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#no I cant draw men or old people. Live with that /silly
crimsomcrystal · 3 months
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My Narrator design be upon ye
Fun facts about him under the cut!
°He is unaware of the existence of his Timekeeper and Curator. °All the endings are scripted all by himself (With a few exceptions), and the Freedom ending has never happened despite it existing, as his Stanley refuses to go through with it. °This would lead you to believe he has control of his Parable, but it is a sentient being as well, and it decides wether to discard or confirm an idea (He is also not aware of this.) °TSPUD is still a WIP to him. °He can remember what happens after most endings. °Mf's vision is BAD, those glasses aren't there just for decor.
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abthepoet · 4 years
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All my friends are dead.
Something strange is trending in my life.
All my friends die.
At the beginning of my sophmore year in college, my roommate from freshman year died tragically in a single vehicle car crash. Her name was Allison Lynam. We called her Blake. She was sassy and funny and I wish I would've taken more time to know her.
The rain was torrential the night she died. I swear I've never seen it rain that hard ever again in my life. She drove to the store along Highway 36 in Long Branch,NJ. She had off campus housing that year and had to use the highway often. The road was terribly flooded the night she died. Im told she hydroplaned, spun, and T-boned the driver side smack into an electrical pole. Her family still decorates it.
At that very same moment, in my dorm room nearby, I was watching TV when the lights suddenly flickered and dimmed. A brown out.
I had no idea but that was my friend crashing into a pole and dying. She was 19 years old.
I know this because that accident happened near the mall. That accident killed the power to nearby businesses.
I later found out that the road she died on was so badly flooded, the police intended to close it. Why they didnt get to it in time, I'll never know. Maybe that's fate.
Then there was Jessica Blain. Jessica Blain was a firecracker of a human being. She was 100% unmistakable. One of the loudest, funniest, most loyal people and friends I have ever met. She was also an incredibly gifted singer and I was lucky enough to have Chorus with her. We, along with a small group of friends, founded a new greek organization on our campus, Alpha Xi Delta. We were paired up as Twins. (you can't have Bigs & Littles when you're just starting the Family Tree). We named the family we formed Fuck Up Your Shit. Because that's what we'd do for a friend. I miss her laugh most of all. It was loud and unapologetic. She was there for me, supportive, and encouraging without me ever having to ask. The night I officially finished college we all went out to the local gay club, The Colosseum. I got wasted, of course. But Jess was the person who when I shouted 'I have to pee' on the ride home, she stopped and knocked on strangers doors and asked to let me use their bathrooms. Nobody said yes so she held my hand while I peed on a fence instead. I remember the last time we spoke. She was at a concert with a mutual friend. We hadn't spoken much since I graduated, she was still in school.
She died in her dorm room bed on Halloween as a result of asphyxiation during an epileptic seizure. She was 20 years old. The news was broken to me that very same Halloween night as I floated along in NY on a concert cruise. The World/Inferno Friendship Society decided to host Hallowmas, their annual event, on a boat this year. Nothing like being trapped on a musical boat while you grieve. I had messaged her AIM late that night to say hi. She had an away message up. I may have sent a message to a dead person. I miss her friendship more than I realize sometimes.
That brings us to James Padden. James was a warm, snuggly bear of a guy who always tried to do the right thing and let me steal his hoodies. He insantly became my best friend in a Stepbrothers-esque manner. I met James working overnights at Wawa in Leonardo, NJ. I forget how it started now, but we were standing in front of the deli and I think I tossed him a broom or he already had one. . . I cant remember now.. . . but he just took one look at me with that mischievous little twinkle that I quickly returned and we instantly began sword fighting with our brooms. Like two little boys playing pretend and having a ball. He was sweet and silly and kind. I needed a ride, and he loved to drive. Our first winter as friends, we went out doing donuts in the snow. I barely knew him, but I felt safe. We smoked a ton of weed and had so many adventures trying to procure more. One time, we got so high driving to a Dropkick Murphys concert in NY we kept going in circles, missed almost the entire show save for the last 3-5 numbers, and had a blast. I can barely remember the night, but I remember laughing hard in that car. No one could talk to me like James. We were both insecure being chubby kids and adults, but so charismatic and grandiose that I sometimes thought we were the only two who would put up with listening to each others wild ideas and ridiculous banter. We would smoke joints and take adderall and talk about everything and anything. I miss the safety and closeness I felt with him. We were always 100% platonic, but we could nap together, I could walk into his house and jump on him in bed and wake him up. Then we would cook ourselves a breakfast feast and hit the beach. He taught me to always take the back roads. I gave him advice on the ladies. He taught me about fixing cars. I helped shave his back. He called his new pick up truck, a pick'um up truck. We could wax philosophical all damn day and not get sick of each other.
It wasnt just driving he loved, it was going fast. Like so many young white men, he had tendency to be a little reckless. The universe gave him a pass only so many times.
I'll never forget when he got his motorcycle. It was the last time I saw him. It was a bright green crotch rocket. He loved lime green. I was doing yoga in the living room when I heard this obnoxious engine rev down my street. I asked myself, who the hell is making this noise?! And it was James, grinning from ear to ear with a matching helmet on his shiny new toy.
before he left I said, 'you die on that thing, I'll bring you back to life and kill you." I remember giving him this very long and intentional hug and not knowing why I felt compelled to hang on.
When he left and hopped back on the bike, I felt compelled again and took a video of him riding away from my driveway until he was entirely out of sight.
That's my very last memory of him alive. James Padden died on Thanksgiving five days after his 25th birthday. He went out for a joyride on his bike before dinner, opened up to 100mph around a curve where he couldn't see a car pulling out around the bend in time. They called a medevac, but he died on scene. I loved James dearly and I regret drifting apart after we both left Wawa and I started a new relationship. He had stuff too, but in hindsight it never seems important.
Then there's JB. I will always remember JB for his kindness and generosity. The very first time I finally worked up the nerve to go to a poetry slam, I was alone and terrified. I had no idea what to expect. JB was the very first person to turn around, introduce himself, and welcome me. He made me feel like I belonged. Years later, when I won the title of Grand Slam Champion, he immediately offered to help coach me for national competition. Except, I didn't see the messages and left them unanswered, which I deeply regret. When I started hosting my own open mic a few years after that, JB would be one of the only people to consistently come support the show both as an audience member and participant. It was at a pizza joint and he would sometimes buy me food when I had no money. He wrote beautiful poems about his two young daughters and how much they inspired him. JB always tried to make people laugh but you could tell he carried a sadness. I did not get details, but from what I have gathered he made a choice to end his life. I wish I would have gotten closer to him and appreciated him more as a friend and person. I wonder if he felt no one cared about him and I feel like I should've let him know more.
Which brings us to Crys. Crystopher Anthony Diaz was a Scorpio with a big heart and a big personality. I met him on Myspace back in the day and started Web camming. We became friends and eventually fell into this gray area of friends, together, but not. It wasn't long before I was spending days at his place, killing hours at a time downloading music, making Wawa runs, and smoking weed with his roommate at the time, Syd. You know, the whole reason I worked at Wawa was Crys suggesting it. And Wawa is the reason I met James. Crys was unlike anyone I'd ever met. He was poetic and artistic and loved animals, especially pit bulls. He loved to draw and write and had this very out loud style that favored Earth tones. He taught me about fashion and insisted on getting dressed even if it was 1am and we were just going to Wawa because you never know who you might see. We would buy new clothes at Walmart and have photo shoots. That boy drank his weight in coffee daily. If it's one thing I'll always remember him for, it's the dancing. Dancing was a passion of his and always used to talk about wanting to form a dance crew. Eventually, we ended up living together for four years. My first apartment was with him in this piece of shit duplex rented to us by a slumlord in Keansburg,NJ. My relationship with him was always defined by our Aries/Scorpio dynamic and he never let me forget it. His birthday was October 30th, mischief night. One time, after we had moved into a new place, we decided to get revenge on our old downstairs neighbor by taking a finished lobster carcass and throwing it on his lawn. . . . . . . Keansburg had a terrible stray cat problem. 😁
I have so many memories with Crystopher. Unfortunately, towards the end of our relationship things became too tumultuous. We had too much unresolved baggage and trauma to find a healthy place emotionally together. We were so financially strained for a time we hardly ate. And then when he met his new girlfriend Laura, she introduced him to her good friend, Roxy. As in Roxcicet. aka Blues. Neither of us knew what that even was at the time. But he sure learned quick. He started using them pretty frequently as time went on, and things only got more complicated. My mental health took a nose dive. By the time I moved out our relationship was trash. I basically left. At the time, I didnt have a choice. things had gotten so bad between us, the money, the using . . . we didn't act like friends anymore.
