Someone once said that raising the drinking age to 21 didn't stop 18 year olds from getting booze, but it did stop a lot of 14 year olds from getting booze.
Which is an awful idea, gladly I never had any trouble getting alcohol at 12-14, and yeah, by 22 I had fucked around so much and partied so hard that was already retiring from getting drunk... isn't it better to be irresponsible idiots when you indeed have no responsibilities, and give a good use to all those puberty hormones?
Alcohol can have an impact on the brain's development, which stops at around 32 years old anyway. So it is less harmful (edit : for the brain development) the older you get. Also, the earlier someone starts drinking, the higher their chances are of developing an addiction.
Yep, the real point where the development stops is not widely known yet. There are even articles which say 37 might be the point, but its definite that its past 32.
I've always heard mid to late 20s as the point where most of the growth stops. Your brain changes to some extent throughout your entire life, but most performance metrics peak around then and decline after.
Alcohol being harmful no matter the age (and most importantly in this study, no matter the quantity) does not mean that it is equally harmful at every age and every quantity.
The study your link is referring to talks about alcohol being a vector for cancer and other health problem at an older age, and disproving the myth along which low alcohol consumption would be good for the heart. It did not take into consideration the age where people started drinking.
I would like to believe all the lessons I learned doing wreckless could have been learned elsehow, but also it tamed me out by the time I was 14. I could tell a lot of the kids around me at that age were acting out as a result of their newfound freedom, the kinda freedom and lack of supervision I had had for ten years at that point. I had my fill already and became a relatively calm and subdued teen. But only because I had learned my lessons through pain.
Are you me? Same trajectory, really.
I did pick up hard drinking again after a several-year-hiatus, though. Then several years of that made me never touch hard liquor again.
You're saying a different thing than they did. They said a drunk 14-year-old on a bike is in more danger than a 21-year-old in a car, which is correct
Drunk pedestrians and cyclists statistically are in more danger than drivers, per mile, by a decent margin
The problem is that doesn't account for externalities, namely the risk of injuring others. A pedestrian or cyclist is unlikely to seriously injure someone else, whereas a driver would
Edit: This is in the US, other countries will have different resukts due to more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure
More of a danger to themselves. Most people, even drunks, put on their seatbelts. That means if there's an accident, even at high speed, the driver is protected by restraints and airbags.
A kid on a bike doesn't have that.
If there's a collision between a bike and a car, which vehicle do you want to be in?
I read what you wrote but was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Just to be clear, you're saying that you'd prefer drunk drivers in cars versus bikes because you're more concerned about the drunk driver's safety than people they might run into/over?
My speculation is that lowering the drinking age should result in fewer deaths overall for this very reason. I don't want drunk drivers to die either but if I had to choose I'd prefer the drunk drivers to die over the person that they hit. I also reject your premise that crashing into something with your bike is more dangerous than crashing into something with a car, seatbelt or not. Speed is a pretty big factor and while drunk biking is surely dangerous it's a lot less likely to crash at higher speeds.
I specifically said that a drunken 14 year old is more at risk of hurting themselves than a drunk adult wearing a safety belt. I never said that drunk driving was 'safe'
Mile per mile, drunk walking and biking is more dangerous than drunk driving for the individual. Obviously why drunk driving is not okay is the danger to others, which is why his wording specifically only mentioned the danger to themselves
You are very bad at communicating. You were correct in your initial comment, but really went off the rails and said many incorrect things afterwards
Walking and biking is statistically more dangerous, mile per mile, for a drunk person than driving. The caveat is this excludes externalities such as injuring other people
Had you said that, I think more people would have understood what you meant. As it stands, it sounds like you're advocating for drunk driving
I really don't know anybody from America who didn't drink before 21. I'm still not a fan of alcohol outside of social events, didn't go to parties often in the first place, and was generally a good little honors student who followed the rules. However, even I drank several times before it was legal.
