Introduction: Random Thoughts on Alcohol

I've never written much about alcohol because I've never been much of a fan of it. Like caffeine, it is both a drug and a food and deeply entwined in our culture. Unlike caffeine it is heavily regulated -- banned to consume by anyone under 21, tightly controlled by where, when and whom it can be sold. It's history in the United States is a story of morality and religion fighting with man's natural urge to party and get stoned out of our brains. I've also taken classes in wine and spirits while in c-school, and did a lot of first-person research while living in England. There is a lot of there, there.

But it was this recent article that got me thinking: climate change is spurring wine production. Due to warmer temperatures, Washington State is finding it harder to grow apples but a lot easier to grow less water-intensive wine-grapes. Due to the same effect, the wine-region of France has slowly crept to the southern tip of England. Also, as temperatures rise and water lessens, the concentrations of sugar increase in a growing wine grape, which then produces a "hotter" wine, i.e. more sugar to ferment into a higher alcohol level.

I wrote about something called "sugar alcohols" in this blog years ago. On one hand, there is a chemical class of something called sugar alcohols that are low-calorie sugar substitutes. But on the other hand,

Sugar and alcohol have something in common: If sugar were to get in to a fight with alcohol, he'd slice his hand off and casually admit, "I am you father...."

"4-Luke-oh, you are a distillation of me, Darth Sucrose." Sorry.

They're both super-simple carbohydrates that the body needs to do little to get into the bloodstream. Sugar will rush in and give you fast energy, then a crash. Alcohol will rush in and get you drunk, then hang you over. When sugar undergoes the metabolic process known as fermentation, an environment is produced to allow yeast to go nutso and eat all the sugar. The yeasts belch & poo two new, simpler components: alcohol and CO2. Through distillation, any boring stuff like water is taken away and you're left with spirits.
Sugar is 4 cal/g, and even though alcohol is made directly from the sugars in the original sources like grains (vodka, beer), raw sugar plants (rum) and grapes (wine), it has 7cal/g. It's quite a different animal. Or is it?

"Excess sugar can alter metabolism, raise blood pressure, skew the signaling of hormones and damage the liver — outcomes that sound suspiciously similar to what can happen after a person drinks too much alcohol. Schmidt, co-chair of UCSF’s Community Engagement and Health Policy program, noted on CNN: “When you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense. Alcohol, after all, is simply the distillation of sugar. Where does vodka come from? Sugar.” 

Alcohol is an acquired taste, but the pleasure from it's intoxicating effects is universal and timeless. Add some sugar to an alcoholic drink to mask the taste of the alcohol and make it taste like candy, and you got one wicked brew.

I've spoken at length about "addiction" in this blog, mostly dealing with forms that some don't readily accept as real: sugar addiction, food addiction, addictions of behavior rather than physiology. It's pretty accepted in our culture that "alcoholism" is a real thing. Infact, according to recent style of new study that combs the entire world wide web, it is estimated that....

Worldwide, some 5 percent of the world's population — about 240 million people — are dependent on alcohol. The accepted mental health definitions of dependence speaks of compulsive use, loss of control over substance use and a failure to stop using even when people are aware of the problems alcohol is causing. More than a billion people, or 20 percent of the human race, smoke tobacco.

There is a debate underway about the root causes of addiction that can be summarized something like this: if your life sucks, drugs that alter your consciousness make your life seem less sucky by comparison, despite the horrendous toll it can take on you and those around you. If your life is good and you have support and people who love you, the appeal of drugs that alter your consciousness to get away from the reality you find yourself in is a lot less appealing, and therefore a lot less "addicting". The opposite of addiction is connection.

If you come from a broken home, if your job doesn't pay you enough to live, if you live in a neighborhood full of violence and uncertainty, you're more likely to become a junky...not because you're a racial minority or have a genetic disposition. Not because drugs are any more addictive than other things that give pleasure. It's that the drugs are one of the few things that give you pleasure. And I include that commonly available drug, alcohol, as a main contender.