I saw him a couple times at his new place but that was years ago. Since then, he went through a lot, including homelessness and more struggles with addiction to opiates. He reached out to me and sent me a message apologizing for everything a couple years back. I never responded. I was afraid I would let him back into my life and let the all the problems back in. I didnt trust where he was at in his life. We lost touch and stopped speaking.
His ex, who used to live with us and became my friend, messaged me and told me he died a few days ago. He was 35. I'm still waiting for information, but it may have been drug related. I'm not even sure where I'm at with how I feel. I know why we stopped talking. It was the right thing to do at the time. But he didnt deserve to die so young, having spent the last god knows how many months homeless. It's fucking with me so hard because we never resolved anything. I loved this person so fucking much and we never made peace. Of everyone I've lost, he was the closest to me. I've had a lot of people die on me but none that I lived with and shared a life with. I have more memories with him than I can handle and while I know we hadn't spoken in years and why, I still wish I would've said something. Done something. Yes, i needed healthy boundaries but he needed somebody. when is being firm too firm? If we would've helped, could it have been different? But we didn't want to help at the time, you try to be tough and draw a line. Be firm. Not let yourself be taken advantage of. But is that a defense? Did that defensiveness leave a human being who's head i used to scratch until he fell asleep out in the cold to get sicker and die?
What am I supposed to learn from all this Universe? Why do you take my friends so young and so tragically? I'm only 35, I'm too young to have this much loss.
Because these are just the major players I've lost. It doesnt include my cousin Jared, who died being reckless on a motorcycle at 21 two years ago. I was 15 when he was born. I loved that baby, he used to bite my nose. But his family lived far, so I rarely saw him growing up. Last time I saw him was at my grandfather's funeral. He didn't remember me and the nose biting.
And then there's Marcos who we used to chill with. He worked delivery for our favorite chinese food place. He was a nice kid who lived with his grandparents. We would get food, smoke weed, hang out a little. Even used to buy it off him for a while. Eventually he got into the opiates too, he even wound up being good friends with Crys and being Blue buddies. But eventually Marcos died from an opiate overdose. He was in his mid twenties.
I didnt want to include Ricky because he was more of an acquaintance for me, he was more my partners childhood friend. But god damn, in the time I knew Ricky that kid was a riot. He was loud and funny and definitely marched to the beat of his own drum. Drugs took him too.
Thanks for reading all this if you've made it this far. It's taken me about two hours to type this out on my phone. but i needed to. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk
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totoroses · 7 years
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i found this lesbian survey and decided to fill it out!
Femme or butch? is this what do i prefer or which i am? im a femme and i have no preference in dating, i’ve been wildly attracted to both and any in between
Do you have a “type”? If so, describe it. the only nearly completely common denominator though my exes are having brown eyes? i have dated only one person who did not have brown eyes. i always feel safer looking into brown eyes then blue. i woudl say i have often gone after the romantic artsy type with good music taste and some kind of signature style about them, ironically none of which drew me to my current girlfriend who i believe is probably defintiely the love of my life
Plaid button-ups or leather jackets? leather jackets! i will swoon over smartly dressed gals in button downs as well as a chill gal in some plaid unbuttoned flannel but the two together make me think of a lumberjack
Describe your style. i usually go for one of two styles- softly dressed forest wanderer, or slightly sassy soft grunge. both include my doc martens, but one is more natural colours and old fashioned dresses and the other is sassy tshirts and 90sish thrift store finds like denim and dark florals
Describe your aesthetic.pressed flowers between the pages of a book on forest spirits, rose milk tea, silver rainy downpours, curly baby hairs, white peaches, a cat sleeping in a library, custard pastries, a circle of mushrooms in moss, opals and furry moths
Favorite article of clothing? my one forever 21 dress ive had since like junior year that i can wear without a bra and it has like a cool cross back i just looooveee ittt, then also my embroidered minty 1930s style qipao sort of dress
Favorite pair of shoes? my doc martens and green chinese embroidered lace up slippers
Current haircut? currently blonde (ugh) and currently my hair falls just past my breasts, the goal is to grow it to my bellybutton!
Any haircut goals for the future? i really wanna get on the thick fluffy bangs bandwagon but i dont think i have the stamina to put up with growing them out again smh
Describe the best date you’ve been on. there was this one date i went on with one of my high school girlfriends where we went to a bookstore and hung out and then stuck googly eyes all over my city on random monuments and street signs, and we also ate thai food and listened to music and it was still one of the most lovely dates. BUT my girlfriend recently visited me in taiwan and we went in a glass bottom gondola ride up a mountain and drank from coconuts and wandered through old streets and had the most amazing tea food with a spectacular view and it was heaven
Describe the worst date you’ve been on. probably the one where i went on a picnic with my first girlfriend who then broke up with me that same day and even though our entire relationship was so awkward and not what is should have been it still hurt so bad
Single? Taken? taken!
If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife! where do i begin! my girlfriend is a slightly shorter than me girl named lynn who loved korean variety shows, drinking coca cola, listening to cheesy love songs, and playing tricks on people (especially me). she used to be a major tomboy in middle and high school and date all the girls and get slapped a lot, as well as mess with teachers and play pranks on them and steal things from their lunchboxes. more than half of her birthchart including sun, rising, and venus are scorpio, and she wants to start her own streetstyle online brand but has not yet found a catchy brand name!
If single, what are you looking for in a potential girlfriend/wife? :)
Describe your dream wedding my girlfriend says if we get married we need two, a traditional chinese wedding (she is from china) and a western one with a priest since i am catholic, and i couldnt agree more. my dream wedding includes just very close friends and family, extravagant lights and flowers and a reception party playlist chosen by me, catered by the teahouse we went to in taiwan. i know its so silly and superficial but i want the dreamiest dress that i design, wisteria everywhere, and most of all i just want lynn at the end of the alter looking stunning in whatever it is she decides to wear
Do you want kids? YES me and lynn talk about this a lot because we both love kids and both agree on at least 4, no more than 8. and we will share who carries the kids so not just one of us is having our uteruses worn out
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? guilin, china. but its a fantasy. guilin is real and beautiful but chinese laws make it so that even if we settle down there and build a house it cant truly belong to us, and in china you cant have a private business and it jsut sucks because the drema is to live in the quiet countryside with a simple life and beautiful scenery to explore together and with our children
Favorite lesbian movie? i love so many but im gonna go with the handmaiden!
Favorite lesbian novel/story? i havent read nearly enough, but  adore all things by malinda lo and julie anne peters! ash by malinda lo is probably my favourite. i have to still read sarah waters though, i hear she reigns supreme
Favorite lesbian song? don’t pull away by milosh ft jviews (the music video is gay at least, i also love hayley kiyoko)
Favorite lesbian musician? hayley kiyoko probably
What lesbian stereotypes do you fit into, if any? mmmm i dont like softball so that doesnt work...i read a lot of sappho though! and i have short nails? and love buffy? are these stereotypes?
Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal? ugh yes
If a woman wanted to woo you, what would a surefire way to accomplish that? write me a love letter or make me a mixtape about your feleings something cheesy
Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian? girls!!!!
Are you more of a cat person or a dog person? cat but i also love pups!
Turn ons? a musical wonderful voice i could listen to and listen to, easy and stimulating conversations, passion for something that lights up their eyes
Turn offs? rudeness in any shape or form, indecisiveness or feigning indecisiveness because you think i want to make the decisions, despicable movie and music taste, smell
Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you? mmmm in the past it has been pretty even. i have learned though that with women it really is a waiting game more than with guys so with my current girlfriend the tension was killing me so much i had to straight up ask her if something was going on and when she said yes she did like me too i was so relieved because she admitted to having not dated anyone since high school (5 years ago for her) and not asking anyone out while at college so if i had kept waiting for her who knows if we would have gotten together!
What is your dream career? i want to be a stay at home mom and author and perhaps an art teacher or preschool teacher on the side if the books dont pa the bills!
Talk about your interests or hobbies! writing and reading and drawing and singing and hiking and listening to music and watching korean dramas and making lists and studying languages
What is the most attractive quality a woman can have? passion, not necessarily in the sexual wya, but passion for something in general. like if she is an actress you see her on the stage and see how into it she is, and offstage she talks about it in a way that shows she is capable of truly loving something so much and seeing wonder in life. or a girl who seems quiet but then when she starts to show you the music she likes she closes her eyes and knows every lyric and has this expression of true passion and love for the music, i am captivated by women who are captivated by the purest elements of life from music to dance to nature
Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone? for women, i fall in infatuation quite easily. i was always more cautious with men of course and now i avoid them altogether. but love is something i’ve been becoming more conservative of somehow. i think because i was so hurt by someone before and gave and gave without receiving and im scared of that happening again. i have to be receiving love to give it, thats something i finally can control my impulses over and protect myself from.