I got 61 upvotes, which means that plenty of people understood what I was saying.
So either you were making a joke, and now you're all salty that I joked back, or you actually had no idea, which means you really do need to get out more.
But don't act like I made some kind of cryptic pronouncement only the illuminati can decipher.
I for one have an enormous amount of respect for people who ask questions when they don't know something, and if you always try to find stuff out when you don't know it, you end up learning a lot. Saying "I don't understand - please explain" is the sign of an inquisitive and self-aware mind on the route to a better understanding of the world.
Just because something is easy and obvious for you to understand, doesn't make it easy and obvious for someone else. We all think differently. Someone on programming.dev might find it obvious that compiled rust would process large xml data much faster than javascript running in node, but sometime on blahaj.zone might find it obvious that disagreeing with someone's feelings about their gender is deeply harmful, but someone from outside those communities might need to have it explained to them and might need to ask how or why. Asking honest questions and answering them is a good thing in the world and we all get better if we learn from and teach each other.
Humiliating someone for not knowing something is sometimes the sign of someone insecure enough of their own understanding that they feel the need to gatekeep it. If your excellence is only because you keep other people down, your excellence is vacuous.
I really doubt that claim, I think it's very much more about the drinking, general culture and just state of the country than legal age. Here in Sweden we can buy alcohol at restaurants and bars at 18 but can't buy alcohol at systembolaget until we're 20, no one even mentioned getting alcohol outside of the most broken kids at school stealing from their parents before 16, and even then it wasn't common at all. But all Americans I've known, some who has moved here and the rest via the Internet, has said it was prettying common with alcohol in the early teens. And all the Danish and Finnish people I've known have the same experience as me of it not really being a thing until legal age. But the Spaniards and Germans I've known have said it was more common. So I really think, as said, it's not connected to legal age as much as it is about drinking culture.
Once had a nondescript volume (sips sips sips) of Jack Daniels from a flask before a night out. Getting that drunk just isn't fun, especially when I'm moving about. Had a hangover so bad my cheeks were bruised from the swelling.
Alcohol let's us live a little while we shave years off our lives.
It's bad, but it's also kind of an understandable reaction to what's going on in the world today. The environment is being destroyed, the planet is becoming more and more uninhabitable for humans (because of the greed of human companies and countries). And the worst human behavior imaginable is being lauded as not just permissable, but recommended.
A lot of us won't accept that... So we just live in this mess hating it all.
76 Comments
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 99 pts · 20d
Someone once said that raising the drinking age to 21 didn't stop 18 year olds from getting booze, but it did stop a lot of 14 year olds from getting booze.
PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 40 pts · 20d
Which is an awful idea, gladly I never had any trouble getting alcohol at 12-14, and yeah, by 22 I had fucked around so much and partied so hard that was already retiring from getting drunk... isn't it better to be irresponsible idiots when you indeed have no responsibilities, and give a good use to all those puberty hormones?
Bonsoir@lemmy.ca · 43 pts · 20d
Alcohol can have an impact on the brain's development, which stops at around 32 years old anyway. So it is less harmful (edit : for the brain development) the older you get. Also, the earlier someone starts drinking, the higher their chances are of developing an addiction.
Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 35 pts · 20d
Fun fact! The reason we say brain development stops at 32 is cus the study famous for it stopped at 32 😁
cosmos8188@leminal.space · 13 pts · 20d
Yep, the real point where the development stops is not widely known yet. There are even articles which say 37 might be the point, but its definite that its past 32.
TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 20d
I've always heard mid to late 20s as the point where most of the growth stops. Your brain changes to some extent throughout your entire life, but most performance metrics peak around then and decline after.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 19d
Maybe because the 21 y/os start drinking?
BurgerBaron@quokk.au · 1 pts · 19d
Most is all I care about. Our ears never stop growing but that doesn't actually matter much.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 19d
Sure it does, old people look hilarious!
UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca · 22 pts · 20d
Why does everyone act like being smart is so great. I'm dumb and I'm okay with it.
TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 20d
So true. I'm smart and it low-key sucks
myrrh@ttrpg.network · 6 pts · 20d
Taldan@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
I don't know that people do, at least not in the US
Anti-intellectualism is the norm here
theneverfox@pawb.social · 10 pts · 20d
Brain development never stops
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 20d
Your body is in a constant state of change your whole life, but there is still a point where you can call it mature.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 20d
No one's ever accused me of being mature.
theneverfox@pawb.social · 3 pts · 19d
Sexually? Absolutely. Do you stop growing? Of course
But there's no age of developmental maturity for your brain. It's a popsci myth
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 20d
Drinking after 32 yo has a negative impact on the brain too lmao.
Bonsoir@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 20d
But most certainly less than at a young age.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 20d
I read it was 25. In any case, it sure isn't 21.
cosmos8188@leminal.space · -2 pts · 20d
Um, there is no such thing as "less harmful", alcohol is harmful no matter the age.
Also, if I remember correctly 32 is the lower (potential) limit to where the brain stops. Just pointing it out..
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 20d
less harmful is a relative statment, like how shooting your foot is less harmful than shooting your chest.
cosmos8188@leminal.space · 2 pts · 20d
I guess that is correct, the OP didn't say it wasnt harmful - error on my part. But either way, the point to reinforce is that harm is harm.
Bonsoir@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 20d
Alcohol being harmful no matter the age (and most importantly in this study, no matter the quantity) does not mean that it is equally harmful at every age and every quantity.
The study your link is referring to talks about alcohol being a vector for cancer and other health problem at an older age, and disproving the myth along which low alcohol consumption would be good for the heart. It did not take into consideration the age where people started drinking.
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev · 5 pts · 20d
Go learn about harm reduction.
cosmos8188@leminal.space · 1 pts · 20d
Looks like we both need to learn something..
Taldan@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
Less harmful != not harmful
catsarebadpeople@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 20d
Learn to drink before you learn to drive imo
Elting@piefed.social · 5 pts · 20d
I would like to believe all the lessons I learned doing wreckless could have been learned elsehow, but also it tamed me out by the time I was 14. I could tell a lot of the kids around me at that age were acting out as a result of their newfound freedom, the kinda freedom and lack of supervision I had had for ten years at that point. I had my fill already and became a relatively calm and subdued teen. But only because I had learned my lessons through pain.
TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 20d
Are you me? Same trajectory, really.
I did pick up hard drinking again after a several-year-hiatus, though. Then several years of that made me never touch hard liquor again.
PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 19d
I was a heavy drinker but I never went back, now just a beer or two very rarely on parties and only if I'm not driving
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -16 pts · 20d
Yes, because 14 year olds are so responsible otherwise.
A drunk 14 year old on a bike is probably in more danger than a drunk 21 year old in a car.
And don't get me started on what trouble a drunk 14 year old girl can get into.
catsarebadpeople@sh.itjust.works · 22 pts · 20d
No way a drunk 14 year old on a bike is worse than a drunk anyone in a car.
14 year olds should have more oversight from their parents though too. Better to learn from a parent or guardian than a frat bro or whatever.
Taldan@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
You're saying a different thing than they did. They said a drunk 14-year-old on a bike is in more danger than a 21-year-old in a car, which is correct
Drunk pedestrians and cyclists statistically are in more danger than drivers, per mile, by a decent margin
The problem is that doesn't account for externalities, namely the risk of injuring others. A pedestrian or cyclist is unlikely to seriously injure someone else, whereas a driver would
Edit: This is in the US, other countries will have different resukts due to more pedestrian-friendly infrastructure
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -9 pts · 20d
Read what I wrote.
More of a danger to themselves. Most people, even drunks, put on their seatbelts. That means if there's an accident, even at high speed, the driver is protected by restraints and airbags.
A kid on a bike doesn't have that.
