Wenx’ World: Sober

Alcohol is good for you. Well, at least if you have a problem. Sounds weird? Let me fill you in (and I am not talking about wine into your glass here): In 2012, scientists showed that “Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving“.

So if you have a problem, get that Tequila out and a creative solution is more likely to happen. I wonder if it works with ‘good’ or ‘smart’ solutions, but that might only be hypotheses for future research. However, I found the article only, because someone had left it in our staff kitchen with the note “Nobel Prize??” on it. They compared a drunk bunch of people with a bunch of sober people and looked how they individually solved Remote Associates Test items. It turned out, that the average drunk could solve more items in a shorter time compared to their sober mates. And that those drunks were also more likely to rate their solutions as insightful. It instantly reminded me of another study on the psychology of people who watched porn but apparently they could not find a control group…

However, I am getting distracted. Of course, alcohol is bad for you. At least psychologically and physically and in general. And I know for sure since I work in Health Science and read nutrition books for fun. It is, of course, well known (though I don’t think really proven yet) that moderate consumption of red wine might be good for your blood because the antioxidants may create cardiovascular benefits.

And another paper, which we swore on during undergrad, showed that women who drink regularly, generally have a lower Body Mass Index, hence less risk of obesity related diseases. The fact that those results might encourage alcohol addiction was consciously ignored by us those days (and still is).

However, just the other week the Frenchman who killed and injured several people because he drove into a Christmas market stall in France, was convicted of drunk driving (4 times the maximum limit, in fact!). And don’t even get me started on the Australian ‘tolerance’, nearly acceptance, of the public on drunk driving…

Just this Sunday morning we chatted about drinking (and the related unsexy beer belly) and realised we didn’t really drink much the previous day. We counted in retrospect:  6 standard drinks all through the day. Quite a bit! What were we thinking? What happened to our drinking perception? So maybe we should just stop altogether. We truly considered. Then we decided we should deeply discuss this over a beer.

Cheers – Wenx