Ever fallen for your best-friend? HA
Ever fallen for a straight girl? HAHA
The L-Word: yes or no? (love it or hate it?) heck to the no i couldnt make it past two episodes 
Favorite comfort food? macaroni and cheese
Coffee or tea? tea
Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above? none but i have tried vegetarian before
Do you have any pets? a chinchilla and a cat!
Early-riser or night-owl? night owl 
What is your sign? gemini sun, sag moon, sag rising
What is your Myers-Briggs type? INFP
Who was your first lesbian crush? my first serious lesbian crush was on a girl at my middle school who dressed to the nines every day in vintage dresses and sweaters and she flirted with practically everyone just joking around and always had a boyfriend but was just charming in every way. my whoel day would eb ruined if i couldn’t just see her or say hello once, and i thought i was just obsessed until i was like ‘wait what if she kissed me’ and BAM i knew it was a real life crush
At what age did you know you were a lesbian? im not really sure. i identified as bi/pan from freshman year to junior year i think, but then was realizing i definitely had a preference and didn’t want to be with guys in a relationship at all to be honest but even up until last summer i was really questioning if i was asexual, so its been a journey but i think i finally fully realized i am a happy happy lesbian after meeting lynn
At what age did you come out (if you have)? i was 14 when i first told my parents i was bi, 18 when i said im a lesbian 
Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)? just my girly friend
Talk about how your day went i worked this morning 7-11 after only sleeping 4 hours since i got hooked on ‘tipping the velvet’ the bbc miniseries, said goodbye to a friend, had school and did a presentation on how to make rosemilk bubble tea, i ate at a moomin cafe with my coworker, and now am working on homework and doing this survey and putting off my night cleaning duties eheh
Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future  i just want to have a family and to have my books published, thats all i really need. a loving wife, my sister still by my side as my partner in crime, so many children, so many stories finally told that people are reading. i really want to build a lovely house for my family like my grandparents did once upon a time, with secret rooms and unique hiding places, a house they can pass down as they grow up and it can have our lineage. i want to live by the mountains and trees and water, i want to be able to speak mandarin, cantonese, korean, japanese, icelandic, italian, arabic, and polish fluently
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low-budget-mulan · 7 years
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All of the "hella [...] cute yall" asks! Muhahaha!
First of all tumblr changed and for some reason I am not getting all the asks that are being sent to me. So sorry for the late response 
1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?
More cereal than milk.
2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?
I absolutely love the cold. it is my favorite thing ever 
3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?
I have used very weird things. Usually whatever is closest. i used a slice of cheese once... 
4: how do you take your coffee/tea?
i take my coffee the way I like my men rich and creamy or strong and black. there is no in between . 
5: are you self-conscious of your smile?
I don’t ever really smile. so i mean not really 
6: do you keep plants?
until they die yes. 
7: do you name your plants?
no??? i’m not weird 
8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?
sleep
9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?
if absolutely nobody is around 
10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?
yes 
11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends?
where to begin. Snao, i dont need this my man has two jobs, it’s the strangest thing. it’s the weirdest thing, drugs, AMERICA EXPLAIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN, i eat dogs for breakfast. there is so many more that I am just going to stop here. 
12: what's your favorite planet?
URANUS 
13: what's something that made you smile today?
my friend 
14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?
empty because we would be using all of our money to pay rent in the stupid place 
15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!
My dad is helping to build the satellite to replace the hubble space telescope. 
16: what's your favorite pasta dish?
RAVIOLI 
17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?
PURPLE 
18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.
i MADE MY PRIEST THINK I WAS PREGNANT WHILE I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. AND THE FATHER WAS ONE OF THE OTHER HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS 
19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?
no. I have always been unable to keep journals because my family doesn’t respect my personal space 
20: what's your favorite eye color?
tbh I really like brown eyes. 
21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.
I don’t really have a favorite bag. 
22: are you a morning person?
hell no 
23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?
sleep and netflix 
24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?
no 
25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into?
the church 
26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit?
i recently had to throw them away. I am now forced to wear shoes that are too small because I am too stubborn to buy new ones 
27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor?
idk 
28: sunrise or sunset?
sunset 
29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?
whenever i do something stupid/awkward/embarrasing my friend being completely honest will say “youre cute” she is great and must be protected at all costs 
30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?
when i was forced to walk through the women’s march in san francisco 
31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.
i prefer bearefoot, but i wear silly socks or just don’t match my socks 
32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.
for a second i though turtles said quack 
33: what's your fave pastry?
Conchitas 
34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?
it was a little stuffed girl doll thing. its name was sara (at the time I thought my name was Sarah so my doll had a different name than me) 
35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?
yes, but am not artistic, so they just go to waste 
36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now?
wal 
37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?
clea, but it is alwasy messy 
38: tell us about your pet peeves!
idk can’t think of them off the top of my head, but when people do things then i get annoyed 
39: what color do you wear the most?
black to match my soul 
40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you?
my scapular, but it isn’t jewelry. I don’t wear jewelry just religious items. my scapular is blessed by pope francis and a third class relic of a couple saints 
41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving?
the bible 
42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!
honu. its smol, family owned, and peaceful. 
43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?
it’s been too long. cant remember 
44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?
adoration 
45: do you trust your instincts a lot?
yes 
46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.
it’s kinda cheesy so i don’t think it will be very gouda. 
47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?
pineapple on pizza 
48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?
idk wasn’t really a scared kid 
49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?
yes. can’t remember 
50: what's an odd thing you collect?
scapulars 
51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?
the digicatholit fam and taste of eternity 
52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?
united memes 
53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?
no, no, yes, yes. the ones ive seen I liked 
54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?
my grandpa when my grandma was in the hospital last week 
55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point?
ummmmm can’t remember, but i do lots of things to prove points. 
56: what are some things you find endearing in people?
idk 
57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?
it’s overplayed, but I like it. no. I am a normal person 
58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?
me and me 
59: what's your favorite myth?
idk 
60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?
yes. i lik the bred 
61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received?
i gave someone a lego once. not a set of legos, not a lego man. a singular lego piece 
62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?
no 
63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?
no. theyre everywhere 
64: what color is the sky where you are right now?
 blue and cloudy 
65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with?
yes. renee. it’s been almost 2 days 
66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?
non existent. i’d like to not die of allergies 
67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?
i love them. 
68: what's winter like where you live?
hot 
69: what are your favorite board games?
monopoly and quelf 
70: have you ever used a ouija board?
i was forced into playing it by someone who used to be my friend. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND NOT USING THEM EVER. 
71: what's your favorite kind of tea?
iced 
72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it?
yes, but im too lazy 
73: what are some of your worst habits?
all of them 
74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.
lit
75: tell us about your pets!
theyre ded 
76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't?
ye 
77: pink or yellow lemonade?
pink 
78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?
MINIONS ARE LIKE MY FAVORITE THING EVER 
79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?
my friend will stay up super late watching movies with me even though he has things to do in the morning. 
80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?
dark blue. no. 
81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.
puddles of poo 
82: are/were you good in school?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA i could have been better 
83: what's some of your favorite album art?
idk 
84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?
hell yea. mostly catholic stuff 
85: do you read comics? what are your faves?
john paul ii comic books 
86: do you like concept albums? which ones?
i guess 
87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?
monty python, heavyweights, nacho libre 
88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?
catholic ones 
89: are you close to your parents?
no 
90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.
it’s hot and theres a lot to do 
91: where do you plan on traveling this year?
JAPAN 
92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?
yes 
93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most?
not brushing it because i am lazy 
94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?
idk? 