If there's a collision between a bike and a car, which vehicle do you want to be in?
catsarebadpeople@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 20d
I read what you wrote but was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Just to be clear, you're saying that you'd prefer drunk drivers in cars versus bikes because you're more concerned about the drunk driver's safety than people they might run into/over?
My speculation is that lowering the drinking age should result in fewer deaths overall for this very reason. I don't want drunk drivers to die either but if I had to choose I'd prefer the drunk drivers to die over the person that they hit. I also reject your premise that crashing into something with your bike is more dangerous than crashing into something with a car, seatbelt or not. Speed is a pretty big factor and while drunk biking is surely dangerous it's a lot less likely to crash at higher speeds.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -5 pts · 20d
You are hilarious!
Speed is a pretty big factor and while drunk biking is surely dangerous it’s a lot less likely to crash at higher speeds.
Glytchrider@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 20d
I'm not as concerned about the safety of the drunk as I am about anyone else who may be near them while operating their chosen vehicle.
With that in mind a bike is better.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -6 pts · 20d
Apples and oranges.
I specifically said that a drunken 14 year old is more at risk of hurting themselves than a drunk adult wearing a safety belt. I never said that drunk driving was 'safe'
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net · 14 pts · 20d
A drunk 21 year old in a car could wipe out a family. A drunk 14 year old on a bike is probably at worst only going to kill themselves.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -10 pts · 20d
I wrote twice that the drunk kid was going to hurt themselves.
How you got that I approve adults driving drunk is a mystery to me, one I prefer not to waste time solving.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 20d
Let me help you out. It was this one:
Taldan@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 18d
That statement is technically correct
Mile per mile, drunk walking and biking is more dangerous than drunk driving for the individual. Obviously why drunk driving is not okay is the danger to others, which is why his wording specifically only mentioned the danger to themselves
Source
catsarebadpeople@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 18d
No one is disagreeing that the statement is incorrect dude. Just that it's not the point.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
The technical correctness wasn't in question.
Taldan@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
You are very bad at communicating. You were correct in your initial comment, but really went off the rails and said many incorrect things afterwards
Walking and biking is statistically more dangerous, mile per mile, for a drunk person than driving. The caveat is this excludes externalities such as injuring other people
Had you said that, I think more people would have understood what you meant. As it stands, it sounds like you're advocating for drunk driving
TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 20d
I really don't know anybody from America who didn't drink before 21. I'm still not a fan of alcohol outside of social events, didn't go to parties often in the first place, and was generally a good little honors student who followed the rules. However, even I drank several times before it was legal.
SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 19d
I didn't, but I was (sincerely) deeply religious at the time :\
KernelTale@programming.dev · 7 pts · 20d
How?
ora@midwest.social · 6 pts · 20d
18 year olds can pass for 21 with a fake ID but a 14 year old definitely couldn't
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 20d
It's more rather preventing seniors at high school buying it for freshmen at high school. Whereas most 21YO+'s friends are adults.
ora@midwest.social · 2 pts · 19d
Oh
Forester@pawb.social · 2 pts · 20d
Everyone family and friends that are older
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -7 pts · 20d
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 13 pts · 20d
or you could stop being a twat
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -7 pts · 20d
I got 61 upvotes, which means that plenty of people understood what I was saying.
So either you were making a joke, and now you're all salty that I joked back, or you actually had no idea, which means you really do need to get out more.
But don't act like I made some kind of cryptic pronouncement only the illuminati can decipher.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 12 pts · 20d
I'm not the original question asker. I'm just someone telling you, that you behave like an asshole
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · -8 pts · 20d
Sure thing,
I'll stop making little jokes like telling people to go outside so you can feel like you're accomplishing something.
Personally, I think telling someone to go outside is much milder than calling them a twat, but I wasn't appointed the guardian of the interwebs
davidagain@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 19d
I for one have an enormous amount of respect for people who ask questions when they don't know something, and if you always try to find stuff out when you don't know it, you end up learning a lot. Saying "I don't understand - please explain" is the sign of an inquisitive and self-aware mind on the route to a better understanding of the world.
