#alcohol PSA

[katarh-mest]

alcohol PSA for writers

If your characters are drinking alcohol, but you yourself have never had any alcohol, it can be very VERY obvious if you have them get drunk within the first few sips of a strong drink.

Continue below if you want some education from a professional lush.

Alcohol actually takes some time to absorb in the bloodstream and start impacting behavior. It's why it is such a dangerous drug, and SO easy to abuse.

At a minimum, most people take at least 10 minutes before they start to get it circulating through the blood stream. That's on an empty stomach. You might have other effects besides the ethanol poisoning - strong liquor can make someone cough if they're not expecting it - but the euphoria and lowered inhibitions don't kick in for quite a while if you are drinking lower ABV stuff.

Most liquor is not drunk straight. Exceptions are things like whiskey and fortified wines like cognac. Mix the drinks with something non alcoholic, usually cut with sugar. Your characters are not going to down straight vodka (unless it's Mao Mao... then she totally would.)

Beer, wine, and ciders range in ABV from 3% (weaker beers) to 15% (stronger wines) compared to liquors which start at 20% ABV for the most part. The whiskey I drink straight is 35% ABV... and I drink it very slowly, very carefully, about 10 drams at a time (roughly 1.5 oz or so.) That is, one "standard" drink.

Other standard drinks: One 5% beer (12 oz can or bottle), one 5 oz pour of 15% wine, and 1.5-2 oz of a liquor that is 35%-40% (80 proof), vs a 0.75-1 oz pour of a 150 proof liquor. Proof maxes out at 190 and that's Everclear, aka 95% pure ethanol. 100 proof is 50% alcohol and you'll find that in things like vodka, gin, and tequila. These DO have flavors! But the flavors are buried underneath the ethanol, and need to be thinned out to be tasted, so they're almost always cut with something else to make the alcohol not be unpalatable.

If I'm drinking, here's about the levels of alcohol and how they affect me (I'm a 44 year old woman that has fairly high tolerance. Use this guide as a metric for your characters who can handle their liquor. Move everyone down a level if they are "lightweights" or have never had alcohol at all.)

1 standard drink makes me happy and pleasant, fun and giggly. I can still think, I can still drive as long as I've had something to eat and waited 30-45 minutes, and I get some of my best house cleaning done in this state

2 standard drinks make me slightly buzzed and approaching unsafe to drive (I hand over my keys at this point to the DD). Still fun and giggly, but also starting to lose my inhibitions. More likely to break something while cleaning.

3 standard drinks start to impair my ability to speak with my normal levels of clarity and articulation. I am not yet slurring my words, but my brain's CPU is now overheating.

4 standard drinks takes me out of the happy space and starts to make me sick. Its no longer fun. I cannot stand up straight. This is binge drinking.

5 standard drinks is going to have me vomiting if I drunk them too fast. I've got high tolerance so if I ate food I'll be okay, but if I don't drink enough water, I'll be hung over the next day.

If I'm beyond this, I'm probably passed out someplace. All but once that 1 time has been at home (that time I woke up on the couch of the fraternity whose party I was at. I was okay. I was lucky. Thank you, Alpha Kappa Psi bros, for putting me on the couch and giving me a glass of water. You were the MVPs.)

Alcohol is a poison. It is a poison. It's a delicious poison, and humans have the ability to process it, but it's still something that will make you very sick or kill you if you go too fast.

BONUS: High tolerance, low tolerance, and a tendency to alcoholism are all somewhat genetic. Our bodies need two enzymes to process alcohol, and if one processes fast and the other processes slow, the result is that some people "handle their liquor" naturally well, and others are going to be "lightweights" no matter how much they practice. Some folks actually get 0 of the happy euphoria from alcohol and go straight into the poison symptoms (this is known as "Asian Flush Syndrome" but it can impact people from any part of the world.) These folks will get sick from a single "standard" drink - but they are unlikely to ever get drunk, because they'll get sick long before they drink enough alcohol to reach that point. They make some of the best DDs out there, though, so if you know someone who experiences it, make them your best friend, offer to buy their coca colas and bar snacks, and hand them the keys after you have had drink #2.

[turtledotjpeg]

[wickedcitrus]

inspired by this post

[mastcrmarksman]

1st order of business. This isn't a call for immediate interactions or anything. This is a....