95: what are your plans for this weekend?
sleep 
96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?
i wait until it won’t let me wait any longer 
97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?
infj sign of the cross slytherin 
98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?
idk it was fine 
99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.
taste of eternity, your love
100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?
future 
1 note · View note
hinanaha · 5 years
Note
1-170 :)
lmfao james i swear to god
1: How tall or short do you wish you were? i wish i was 160cm cause i wanna be short and also then my weight would be healthy lmao2: What’s your dream pet? (Real or not) we all know i want a norwegian forest cat, and also a lizard would be cute3: Do you have a favorite clothing style? long flowing dress or skirts w blouses4: What was your favorite video game growing up? pokemon5: What three things/people do you think of most each day: my cats, what i will eat and how much a wanna be picked up and spun around one day6: If you had a warning label, what would yours say? it wouldnt say anything it`d just have the crying laughing emoji like deepfried on red tape7: What is your opinion on [insert person/thing here]? u didnt say anything for this so ill state my opinion on meat which is yuck8: What is your Greek personality type? [Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, or Melancholic] none rlly fit me tbh9: Are you ticklish? yea….. 10: Are you allergic to anything? nope11: What’s your sexuality? lesbian (femme lesbian specifically)12: Do you prefer tea, coffee, or cocoa? coffee, tho i like all13: Are you a cat or dog person? CAT, im very picky abt dogs14: Would you rather be a vampire, elf, or merperson? elf15: Do you have a favorite Youtuber? idk like i dont rlly watch youtube for anyone inparticular i just watch whatever16: How tall are you? 170cm17: If you had to change your name, what would you change it to? opal, just cause its my middle name and opals are my favourite gemstone18: How much do you weigh? [Only ask this if you know the user doesn’t mind!] about 50kg (ik im underweight if anyone is concerned btw im fine its a sideaffect of one of my medications)19: Do you believe in ghosts/spirits? yes20: Do you like space or the ocean more? i love sharks and jellyfish so the ocean, however i am fucking scared of octopuses21: Are you religious? nope, never have been22: Pet peeves? men.23: Would you rather be nocturnal or diurnal [opposite of nocturnal]? why does diurnal sound like urinal, but i like the day so that24: Favorite constellation? the pot thing cause its easy to spot25: Favorite star? the biggest one there is26: Do you like ball-jointed dolls? i dont rlly see much of a use for them27: Any phobias or fears? arachnophobia, and aslo the dark 28: Do you think global warming is real? um yes definitely, because im not stupid29: Do you believe in reincarnation? i mean there aint even close to enough science backing or not backing it so i couldnt say, im neutral 30: Favorite movie? idk31: Do you get scared easily? id say more anxious then scared, like im a very jumpy and shaky person32: How many pets have you owned in your lifetime? idk like 20+ (chickens count)33: Blog rate? [You’ll rate the blog of the one who’s asking.] yes34: What is a color that calms you? peachy colours and whites35: Where would you like to travel and/or live? i would love to hike somewhere someday tbh i think itd be rlly magical, and i love nature so much36: Where were you born? Melbourne37: What is your eye color? blue grey38: Introvert or extrovert? introvert39: Do you believe in horoscopes and zodiacs? to an extent40: Hugs or kisses? both at the same time41: Who is someone you would like to see/visit right now? honestly kinda wanna see my nan rn for some reason42: Who is someone you love deeply? definitely my mum, she is the most important person to me43: Any piercings you want? i want a nose piercing, maybe a small decorative ring44: Do you like tattoos and piercings? yess i love them, i rlly want a tattoo someday45: Do you smoke or have you eiver done so? no i dont want to46: Talk about your crush, if you have one! i don`t have one47: What is a sound you really hate? i cannot stand the sound of animals licking themselves48: A sound you really love? wind chimes49: Can you do a backflip? i could if i wanted to50: Can you do the splits? no51: Favorite actor and/or actress? ashley johnston52: Favorite movie? this was already asked lmao53: How are you feeling right now? pretty chill but also kinda sad for no actual reason54: What color would you like your hair to be right now? im feelin a burgundy colour tbh55: When did you feel happiest? nothing specific rlly56: Something that calms you down? music57: Have any mental disorders? [Only ask this if you know the user doesn’t mind!] i have ADD also p bad anxiety58: What does your URL mean? mango boba yum59: What three words describe you the most? anti-social goblin witch 60: Do you believe in evolution? i do biology so yes61: What makes you unfollow a blog? they post stuff i dont care abt or triggering content62: What makes you follow a blog? pretty picture63: Favorite kind of person: someone who makes me feel special/loved64: Favorite animal(s): cats, bees, lizards, crows65: Name three of your favorite blogs. idfk tbh66: Favorite emoticon: im not on mobile but the sparkling heart one67: Favorite meme: i dont have a favourite68: What is your MBTI personality type? Infp/intp69: What is your star sign? taurus70: Can your dog roll over on command, if you have a dog? no they cannot71: What outfit out of all your clothes do you like to wear the most? pyjamas72: Post a selfie or two? icbb73: Do you have platform shoes? yes74: What is one random but interesting fact about yourself? i have a double jointed shoulder on one arm75: Can you do a front flip? yes76: Do you like birds? yes chirp 77: Do you like to swim? no lol it sucks i cant breath well when i swim and it freaks me out78: Is swimming or ice skating more fun to you? ice skating, i love it, would take up lessons if they were available79: Something you wish didn’t exist: flies80: Some thing you wish did exist: giant domestic cats81: Piercings you have? just simple ear piercings82: Something you really enjoy doing: doing creative things w friends83: Favorite person to talk to: u already know its the council 84: What was your first impression of Tumblr? funny mem85: How many followers do you have? 168 (i had 470 on my old blog)86: Can you run a mile within ten minutes? ye but not always87: Do your socks always match? yes88: Can you touch your toes and keep your legs straight completely? yeah89: What are your birthstones? idk90: If you were an animal, which one would you be? surprising but id be a fox not a cat91: If a flower could aesthetically represent you, what kind would it be? lavenders baby92: A store you hate? bendigo iga, its shit93: How many cups of coffee can you drink in one day? 1 otherwise my hands shake94: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds? neither tbh95: Do you like to wear camo? ii guess if it looks good96: Winter or summer? summer97: How long can you hold your breath for? a pretty long time actually, once held my breath for 3 minutes underwater98: Least favorite person? my dad99: Someone you look up to: no one100: A store you love? i dont like kpop anymore, but the owners of happytown were always so nice to me so i rlly like that store because of that101: Favorite type of shoes converse102: Where do you live? austrlia103: Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If so, why? im vegetarian, but i eat mostly vegan food, i rlly like animals and dont like the idea of eating them, also eating too many animal products can be unhealthy 104: What is your favorite mineral or gem? opal105: Do you drink milk? ye but not on its own106: Do you like bugs? yes, silly creetures107: Do you like spiders? im scared of them108: Something you get paranoid about? i dont rlly get paranoid much, but i sometimes get rlly paranoid something be watching me109: Can you draw: ye, reblog my art pls @yumeuwu110: Nosiest question you have ever been asked? i cant remember lmao111: A question you hate being asked? i cant think of anything112: Ever been bitten by a spider? nope113: Do you like the sound of waves at the beach? yeah its pretty nice114: Do you prefer cloudy or sunny days? both i guess,  tho respectfully to their matching seasons115: Someone you’d like to kiss or cuddle right now: id cuddle my future gf rn :`)116: Favorite cloud type: .. w… poofy cloud117: What color do you wish the sky was? yellow would be pretty, but not piss yellow cause that`d be weird118: Do you have freckles? yea faint ones119: Favorite thing about a person: their lips, lips pretty120: Fruits or vegetables? veggies121: Something you want to do right now: sit on a warm hill in silence122: Is the ocean or sky prettier? sky123: Sweet or sour foods? im more of a savoury person124: Bright or dim lights? dim, sexy125: Do you believe in a certain magical creature? i mean it aint impossible126: Something you hate about Tumblr: pointless discourse127: Something you love about Tumblr: nice people128: What do you think about the least? idfk129: What would you want written on your tombstone? oh my fuckin god she fuckin dead130: Who would you like to punch in the face right now? no one, but im always ready to punch something131: What is something you love but also hate about yourself? im very very selfless, which is nice but also makes me rlly sad sometimes132: Do you smile with your teeth showing for pictures? nah133: Computer or TV? computer134: Do you like roller coasters? hell yeah, they fun135: Do you get motion sickness or seasickness? i get motion sickness136: Are your ears lobed or attached? lobed137: Do you believe in karma? i guess138: On a scale of 1-10, how attractive would you say you are? probably a 7, like im p cute139: What nicknames do you have/have had? uhhh anepeace (die mr flanagan that nickname is so ugly)140: Did you have any pretend or imaginary friends? no, not that desperate yet (no offence to those who do have them im sure ur lovely)141: Have you ever seen a therapist/shrink? yeah i see a psychologist monthly and also psychiatrist 142: Would you say you are a good or bad influence to others? id like to say good143: Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts/help? recieving144: What makes you angry? assholes145: How many languages do you speak fluently? 1146: Do you prefer boys, girls, and/or non-binaries? girls ;3147: Are you androgynous? nah148: Favorite physical thing about yourself: i have nice shoulders149: Favorite thing about your personality: i try to be considerate of others 150: Name three people you would like to talk to right now in person. idk151: If you could go back into time and live in one era, which would you choose? honestly fine w this one152: Do you like BuzzFeed? some things153: How did you meet your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner? [If you have one.] dont have one :((154: Do you like to kiss others’ foreheads or hands for platonic reasons? nah155: Do you like to play with others’ hair? yea, prefer people playing w my hair tho156: What embarrasses you? anything that puts me at the centre of attention among strangers157: Something that makes you nervous/anxious: loud noises158: Biggest lie you have ever told: i dont rlly tell lies so notin159: How many people are you following? i cbb to check160: How many posts do you have on your blog(s)? 7000+161: How many drafts do you have on your blog(s)? 1162: How many likes do you have on your blog(s)? idfk163: Last time you cried and why: i cried cause i saw a floofy cat164: Do you have long or short hair? short hair165: Longest your hair has ever been: hip length166: Why do you like, dislike, or have neutral feelings about religon? most religious views ive heard make no sense when compared to science so i dont rlly believe it167: Do you really care how the universe and world was created? nah168: Do you like to wear makeup? sometimes169: Can you stand on your hands or head for more than thirty seconds? no im weak170: Did you answer the questions you were asked truthfully? ye
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adambstingus · 6 years
Text
My Dad Died And All I Got Was This Lousy Complex
Dead parents are an exceedingly common occurrence as I grow older. You cant throw a rock in this town without hitting a 30-something with a sad but touching story of how he navigated the death of one or both of his parents. These are the stories people tell me when I disclose that my dad recently died. While I appreciate the attempt at shared commiseration, the truth is the death of my father is only notable for the fact that I dont care.
