discipline when it came to occasionally snorting coke or smoking meth for fun? My guess is probably not because there is a cultural awareness that these substances operate on the very system the produces will to begin with. To be more technical, they operate on the mammalian reward/motivation system. This is also true of alcohol. The only difference is the wide acceptance of its use.

[_Chap]

I am trying to understand the issue under dispute. Do I have it right that EAllusion would be satisfied with advice like this being given to young people:

"Alcohol is widely consumed in many societies, and for most people it is a source of enjoyment and social relaxation, with no significant health disbenefits. On the other hand, not drinking alcohol at all will almost certainly not damage your health in any significant way either.

If you do choose to drink alcohol, or you have friends who drink alcohol, you should be aware that a small but significant number of alcohol users may become physiologically addicted to it, and such people may suffer damage to physical health as well as major disruptions of their lives. Be on the watch for those signs, both in yourselves and in those you care for. Such people need to seek help, and to give up alcohol on a permanent basis."

[_EAllusion]

That's fine, Chap. Only a few quibbles:

1) People usually distinguish physiological addiction as tolerance/withdrawal (which is particularly bad in the case of alcohol) with psychological addiction which is the compulsion to use despite negative consequences. The latter is all that really matters when thinking about how addictive a substance is. Some things that produce no tolerance/withdrawal are highly addictive and something things that produce significant tolerance/withdrawal are barely addictive at all. What's significant about any addictive drug is that it is psychologically addictive. You could just shorten this to say people might become addicted to it.

2) Alcohol also causes major disruptions in the lives others. For example, it plays a causal role in a huge % of incidents of violence in the United States.

"Drink alcohol" isn't good health advice. It's an incidental side-benefit for those who stick within the recommended limits. Advising people to drink alcohol for cardiac benefits is like recommending someone use morphine to cure a headache. It fundamentally screws up the risk/benefit calculus. Adding the qualifier to do it "in moderation" misunderstands what's so risky about habit-forming substances in the first place.

[_DarkHelmet]

The point of the OP was to highlight that it's a tad two-faced (one-eyed?) for a self confessed glutton to be pointing out that drinking alcohol could be bad for you if not done in moderation. Because God.

But that's the position of the church. A 300 pound guy can sit in a temple recommend interview and answer the questions while unsparingly eating a pile of meat and say "Yes" when asked if he obeys the Word of Wisdom. But a guy in perfect health, who runs a couple miles every day, who sits in an interview while sipping a cup of tea and will have to answer "No" when asked if he obeys the Word of Wisdom. The Word of Wisdom is not about health, it's about obedience. The big 15 could come out today and say the Word of Wisdom has been changed to require every member to drink red wine with dinner and suddenly members would be touting the health benefits of red wine and how inspired the Brethren are.

[_Maksutov]

The Word of Wisdom is not about health, it's about obedience.

Exactly.

[_EAllusion]

Here's another way to put it:

Arguably the two most dangerous addictive drugs that we know about also coincidentally happen to be the only two legal across the United States.

No substance is more addictive than nicotine. In all sorts of different measures of addictive potential, nicotine stands a cut above from the rest. It's crazy-addictive. Heroin often has a reputation for it being a magic-bullet additive substance and nicotine is flatly more addictive than it. Add to this that its consumption comes with serious long-term health consequences and you got yourself a very dangerous drug.

Alcohol isn't in the same class as nicotine in terms of addictivness, but it is still quite addictive. It falls within the range of a host of other drugs that have a reputation in our culture for being scarily addictive such as heroin, meth, and cocaine. It's right there in the mix. What alcohol has over those other substances is the tendency to produce extreme aggressiveness and disinhibition when people are intoxicated. That makes is societal costs much steeper than other substances. I've never seen a scientific attempt to quantify the harms of a particular addictive substance that didn't have alcohol blow the competition out of the water.

It's funny that they are the legal ones then when the typical twin justifications for criminalizing a substance are its addictive potential and social harms. While nicotine has seen social tolerance of it fall over the past half century, alcohol still enjoys wide societal tolerance - Mormons notwithstanding.

What's the takeaway here? For those that know me, I obviously think we should pursue legalization of other drugs. To the bigger question about what our attitudes should be towards these substances, I'm not sure. I think we probably are a little too forgiving towards nicotine and alcohol in our attitudes and not forgiving enough towards substances like crack-cocaine. Something like Chap's advice is applicable to drugs across the board, but probably should have a more sternly worded admonishment about the risks.

[_Chap]

You may be interested in this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 45870.html

The nation’s attitude towards drinking may be changing, as young people turning away from binging and adults consume less alcohol in general.

Over one fifth of adults have cut alcohol out of their diets - up from 19 per cent in 2005, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Binge drinking, defined as regularly consuming more than three to four units of alcohol for men and two to three units for women, has also fallen in the past decade, from 18 per cent to 15 per cent.

The ONS said the fall in binge drinking was due to a combination of adults either drinking less or choosing not to drink at all.

The data also showed that more young people aged between 16 and 24 are opting to be teetotal, rising from 19 per cent in 2005, to 27 per cent in 2013.

The drops in drinking between 2005 and 2013 “were a result of changes among younger adults, with little or no change in older groups”, the ONS report said.

My teenage daughter (like quite a few of her friends) shows little or no interest in consuming alcohol to any significant degree, and I am not attempting to persuade her to take it up. I on the other hand enjoy drinking moderate amounts, and have no intention of attempting to give it up.

I do agree, by the way, that health benefits have little or nothing to do with the Word of Wisdom as currently conceived by Mormons. A religion that denies entry to its temples to those who admit to drinking tea and coffee, while doing nothing to persuade the grossly obese to eat less and eat better, is not a religion that has its members health as the principal object of its dietary prohibitions.

[_sock puppet]

This thread points up the problem of the LDS Church having made an obedience commandment out of what was originally and yet is labeled a 'word of wisdom'. The LDS obedience commandment is itself a cafeteria approach to the codified, D&C 'word of wisdom' as illustrated by the OP, some parts ignored, other parts interpreted in nonsensical ways (hot drinks means coffee and tea, but not hot chocolate or Postum). But because of its moniker, TBMs will latch on to anything that supports the 'health' benefits of the slice-and-dice interpretive taboos, while imbibing the high caloric hot drink called hot chocolate. (Since all three are hot drinks, all three sport caffeine, the big differentiator is the amount of calories--the high calorie hot chocolate gets the good LDS-keeping stamp of approval, but the low/no calorie tea and coffee are ver boten.)

For LDS defenders, this patch-work application of the 'hot drinks' prohibition leaves them looking like duplicitous, blind followers. Which I think those who vocally defend such nonsense indeed are.

Due to the health benefits, public policy banning weed while allowing alcohol and tobacco makes no sense. Prohibition on alcohol ended in the U.S. as a compromise, letting people have one self-intoxicant to help relax against the demands of life and also be a social lubricant. (Probably be a lot less of us created if not for alcohol.) But the deleterious health effects from alcohol versus marijuana seem to point to legalizing pot, and perhaps making alcohol less available.