I normally drink moderately, a bottle of wine spread over the weekend and maybe one or two bottles of beer during the week.
I do have long periods of not drinking at all. I think my longest period of not touching alcohol is around 20 months. I wouldn’t say I miss drinking when I am not drinking, but when I do, I do enjoy the taste of a glass of wine or a beer. I don’t drink the alcohol-free products, when some years ago I tried them I wasn’t impressed. People tell me they are much better now, even so I have no desire to try them.
Giving up coffee is something I was forced into during my cancer treatment; the chemo made it taste foul, and chocolate as well. It was several months after my treatment ended that I tried coffee again, and it was fabulous. Recently, I had to go 24 hours without my black Americano in the morning, and I decided, giving up coffee forever would be more of a loss to me than alcohol.
Well in Britain, I assume also on the continent, in the Middle Ages beer was often used instead of water for labourers for hydration, as it kept better with the then levels of hygiene.
However back then beer tended to be a generally much weaker than much processed industrial beer is now.
(Alcohol is toxic to most yeast cultures, so a natural balance of strength is achieved. These days manufactured yeast cultures can be made to be a lot more alcohol resistant,… and as I think you’ll find most brew masters will tell you the taste (not smell, nor colour) of traditional beer types largely comes from the yeast culture used… and these are therefore carefully protected as living cultures by brewers and brewing chains, and licenced brewing operations… if anyone is in East Suffolk, arranging a tour around the Southwold Adnams brewery can be super interesting and also dispels many myths about beer and what makes it taste the way it does)
At one stage I had 1,290 bottles of wine ( I counted them ) in storage under cool climate conditions
Not that i personally drank them all but shared with friends over many years
Now down to about 70 bottles, mostly kiwi Pinots of course
I love a wine, one of life’s pleasures for me , these days drinking a few is confined to social occasions , I tend not to drink during the week unless out and about
Love a few beers now and then.
All in moderation , good luck to those that don’t drink but I’ll always have a few
Wine does not agree with me, but a cold beer is nice. I never drink more than 1 beer per day and normally only in weekends. But lately, I am also considering quitting alcohol completely. I have n’t touched any beer for the last 4 weeks.
Some are, but many are not. Take Adnams, when contacted they were happy to supply me with some of their yeast. They even went through the effort of shipping it to one of their shops for collection.
A lot are also simply available from yeast banks or the several “producers”. They usually don’t disclose which particular brewery their yeast “X” comes from, but for some it is public knowledge. From memory WhiteLabs also supplies the Adnams yeasts, although it’s one of their specials that they only do a batch off every X years.
I only drink loose leaf tea now as it just tastes so much better. If I’m just doing one cup for myself just a small amount in a diffuser and I’m sorted. I look upon the diffuser as a reusable teabag
I have a bottle of beer every night and sleep perfectly well. Sometimes more when I go out.
I do get tired of people proselytising about healthy choices and implying there is something wrong with those of us who prefer to indulge ourselves. If you want to avoid acohol, tobacco or anything else then fine but please don’t imply your choice is intrinsically “better”.
Basically it’s a choice between a possibly shorter life and a merry one or surviving into extreme old age to enjoy dementia, extreme dependency, and all sorts of exotic diseases. Both are for the individual to decide but neither is better than the other.
Not given up completely but about 3 months ago I stopped drinking every night and now limit it to 3 small glasses on a Friday and Saturday night. The only other time I might drink is on holiday and family occasions if I’m not driving.
This was mainly due to blood pressure and an undiagnosed heart condition which meant I almost didn’t make it to my 58th birthday last year. Very grateful to the NHS that I did and glad to hear that CPR & Defib. Are likely to form part of the driving test at some point. Apart from that the positives are that I don’t crave alcohol ever and I go to bed at 11am rather than 1pm and get a great nights sleep. Hopefully I’ll lose some more weight too. Generally feeling a lot healthier and positive. It’s a good thing imo and makes me realise that drinking was simply a habit I got into due to the stresses or work which I don’t have any more
Yes, my maxim is a little bit of everything and not too much of one thing, and I never knee-jerk to the latest revelation. My original adoption of that approach arose decades ago, before my subsequent learning, arising from realisation that what is said to be good for you at one time can change a few years later to being told is bad for you, and then later still might be realised good for you after all, as research and current thinking develops (e.g.eggs).
We all use things to control how we feel. Some things get out of hand, whether that’s alcohol, smoking, undereating, overeating, cleaning, shopping, sex, underearning, overearning, drugs, etc…….. It’s easy to single one out as some bad toxic blame, but is it that bad and is it to blame?
Who gave up something 100% and why 100%. Left or right.
There is a tendency to talk about stop drinking alcohol which is fine but we should not avoid the point that the top 10 of unhealthy habits is smoking. Only after that comes lack of exercise, food, alcohol et cetera.
An interesting link to some extensive research into ancient brews.
Some vessels still contained the sealed liquids. I wonder how it smelled and tasted ?
Interesting, so is that suggesting that 2 cups of tea per week exposes you to 153 million particles or is it an aggregate figure for a large population and what gets released into the environment?
I drink a heck of a lot of tea and used to use a brand with no plastic in the bags but I went off it. Must check if the current regular brand has plastic in the bags.
I frequently use loose leaf tea, but often bags are more convenient when in a rush or making a mug of tea for one.
Interestingly I was in a supermarket today looking at ‘meal deals’ - my eye was drawn to some sushi until I realised what a ridiculous amount of thick plastic has been used with a very intricate inner plastic tray to display the sushi pieces neatly.
I’m really baffled why all this superfluous plastic packaging is allowed and we’re only likely to get more of it in the UK once some new packaging taxes come in as it will be based on weight of the packaging materials I believe so glass which I’ve always assumed to be ‘greener’ will be more costly to use though I suspect that will simply be passed on to the consumer.
Good points, it’s a shame that so many things we enjoy in life are potentially bad for us
As for the photo it could be either of them I guess - one feeling miserable because he’s given up a vice or a bit of a wreck because h hasn’t. The happy chap might just be high as a kite rather than quit something..
I have a glass of wine at home shared with my wife maybe a couple of times a week. And again over a week, 3 or 4 beers, but that’s so I can not only tolerate but join in with the shiz that my friends talk about without amplifying the ffs thoughts in my head.
We’ve with success protested against superfluous packaging of tea in our office. We got large tins with tea instead which has a better quality and we got rid of all the plastic bags & little cardboard boxes around a minuscule amount of infused tealeaves.
Probably mentioned it before, but I also think percentage recycling targets are bizarre.
As we all try to reduce our non-recyclable waste, assuming there is only so much of that you can do and the amount stays fairly constant then surely the next step would not be to hit an artificial percentage of recycled vs total waste, rather we’d be better drastically cutting the amount of recyclable plastic we use/consume to begin with - just because we can recycle it doesn’t mean we need it as packaging. How things have changed since I was a lad.
) in storage under cool climate conditions