I was 13 the last time Id seen my father. Hed taken me to a New Years Eve party mostly populated by adults and I got drunk on punch upstairs while he sat in the basement doing god knows what. At some point he walked me home, both of us drunk, me for the first time. My dad was a notoriously chatty when he drank, and he rambled to me the whole way back to my moms house (this was post-divorce).
In my 13-year-old brain I knew I was about to experience some profound change in perspective. He talked about his numerous marriages and several legitimate and illegitimate children. He eventually admitted he wasnt sure that anything good had come from any of this, that all those women had just been a drain on him and provided little to no joy. A moment later he realized the idiocy of telling your daughter that she wasnt a worthwhile addition to your life, and made some lame statement about valuing and treasuring his kids, all 200 hundred of them (she mildly exaggerates).
I cant say that what he said was sad or surprising, and maybe it was the booze, but in that moment I just accepted that my dad was an asshole. Any sort of intelligence or ability my dad possessed took a back seat to unchecked mental illness. This resulted in a lot of drinking, fighting with my mom, an aversion to work, and a personality that turned on a dime. Sometimes my father would be the life of the party, other times he would sneak out the back door to avoid saying goodbye to anyone (also known as the Irish exit).
On paper, none of this is very horrific. The one truly awful memory I have of my father is of him grabbing my mom by the throat and lifting her up so that her feet left the ground. I cant remember how old I was, but I do remember watching her feet kicking at air and feeling frozen in the moment, unsure of what I should do or if anything could be done. Looking back on it I dont really feel anything. Which is the defining theme of my life. I typically dont feel and when I have an actual discernible emotion I am shocked and outraged. How could this happen to me? My defenses should be rock solid, Ive been fortifying them for most of my life. Its the worst with positive emotions. If I feel love and affection for anyone I immediately become uncomfortable.
A day before my 37th birthday my father had the audacity to die. My ethnic origins mean that people think its ok to take pictures of dead and/or dying people, and one of these pictures of my father made its way to my phone. Hes not dead in it but he might as well be. When it comes to faces, the most haunting aspect of death appears in the mouth, not the eyes. In the picture, my fathers mouth hangs open slackly like he was drawing his final breath. I like to show this picture to people at inopportune times and laugh at their shocked reactions. I look at it and feel absolutely nothing.
Perhaps the most hilarious side effect of my weird relationship with my father is my choice in men. This is a point of contention for me, as I believe human beings (myself especially) are far too complex to draw a straight line from Shitty Father to Shitty Boyfriend. However, my love life is replete with questionable men who all seem to enjoy some combination of casual domestic violence, alcohol, mental illness, and infidelity. I have a strong inkling that the real reason I choose men like this is because its just an elaborate form of self-sabotage.
It all started with my first serious boyfriend, who I met when I was 16. While sweet and charming, this guy was apparently on the lam from the law and a few months into our relationship he simply disappeared from his apartment never to return. He may or may not have been in the news recently for some kind of insane prison break, but that claim is unverified. After him was a devil-worshipping single father who I somehow spent ten years of my life with fielding insults and dodging half full bottles of beer. Next up we have an alcoholic Pacific North Westerner who was ten years my junior, also known as the OKCupid date that lasted three years. My most recent conquest is perhaps the most bizarre yet, a couch-surfing manic depressive who builds tree houses for a living.
In addition to a decidedly problematic taste in men, whats most disturbing about my father is that sneaking fear that I am just like him, only I had the good sense not to procreate and draw another human being into this silly drama I call my life. A therapist once asked me if I mourned the life I didnt have. This was a tough question to contemplate. I imagined how different I would be if I had a normal life with a normal family. Maybe I would be married with kids, and my husband would be some boring guy I could barely tolerate. My kids would be mediocre in every way, maybe the youngest one would be a little shit and I would secretly despise him or her. Maybe I would lose it and bang a 16-year-old football player or become one of those Munchausen-by-proxy women.
I could tell you what wouldnt have happened if I had a normal life. I wouldnt have woken up this morning reeking of cocaine. I bet you didnt know that you could actually smell like cocaine? Well you can, and its disgusting. I wouldnt be in love with another questionable man with whom a shared future is a hard sell. I wouldnt be borderline anorexic and taking perverse joy in not-eating and announcing how little I weigh to everyone. Or maybe I would be like this, maybe my problems are inherent and would have presented themselves anyway. I guess Ill never know.
At some point your parents are going to die and youre going to feel a profound sadness, like youve just been unmoored from the only thing anchoring you to life itself. Or you might feel absolutely nothing like I did, which is even more of a kick in the face. My father never really did anything particularly egregious to me. He just introduced me to that special type of asshole that I would encounter again and again throughout my life, one that I would even personify on occasion.
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/my-dad-died-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-complex/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/177566781212
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samanthasroberts · 7 years
Text
Whats Worse For Your BrainDrinking or Playing Football?
Our correspondent drinks for a living. Is he putting his brain at more risk of damage than a football player?
I woke up Sunday morning with a throbbing headache. Id spent the previous night heavily sampling a selection of rare whiskeys with some friends.
That may have been fun, but now here I was, still in bed at 11 a.m., barely able to keep my eyes open, hardly able to think, certainly not wanting to turn on the days NFL games.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
And I thought this cannot be good for my brain.
The effect of NFL action on the brain is one of the hottest topics of the moment, with the movie Concussion opening this Christmas weekend.
In that film Will Smith portrays Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first brought to light the appearance of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in American football players.
Thanks partially to Omalus work, nowadays when we watch the constant brutality on the football field, when we see players crashing their heads into each other down after down, when we notice aging players getting dementia (and worse) once retired, many of us have even started to wonder, Can I ethically enjoy football any more? Myself included.
At the same time, though, I often put my own brain in serious jeopardy too.
Yes, I am a professional drinks writer. Mid-day cocktail tastings. Evening scotch samplings. Beer festivals on the weekends. Trips to breweries, distilleries, and wineries. You should see how much free liquor gets delivered to my house on a daily basis!
People often tell me I must have one of the best jobs around. But they arent the ones that have had to drink literally every single day for hell, who knows how many days in a row it has been now. They arent the ones that wake up many mornings with a hangoverjust another occupational hazard.
So, with all this in mind, I decided to ask some football concussion doctors about the effects of my equally dangerous profession on my own precious brain. I wondered, how bad is my drinking compared to playing football?
Was a single whiskey shot equal to a QB sack?
A night of heavy beer drinking equal to a half of football?
Did my brutal Sunday morning hangover feel worse than it did on a Monday morning for a running back?
Neither Dr. Omalunor Will Smithreturned any of my calls, but luckily I had other accomplished doctors willing to answer my questions.
Dr. William Barr is the Director of Neuropsychology at NYU Langone Medical Center.
He is a clinical expert on epilepsy, forensic neuropsychology, and sports concussions. He has testified in numerous cases involving forensics and in civil cases involving MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury). More importantly, from the mid-1990s until 2004, Barr was a neuropsychological medical consultant for the NFLs New York Jets.
He quickly understood the somewhat silly concept behind this piece, and even why a professional drinks writer had reason to be concerned.
I used to think about boxers, he told me, noting that this was before all this concussion talk was in the mainstream. People used to say boxing was the only way for a kid to get out of the ghettobut he had to put his brain at risk. How terrible it was that society forced them to do this! But I also thought about the typical Mad Men-era businessmen. They had to do the three-martini lunches for their workthey too were pickling their brains just to get ahead!
