Human Nature? Odd or just Bizarre?

[Kreekakon]

I've heard that drinking alcohol in very minor amounts daily is actually beneficial to your body, especially your liver.

[rndmnwierd]

I've always had trouble understanding extreme destructive behavior. I never got into cigarettes, I do drink a bit every once in a while and I have, on the rarest of rare occasions(like 3 times in my life), dabbled a bit with weed.

But I have this friend who is an alcoholic. Literally every problem he has in life is attributed to alcohol.

Doesn't have a car or license because of multiple DUI's.

Doesn't have a good job and can't graduate college because he's shown up to work/class drunk or called out with a hangover.

Lived with his mom until recently when she finally kicked him out after he became belligerent with her. She's kicked him out multiple times for the same reason. This happened once every few months or so.

Now he lives with his dad and has to start all over, find a new job, a new campus, all of that jazz.

It's so bad that he's even isolating his friends from him. No one can drink with him because he goes out and gets stupid drunk and picks fights with all of us or tries to get in our pants, male and female!

I've had to threaten to call the cops on him the most recent time this happened. And we've told him that if he stops drinking, we will help him with everything else he needs help with. He just seems hell bent on killing himself though. And he's only 23.

And I can't understand why you wouldn't want your life to get better. If he drinks because he's depressed and he's depressed because of all of these problems and all of these problems are caused by his excessive drinking, then the solution seems obvious to me...

Wow, sorry for the rant, there...

[Bridge]

I've heard that drinking alcohol in very minor amounts daily is actually beneficial to your body, especially your liver.

I've read a few studies and there seems to be no consensus as to why this is. But did you know that a survey on the effects of alcohol actually showed that heavy drinkers had a 10% lower mortality rate than abstainers? The article theorized that it was the stress-reducing quality of alcohol and the fact that it is usually drunk in social situations (which are actually vital to physical and mental well-being) that caused it. Moderate drinkers (1-2 drinks daily) lived on average the longest. I don't think it has anything to do with the liver or the heart though, since alcohol is poisonous. The body produces pure ethanol periodically on its own but these amounts are so low they don't even appear on a breathalyzer, so although alcohol is not a foreign substance it is harmful and even moderate doses are relatively high. But almost all things are harmful (even exercise) and the thing that really determines the lethality more than anything is the period of rest between indulgences (plus the dosage).

EDIT: Talking about alcohol is fun and all, but this really isn't the point of this thread. I think if we want to talk about the effects of drugs or alcohol on the body or just to talk about different types of drinks we should make a thread about it.