Just because something is easy and obvious for you to understand, doesn't make it easy and obvious for someone else. We all think differently. Someone on programming.dev might find it obvious that compiled rust would process large xml data much faster than javascript running in node, but sometime on blahaj.zone might find it obvious that disagreeing with someone's feelings about their gender is deeply harmful, but someone from outside those communities might need to have it explained to them and might need to ask how or why. Asking honest questions and answering them is a good thing in the world and we all get better if we learn from and teach each other.
Humiliating someone for not knowing something is sometimes the sign of someone insecure enough of their own understanding that they feel the need to gatekeep it. If your excellence is only because you keep other people down, your excellence is vacuous.
M137@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 20d
I really doubt that claim, I think it's very much more about the drinking, general culture and just state of the country than legal age. Here in Sweden we can buy alcohol at restaurants and bars at 18 but can't buy alcohol at systembolaget until we're 20, no one even mentioned getting alcohol outside of the most broken kids at school stealing from their parents before 16, and even then it wasn't common at all. But all Americans I've known, some who has moved here and the rest via the Internet, has said it was prettying common with alcohol in the early teens. And all the Danish and Finnish people I've known have the same experience as me of it not really being a thing until legal age. But the Spaniards and Germans I've known have said it was more common. So I really think, as said, it's not connected to legal age as much as it is about drinking culture.
aldhissla@piefed.world · 25 pts · 20d
Hey, more booze for me!
Millenial and trying to forget 🤘
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 15 pts · 20d
I too enjoy replacing the fading sins of my past with entirely new and far worse mistakes
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net · 7 pts · 20d
Makes no difference to me as I mostly drink my own homebrew cider and mead.
aldhissla@piefed.world · 8 pts · 20d
Ooo, must be nice, Mr I-Make-My-Own-Remedies-At-Home
You need to send me some samples of your superior medicine, you!
lyralycan@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 20d
I'm trying to forget Kimi No Na Wa and this meme is not helping
bigchungus@piefed.blahaj.zone · 17 pts · 20d
Once had a nondescript volume (sips sips sips) of Jack Daniels from a flask before a night out. Getting that drunk just isn't fun, especially when I'm moving about. Had a hangover so bad my cheeks were bruised from the swelling.
I'm sticking to weed instead.
cows_are_underrated@feddit.org · 1 pts · 19d
Getting drunk can be fun, but for me weed is usually way more enjoyable. Forst that can happen is, that you still wake up stoned.
erinmeow@piefed.blahaj.zone · 16 pts · 20d
alcohol is worsssttttttttt
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 20d
Alcohol let's us live a little while we shave years off our lives.
It's bad, but it's also kind of an understandable reaction to what's going on in the world today. The environment is being destroyed, the planet is becoming more and more uninhabitable for humans (because of the greed of human companies and countries). And the worst human behavior imaginable is being lauded as not just permissable, but recommended.
A lot of us won't accept that... So we just live in this mess hating it all.
People shouldn't drink excessively, but I get it.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 2 pts · 20d
i get a bad hangover from alcohol, but not the next day, but immediately, like 5 minutes after drinking.
JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 19d
Ja… nein, lol
vantablack@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 20d
underage drinking was my favorite hobby in middle and high school. no regrets
kamen@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 19d
What about just being moderate with it regardless of the age?
Rooster326@programming.dev · 5 pts · 19d
Believe it or not, straight to jail
Geobloke@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 19d
I was incapable of any sort of moderation at 18
alapakala@quokk.au · 4 pts · 20d
tfw, allergic
TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 20d
dang, that sounds somewhat inconvenient, but probably good in the long run.
crakila@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 19d
Sure, we all say that "We'll never drink again" within our 20s and then proceed to drink again either the next night or the next week. Vicious circle.