Barr is a bit of a firebrand when it comes to talk about concussions. In fact, he believes concussionswhether from football or otherwiseactually have a fairly minimal impact on future cognitive functioning.
When you look at the studies and what happens three months after a concussiondo you know what meta-analysis is? he asks. I dont. He explains that, In science, rather than making conclusions based on a single study, you look at all the literature. Put it into a similar metric. Whats the overall effect based on many, many studies? So now, maybe, youre looking at 300 people over 10 studies. What it shows is the overall effect (on your brain) of a concussion after 30 days is lower than the effects of intoxication.
The study Barr is citing is Grant L. Iversons 2005 paper Outcome from Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
Iverson didnt study alcohols traumatic effect on the brain per se, but he did find chronic cannabis use to be worse on overall neuropsychological functioning than an MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury) was on a person just one to three months after the injury had occurred. Likewise, he found chronic cannabis use to be slightly worse on future memory functioning than an MTBI.
For Barr, that was enough for him to deduce for me that alcohol abuse would be probably likewise worse on the brain than head injuries from playing football. Uh oh.
Barr isnt completely speculating, as he has co-authored his own significant studies. With a team of other doctors and PhDs he helped pen Cumulative Effects Associated with Recurrent Concussion in Collegiate Football Players and Acute Effects and Recovery Time Following Concussion in Collegiate Football Players.
Ive studied athletes more than the general population. With them we can get information before their injury and then after, he tells me. And what that shows is that 95 percent (of athletes who have a concussion) recover back to normal in 7 days or less.
He tests alcoholics brains in a similar manner to how he tests concussed athletes. He interviews them and then gives them a series of tests, ones mainly based on memory functioning (they have to remember a certain story).
So I might notice, this person has problems with attention and remembering things. In the past theyve been a 10-drinks-a-day alcoholic and now it looks like theyve pickled brain.
Though well-honored and quite thorough, you can probably see how Barr is considered a bit of a contrarian for his thinking on concussions.
Barr was even dismissed from the NFLs MTBI committee in 2004 by then-chairman Elliot Pellman, another former New York Jets team physician who is not without his own controversy.
I wanted another doctors opinion on my potentially pickling brain. Dr. James Paci, a professor and orthopedic surgeon, specializes in sports medicine at Stony Brook University Medicine. Hes also the football teams doctor.
First, he clarified that he was neither a neurologist nor brain physician. Despite that, he was trained to deal with concussions on a day-in, day-out basis in his own role as team doctor.
My expertise is how do we treat these athletes, Paci told me. What do we look out for? How do we prevent long term consequences?
However, unlike Barr, Paci somewhat struggled with the comparisons I was hoping he would draw for me.
Certainly there is some connection between alcoholism and Alzheimers, brain diseases. Drawing a parallel between drinking and football though? I dont think anyone has made that correlation. Though he does note, The rock n roll lifestyle and athlete lifestyle certainly do have some comparisons.
A man like Paci believes that both football and drinking are inherently dangerous, but thats OK, so long as we acknowledge the risk involved in both activities and, thus, let potential participants make informed decisions.
Ive had concussions before, Paci tells me. Anyone who plays sports has had one before.
Paci is about my age, having played football at Yale University in the late-1990s, while the slightly-older Barr played during a time head injuries werent treated all that seriously.
Back in the day when I played high school football, Barr tells me, you pretty much had to be in a coma before they did anything about it.
So both men had played football at a fairly high level, had head injuries on the field, and were still able to become prestigious doctors. But did they drink?
Not routinely, but I do, Paci tells me. Most doctors do. There are certainly benefits to some alcohol.
(Ive been saying that for years.)
I do, Barr also tells me. Everything in moderation. A little bit of alcohol can be good for the heart. Theres good data for the red wines. Some scotch in moderation, a finger a day maybe.
So you guys drink, but now knowing what you know, would you let your own children play football?
On that point Paci is fairly strict, believing young children simply dont have the body control and should stick to flag football or two-hand touch.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
Barr has a six-month grandson he absolutely wants to play football some day.
Should that boy play football or not? My take, from what we know right now: the chance of getting dementia, the prospect of a 13-year-old boy who starts football getting dementia one day is, lets say, 1 to 2 percent. Im being liberal, Barr tells me. But lets say that boy is not allowed to play football. Instead junior becomes fat and gets diabetes and high blood pressure. Now he has a 30 percent chance of dying of dementia.
So to Barr inactivity in this country is a much bigger problem than helmet-to-helmet contactinteresting, because drinkers on the whole are statistically much more active than non-drinkers according to the Center for Advancing Health.
That papers lead author, Michael French, a professor of health economics at the University of Miami, found that alcohol users not only exercised more than teetotalers, but the differential actually increased with more drinking.
I dont fully understand the relationship, Barr admits, though he has a speculation. Maybe people feel like after visiting the gym, they deserve to do something bad.
Its true enough anecdotally for myself, though Im a bit more of the reverse. I do something bad the night before, then feel the need to go jog five miles the next day.
I ask Barr point-blank, It seems like you ultimately think its safer to play in the NFL than to drink heavily?
Yeah, you could say that, he confirms.
This did not sound good for me. But what exactly did heavily mean? This week alone I sampled new whiskeys on Monday, drank wine with dinner on Tuesday, visited a hot new cocktail bar on Wednesday, went to a brewery opening on Thursday, and hit happy hour with friends on Friday.
Luckily, Barr relieved some of my concerns about any sort of future with dementia, simply telling me, You would not be on the phone with me, or even able to write this story, if you were drinking too much.
Regardless, I think Ill start trying to be more cognizant of my intake. As Paci ultimately summed up for me: The brain is an amazing thing. Your head hurts when you bang it. So you try not to bang your head again. With a hangover, theres obviously something similar going on there.
Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/28/whats-worse-for-your-braindrinking-or-playing-football/
from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/whats-worse-for-your-braindrinking-or-playing-football/
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jimdsmith34 · 7 years
Text
Whats Worse For Your BrainDrinking or Playing Football?
Our correspondent drinks for a living. Is he putting his brain at more risk of damage than a football player?
I woke up Sunday morning with a throbbing headache. Id spent the previous night heavily sampling a selection of rare whiskeys with some friends.
That may have been fun, but now here I was, still in bed at 11 a.m., barely able to keep my eyes open, hardly able to think, certainly not wanting to turn on the days NFL games.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
And I thought this cannot be good for my brain.
The effect of NFL action on the brain is one of the hottest topics of the moment, with the movie Concussion opening this Christmas weekend.
In that film Will Smith portrays Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first brought to light the appearance of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in American football players.
Thanks partially to Omalus work, nowadays when we watch the constant brutality on the football field, when we see players crashing their heads into each other down after down, when we notice aging players getting dementia (and worse) once retired, many of us have even started to wonder, Can I ethically enjoy football any more? Myself included.
At the same time, though, I often put my own brain in serious jeopardy too.
Yes, I am a professional drinks writer. Mid-day cocktail tastings. Evening scotch samplings. Beer festivals on the weekends. Trips to breweries, distilleries, and wineries. You should see how much free liquor gets delivered to my house on a daily basis!
People often tell me I must have one of the best jobs around. But they arent the ones that have had to drink literally every single day for hell, who knows how many days in a row it has been now. They arent the ones that wake up many mornings with a hangoverjust another occupational hazard.
So, with all this in mind, I decided to ask some football concussion doctors about the effects of my equally dangerous profession on my own precious brain. I wondered, how bad is my drinking compared to playing football?
Was a single whiskey shot equal to a QB sack?
A night of heavy beer drinking equal to a half of football?
Did my brutal Sunday morning hangover feel worse than it did on a Monday morning for a running back?
Neither Dr. Omalunor Will Smithreturned any of my calls, but luckily I had other accomplished doctors willing to answer my questions.
Dr. William Barr is the Director of Neuropsychology at NYU Langone Medical Center.
He is a clinical expert on epilepsy, forensic neuropsychology, and sports concussions. He has testified in numerous cases involving forensics and in civil cases involving MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury). More importantly, from the mid-1990s until 2004, Barr was a neuropsychological medical consultant for the NFLs New York Jets.
He quickly understood the somewhat silly concept behind this piece, and even why a professional drinks writer had reason to be concerned.
I used to think about boxers, he told me, noting that this was before all this concussion talk was in the mainstream. People used to say boxing was the only way for a kid to get out of the ghettobut he had to put his brain at risk. How terrible it was that society forced them to do this! But I also thought about the typical Mad Men-era businessmen. They had to do the three-martini lunches for their workthey too were pickling their brains just to get ahead!
Barr is a bit of a firebrand when it comes to talk about concussions. In fact, he believes concussionswhether from football or otherwiseactually have a fairly minimal impact on future cognitive functioning.