I was on a date a while back with a women who was a bit of an oenophile. She sampled three or four glasses, sniffing and swirling, before she chose the glass for us. The wine was okay I guess, it went well when I mixed it in my mouth with my entree. However, there was a "chocolate board" for desert, a small tasting of six high-end artisanal dark chocolates from around the world. I tasted the hell out of that, and made comments about the "grassy", "stone-fruit" and "loud tannic" activity of each piece. Funny, all the wine-terminology I was taught in c-school burst forth when testing my palate on chocolate. It's not addiction that drove her focus on the wine and my focus on the chocolate -- it was the heightened pleasure. It's when you can't stay sober at work or keep your weight under 500 lbs that maybe the term "addiction" should be brought in.

Before Prohibition, the United States still had the backbone of a European cultural attitude toward alcohol -- it was good for food and celebration. There were always unhappy or stupid people who would abuse it, but pushing it underground just made it sexier and put drinking on the side of "freedom" and "adventure" and "rebellion", which are naturally American values. By the time I got to college in the 1980s, with the drinking age pushed up to 21 only a generation ago, it was a big deal for a lot of my fellow incoming freshmen to be away from home and have the "freedom" to drink crappy beer in the privacy of their own dorm rooms with each other. My parents always made alcohol available to me -- there was nothing more square or boring than doing what my parents did, even it was in the form of dry martinis and interesting whiskeys.

What was my point? Alcohol. As with any drug, make it cheap, make it commonly available to all, regulate the manufacture and tax it, and let people decide for themselves if it is good or bad. If you want to fight alcoholism or drug abuse (or the crumbling of the nuclear family or many other social ills that show a lack of real connectedness with each other), raise the minimum wage so that the weakest among us can live with dignity. Society should be shaped more with carrots than sticks. Regard it as a compliment to good food, not an intoxicant to party with.

Well, that was a ramble. Thanks for taking that walk with me!
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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2830
Not great, but a step in the right direction.

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MONDAY COUNT: 2985

SLEPT: 10:30pm-5:45am, 7.25 hrs

AM SNACK: 6:15 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 10am, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, falafel, chicken soup, health salad, pickles, 725 cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, mahi mahi, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, popcorn, +/- 400 cal

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, 3 kid granola bars, one kind bar, 500 cal
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TUESDAY COUNT: 2640

SLEPT: 8:30pm- 4:45am, 8.25hrs

AM SNACK: 5 am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal
First time in almost a week due to broken parts. Surprising how good it tasted after the involuntary absence.

BREAKFAST 2: 10am, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, mushroom masala, steamed string beans, pickles,  620 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad, cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER: 7pm, sauteed chicken breast, roasted brussel sprouts, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACKS: 8pm, 3 kid granola bars, kind bar, 500 cal
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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2830

SLEPT: 9:15pm - 5:15am,  8hrs

AM SNACK: 5:45am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, fruit smoothie, 450 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, sautted chicken, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, 400cal

PM SNACK: 3:30pm, momma salad, cheezit, 310 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, cashews, 310 cal

DINNER: 8pm, pork tonkatsu curry with rice, pork dumplings, cupcakes +/-1200 cal
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BIKE CREDIT: 1285
THURSDAY COUNT: 2865

SLEPT: 11pm - 3am, 4 hr

AM SNACK: 3:30am, iced green tea, 150 mg caffeine

BIKE SNACK: 5am, homemade granola bar, 340cal

BIKE SNACK: 7am, homemade granola bar, 340 cal

BREAKFAST 1: 9:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST: 10am, Steel cut oatmeal,  450 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, sautéed shrimp and mushrooms, quinoa, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, 950 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad, cheezits, 410 cal

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, reese's peanut butter cups, +/- 700 cal

DINNER: 8pm, Russ & Daughter's Cafe dinner, +/- 800 cal
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FRIDAY COUNT: ---

SLEPT: 10:30pm-5:30am, 7 hours

BREAKFAST 1: 10am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11am, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla, 450 cal  

LUNCH: 2pm, almond butter and grape jelly on whole wheat toast, poppa salad with dressing, pickles, warm chocolate pastry cream, +/- 900 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, momma salad and cheezits, 310 cal

DINNER 1: 5:15pm, went off the rails here, with a friend with whom I usually eat too much. Totes worth it.