Given that alcoholism/addiction is a theme on this blog / personal headcanon and developed arc for Clint. I tend to write in present canon with the assumption that Clint has already entered into recovery arc and is sober. Along with I generally avoid writing too heavily around the topic for first time interactions with people or center it as a topic, since not everyone is comfortable with exploring such things in depth.

As alcoholism and being drunk, being a jerk and missing life, isn't cool. It's an unhealthy coping mechanism and alcoholism runs on clint's family (i want to work on a post about that). I do remind that I write this stuff as it's cathartic and addiction has effected my own personal life via family.

However, the point being of this post is give a like of you'd be comfortable or comment a ❤️ to have threads or plot around the parts of Clint's timeline when he's at his worst, before recovery, when he's struggling, relapse, AA discussion, tough times with sobriety, and allowing the topic to be explored or centered in general.

I simply just want to get a general idea of who is comfortable with that explicitly, so in other things we are writing or plotting, this may come up in clint's timeline or have some threads that are central to the topic of alcoholism, sobriety the struggle, and so on.

[mismess]

MR LEAKS HAAAAPPPYYYY NEW YEARS!!!! ANOTHER YEAR GLAD TO BE AROUND!!!! I HOPE IT TURNS OUT TO BE A MAGNIFICENTTTT YEAR FOR YOU!!!

-weem anon

YAAAAYYY THANK YOU GLAD YOU ARE HERE TOO !! we all made it through the year and for that I think we all deserve a big round of applause 👏👏👏👏👏 I HOPE FOR THE BEST FOR YOU AS WELL AND FOR EVERYONE ELSE WHOSE STILL KICKING, LETS MAKE 2024 A GOOD ONE HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

[tsintotwo]

Drinks w/ Tom Sturridge

[ikamigami]

PSA

To everyone who thinks that it's okay if Sun drinks his stress away:

No, it's not. Drinking when you're stressed is first step to alcoholism.

[degeneratedworker]

"Stop! Last warning!" Soviet Union 1929

[rockybloo]

If your characters were alcoholic beverages, I would die from an alcohol overdose (but I would keep drinking in the afterlife)

[herbie851]

I’ve seen a few people here talking about what shit friends Ray has. That they are terrible for ditching him when he is obviously self destructing. They should be there for him, taking care of him whenever he is drunk (so, always). I totally understand the sentiment but here’s the thing…

You can only try to save someone on a self destructive path for so long. This is a group who has been friends for a while. They have probably spent years trying to help Ray. How many times have they carried him home? How many times have they cleaned up the puke? Taken his car keys so he doesn’t drive? Calmed down others when he started a fight?

Sometimes, even when you love someone a lot, you have to recognize their part in their behavior. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Even with alcoholism and addiction, they have to choose to get sober.

So I don’t think they are necessarily shit for letting Ray face the weight of his decisions on his own. They may be shit for a million other reasons, but not this one.

And, to those of you out there who have friends like Ray, you don’t have to fall into a terrible place to save them. It’s ok to love your friend and accept that they are self destructing. It’s totally ok to be there for them, support them, but please realize that in the end it is their choice. Please take care of yourself.

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

Respect those that don't drink and respect those that do drink but may decline one in that moment

Don't pester them about it

It's none of your business

[hecho-a-mano]

PSA on cleaning products.

Whatever you do, never mix cleaning products, they can easily create gases which can easily kill you if you do so

A common example is mixing ammonia (including non cleaning products like urine) and bleach. It will create chloramine gas, which at the very least it can burn up your lungs pretty badly.

[imabillyami]

If your posts show up on my dash like this, cause you tagged them properly, just know that I love you forever and a day.

[rottenpumpkin13]

!!! small PSA that if you send me an ask and I take a decade and a half to answer it, I'm not ignoring you! I'm using it as a prompt/building an elaborate answer! Sorry I'm slow! this has been a public service announcement brought to you by the hamster powering my brain with a hamster wheel (his name is Jude).

[contac]

[earthytzipi]

heads up fellow teen/adult autists with substance use issues and alexithymia: I know that whole advice about simply doing something else is shit because it doesn't address the need, but perhaps consider that the craving is really just understimulation. I did not realize that getting sensory stimulation was so helpful for mine until a few days ago, but it's been a total game changer. even if you're normally sensory avoidant, give it a shot