When you look at the studies and what happens three months after a concussiondo you know what meta-analysis is? he asks. I dont. He explains that, In science, rather than making conclusions based on a single study, you look at all the literature. Put it into a similar metric. Whats the overall effect based on many, many studies? So now, maybe, youre looking at 300 people over 10 studies. What it shows is the overall effect (on your brain) of a concussion after 30 days is lower than the effects of intoxication.
The study Barr is citing is Grant L. Iversons 2005 paper Outcome from Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
Iverson didnt study alcohols traumatic effect on the brain per se, but he did find chronic cannabis use to be worse on overall neuropsychological functioning than an MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury) was on a person just one to three months after the injury had occurred. Likewise, he found chronic cannabis use to be slightly worse on future memory functioning than an MTBI.
For Barr, that was enough for him to deduce for me that alcohol abuse would be probably likewise worse on the brain than head injuries from playing football. Uh oh.
Barr isnt completely speculating, as he has co-authored his own significant studies. With a team of other doctors and PhDs he helped pen Cumulative Effects Associated with Recurrent Concussion in Collegiate Football Players and Acute Effects and Recovery Time Following Concussion in Collegiate Football Players.
Ive studied athletes more than the general population. With them we can get information before their injury and then after, he tells me. And what that shows is that 95 percent (of athletes who have a concussion) recover back to normal in 7 days or less.
He tests alcoholics brains in a similar manner to how he tests concussed athletes. He interviews them and then gives them a series of tests, ones mainly based on memory functioning (they have to remember a certain story).
So I might notice, this person has problems with attention and remembering things. In the past theyve been a 10-drinks-a-day alcoholic and now it looks like theyve pickled brain.
Though well-honored and quite thorough, you can probably see how Barr is considered a bit of a contrarian for his thinking on concussions.
Barr was even dismissed from the NFLs MTBI committee in 2004 by then-chairman Elliot Pellman, another former New York Jets team physician who is not without his own controversy.
I wanted another doctors opinion on my potentially pickling brain. Dr. James Paci, a professor and orthopedic surgeon, specializes in sports medicine at Stony Brook University Medicine. Hes also the football teams doctor.
First, he clarified that he was neither a neurologist nor brain physician. Despite that, he was trained to deal with concussions on a day-in, day-out basis in his own role as team doctor.
My expertise is how do we treat these athletes, Paci told me. What do we look out for? How do we prevent long term consequences?
However, unlike Barr, Paci somewhat struggled with the comparisons I was hoping he would draw for me.
Certainly there is some connection between alcoholism and Alzheimers, brain diseases. Drawing a parallel between drinking and football though? I dont think anyone has made that correlation. Though he does note, The rock n roll lifestyle and athlete lifestyle certainly do have some comparisons.
A man like Paci believes that both football and drinking are inherently dangerous, but thats OK, so long as we acknowledge the risk involved in both activities and, thus, let potential participants make informed decisions.
Ive had concussions before, Paci tells me. Anyone who plays sports has had one before.
Paci is about my age, having played football at Yale University in the late-1990s, while the slightly-older Barr played during a time head injuries werent treated all that seriously.
Back in the day when I played high school football, Barr tells me, you pretty much had to be in a coma before they did anything about it.
So both men had played football at a fairly high level, had head injuries on the field, and were still able to become prestigious doctors. But did they drink?
Not routinely, but I do, Paci tells me. Most doctors do. There are certainly benefits to some alcohol.
(Ive been saying that for years.)
I do, Barr also tells me. Everything in moderation. A little bit of alcohol can be good for the heart. Theres good data for the red wines. Some scotch in moderation, a finger a day maybe.
So you guys drink, but now knowing what you know, would you let your own children play football?
On that point Paci is fairly strict, believing young children simply dont have the body control and should stick to flag football or two-hand touch.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
Barr has a six-month grandson he absolutely wants to play football some day.
Should that boy play football or not? My take, from what we know right now: the chance of getting dementia, the prospect of a 13-year-old boy who starts football getting dementia one day is, lets say, 1 to 2 percent. Im being liberal, Barr tells me. But lets say that boy is not allowed to play football. Instead junior becomes fat and gets diabetes and high blood pressure. Now he has a 30 percent chance of dying of dementia.
So to Barr inactivity in this country is a much bigger problem than helmet-to-helmet contactinteresting, because drinkers on the whole are statistically much more active than non-drinkers according to the Center for Advancing Health.
That papers lead author, Michael French, a professor of health economics at the University of Miami, found that alcohol users not only exercised more than teetotalers, but the differential actually increased with more drinking.
I dont fully understand the relationship, Barr admits, though he has a speculation. Maybe people feel like after visiting the gym, they deserve to do something bad.
Its true enough anecdotally for myself, though Im a bit more of the reverse. I do something bad the night before, then feel the need to go jog five miles the next day.
I ask Barr point-blank, It seems like you ultimately think its safer to play in the NFL than to drink heavily?
Yeah, you could say that, he confirms.
This did not sound good for me. But what exactly did heavily mean? This week alone I sampled new whiskeys on Monday, drank wine with dinner on Tuesday, visited a hot new cocktail bar on Wednesday, went to a brewery opening on Thursday, and hit happy hour with friends on Friday.
Luckily, Barr relieved some of my concerns about any sort of future with dementia, simply telling me, You would not be on the phone with me, or even able to write this story, if you were drinking too much.
Regardless, I think Ill start trying to be more cognizant of my intake. As Paci ultimately summed up for me: The brain is an amazing thing. Your head hurts when you bang it. So you try not to bang your head again. With a hangover, theres obviously something similar going on there.
source http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/28/whats-worse-for-your-braindrinking-or-playing-football/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/09/whats-worse-for-your-braindrinking-or.html
0 notes
allofbeercom · 7 years
Text
Whats Worse For Your BrainDrinking or Playing Football?
Our correspondent drinks for a living. Is he putting his brain at more risk of damage than a football player?
I woke up Sunday morning with a throbbing headache. Id spent the previous night heavily sampling a selection of rare whiskeys with some friends.
That may have been fun, but now here I was, still in bed at 11 a.m., barely able to keep my eyes open, hardly able to think, certainly not wanting to turn on the days NFL games.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
And I thought this cannot be good for my brain.
The effect of NFL action on the brain is one of the hottest topics of the moment, with the movie Concussion opening this Christmas weekend.
In that film Will Smith portrays Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first brought to light the appearance of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in American football players.
Thanks partially to Omalus work, nowadays when we watch the constant brutality on the football field, when we see players crashing their heads into each other down after down, when we notice aging players getting dementia (and worse) once retired, many of us have even started to wonder, Can I ethically enjoy football any more? Myself included.
At the same time, though, I often put my own brain in serious jeopardy too.
Yes, I am a professional drinks writer. Mid-day cocktail tastings. Evening scotch samplings. Beer festivals on the weekends. Trips to breweries, distilleries, and wineries. You should see how much free liquor gets delivered to my house on a daily basis!
People often tell me I must have one of the best jobs around. But they arent the ones that have had to drink literally every single day for hell, who knows how many days in a row it has been now. They arent the ones that wake up many mornings with a hangoverjust another occupational hazard.
So, with all this in mind, I decided to ask some football concussion doctors about the effects of my equally dangerous profession on my own precious brain. I wondered, how bad is my drinking compared to playing football?
Was a single whiskey shot equal to a QB sack?
A night of heavy beer drinking equal to a half of football?
Did my brutal Sunday morning hangover feel worse than it did on a Monday morning for a running back?
Neither Dr. Omalunor Will Smithreturned any of my calls, but luckily I had other accomplished doctors willing to answer my questions.
Dr. William Barr is the Director of Neuropsychology at NYU Langone Medical Center.
He is a clinical expert on epilepsy, forensic neuropsychology, and sports concussions. He has testified in numerous cases involving forensics and in civil cases involving MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury). More importantly, from the mid-1990s until 2004, Barr was a neuropsychological medical consultant for the NFLs New York Jets.
He quickly understood the somewhat silly concept behind this piece, and even why a professional drinks writer had reason to be concerned.
I used to think about boxers, he told me, noting that this was before all this concussion talk was in the mainstream. People used to say boxing was the only way for a kid to get out of the ghettobut he had to put his brain at risk. How terrible it was that society forced them to do this! But I also thought about the typical Mad Men-era businessmen. They had to do the three-martini lunches for their workthey too were pickling their brains just to get ahead!
Barr is a bit of a firebrand when it comes to talk about concussions. In fact, he believes concussionswhether from football or otherwiseactually have a fairly minimal impact on future cognitive functioning.
When you look at the studies and what happens three months after a concussiondo you know what meta-analysis is? he asks. I dont. He explains that, In science, rather than making conclusions based on a single study, you look at all the literature. Put it into a similar metric. Whats the overall effect based on many, many studies? So now, maybe, youre looking at 300 people over 10 studies. What it shows is the overall effect (on your brain) of a concussion after 30 days is lower than the effects of intoxication.
The study Barr is citing is Grant L. Iversons 2005 paper Outcome from Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
Iverson didnt study alcohols traumatic effect on the brain per se, but he did find chronic cannabis use to be worse on overall neuropsychological functioning than an MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury) was on a person just one to three months after the injury had occurred. Likewise, he found chronic cannabis use to be slightly worse on future memory functioning than an MTBI.
For Barr, that was enough for him to deduce for me that alcohol abuse would be probably likewise worse on the brain than head injuries from playing football. Uh oh.
Barr isnt completely speculating, as he has co-authored his own significant studies. With a team of other doctors and PhDs he helped pen Cumulative Effects Associated with Recurrent Concussion in Collegiate Football Players and Acute Effects and Recovery Time Following Concussion in Collegiate Football Players.
Ive studied athletes more than the general population. With them we can get information before their injury and then after, he tells me. And what that shows is that 95 percent (of athletes who have a concussion) recover back to normal in 7 days or less.
He tests alcoholics brains in a similar manner to how he tests concussed athletes. He interviews them and then gives them a series of tests, ones mainly based on memory functioning (they have to remember a certain story).
So I might notice, this person has problems with attention and remembering things. In the past theyve been a 10-drinks-a-day alcoholic and now it looks like theyve pickled brain.
Though well-honored and quite thorough, you can probably see how Barr is considered a bit of a contrarian for his thinking on concussions.
Barr was even dismissed from the NFLs MTBI committee in 2004 by then-chairman Elliot Pellman, another former New York Jets team physician who is not without his own controversy.
I wanted another doctors opinion on my potentially pickling brain. Dr. James Paci, a professor and orthopedic surgeon, specializes in sports medicine at Stony Brook University Medicine. Hes also the football teams doctor.
First, he clarified that he was neither a neurologist nor brain physician. Despite that, he was trained to deal with concussions on a day-in, day-out basis in his own role as team doctor.
My expertise is how do we treat these athletes, Paci told me. What do we look out for? How do we prevent long term consequences?
However, unlike Barr, Paci somewhat struggled with the comparisons I was hoping he would draw for me.
Certainly there is some connection between alcoholism and Alzheimers, brain diseases. Drawing a parallel between drinking and football though? I dont think anyone has made that correlation. Though he does note, The rock n roll lifestyle and athlete lifestyle certainly do have some comparisons.
A man like Paci believes that both football and drinking are inherently dangerous, but thats OK, so long as we acknowledge the risk involved in both activities and, thus, let potential participants make informed decisions.
Ive had concussions before, Paci tells me. Anyone who plays sports has had one before.
Paci is about my age, having played football at Yale University in the late-1990s, while the slightly-older Barr played during a time head injuries werent treated all that seriously.
Back in the day when I played high school football, Barr tells me, you pretty much had to be in a coma before they did anything about it.
So both men had played football at a fairly high level, had head injuries on the field, and were still able to become prestigious doctors. But did they drink?
Not routinely, but I do, Paci tells me. Most doctors do. There are certainly benefits to some alcohol.
(Ive been saying that for years.)
I do, Barr also tells me. Everything in moderation. A little bit of alcohol can be good for the heart. Theres good data for the red wines. Some scotch in moderation, a finger a day maybe.
So you guys drink, but now knowing what you know, would you let your own children play football?
On that point Paci is fairly strict, believing young children simply dont have the body control and should stick to flag football or two-hand touch.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
Barr has a six-month grandson he absolutely wants to play football some day.
Should that boy play football or not? My take, from what we know right now: the chance of getting dementia, the prospect of a 13-year-old boy who starts football getting dementia one day is, lets say, 1 to 2 percent. Im being liberal, Barr tells me. But lets say that boy is not allowed to play football. Instead junior becomes fat and gets diabetes and high blood pressure. Now he has a 30 percent chance of dying of dementia.
So to Barr inactivity in this country is a much bigger problem than helmet-to-helmet contactinteresting, because drinkers on the whole are statistically much more active than non-drinkers according to the Center for Advancing Health.
That papers lead author, Michael French, a professor of health economics at the University of Miami, found that alcohol users not only exercised more than teetotalers, but the differential actually increased with more drinking.
I dont fully understand the relationship, Barr admits, though he has a speculation. Maybe people feel like after visiting the gym, they deserve to do something bad.
Its true enough anecdotally for myself, though Im a bit more of the reverse. I do something bad the night before, then feel the need to go jog five miles the next day.
I ask Barr point-blank, It seems like you ultimately think its safer to play in the NFL than to drink heavily?
Yeah, you could say that, he confirms.
This did not sound good for me. But what exactly did heavily mean? This week alone I sampled new whiskeys on Monday, drank wine with dinner on Tuesday, visited a hot new cocktail bar on Wednesday, went to a brewery opening on Thursday, and hit happy hour with friends on Friday.
Luckily, Barr relieved some of my concerns about any sort of future with dementia, simply telling me, You would not be on the phone with me, or even able to write this story, if you were drinking too much.
Regardless, I think Ill start trying to be more cognizant of my intake. As Paci ultimately summed up for me: The brain is an amazing thing. Your head hurts when you bang it. So you try not to bang your head again. With a hangover, theres obviously something similar going on there.
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/28/whats-worse-for-your-braindrinking-or-playing-football/
0 notes
adambstingus · 7 years
Text
Whats Worse For Your BrainDrinking or Playing Football?
Our correspondent drinks for a living. Is he putting his brain at more risk of damage than a football player?
I woke up Sunday morning with a throbbing headache. Id spent the previous night heavily sampling a selection of rare whiskeys with some friends.
That may have been fun, but now here I was, still in bed at 11 a.m., barely able to keep my eyes open, hardly able to think, certainly not wanting to turn on the days NFL games.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
And I thought this cannot be good for my brain.
The effect of NFL action on the brain is one of the hottest topics of the moment, with the movie Concussion opening this Christmas weekend.
In that film Will Smith portrays Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first brought to light the appearance of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in American football players.
Thanks partially to Omalus work, nowadays when we watch the constant brutality on the football field, when we see players crashing their heads into each other down after down, when we notice aging players getting dementia (and worse) once retired, many of us have even started to wonder, Can I ethically enjoy football any more? Myself included.
At the same time, though, I often put my own brain in serious jeopardy too.
Yes, I am a professional drinks writer. Mid-day cocktail tastings. Evening scotch samplings. Beer festivals on the weekends. Trips to breweries, distilleries, and wineries. You should see how much free liquor gets delivered to my house on a daily basis!
People often tell me I must have one of the best jobs around. But they arent the ones that have had to drink literally every single day for hell, who knows how many days in a row it has been now. They arent the ones that wake up many mornings with a hangoverjust another occupational hazard.
So, with all this in mind, I decided to ask some football concussion doctors about the effects of my equally dangerous profession on my own precious brain. I wondered, how bad is my drinking compared to playing football?
Was a single whiskey shot equal to a QB sack?
A night of heavy beer drinking equal to a half of football?
Did my brutal Sunday morning hangover feel worse than it did on a Monday morning for a running back?
Neither Dr. Omalunor Will Smithreturned any of my calls, but luckily I had other accomplished doctors willing to answer my questions.
Dr. William Barr is the Director of Neuropsychology at NYU Langone Medical Center.
He is a clinical expert on epilepsy, forensic neuropsychology, and sports concussions. He has testified in numerous cases involving forensics and in civil cases involving MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury). More importantly, from the mid-1990s until 2004, Barr was a neuropsychological medical consultant for the NFLs New York Jets.
He quickly understood the somewhat silly concept behind this piece, and even why a professional drinks writer had reason to be concerned.
I used to think about boxers, he told me, noting that this was before all this concussion talk was in the mainstream. People used to say boxing was the only way for a kid to get out of the ghettobut he had to put his brain at risk. How terrible it was that society forced them to do this! But I also thought about the typical Mad Men-era businessmen. They had to do the three-martini lunches for their workthey too were pickling their brains just to get ahead!
Barr is a bit of a firebrand when it comes to talk about concussions. In fact, he believes concussionswhether from football or otherwiseactually have a fairly minimal impact on future cognitive functioning.
When you look at the studies and what happens three months after a concussiondo you know what meta-analysis is? he asks. I dont. He explains that, In science, rather than making conclusions based on a single study, you look at all the literature. Put it into a similar metric. Whats the overall effect based on many, many studies? So now, maybe, youre looking at 300 people over 10 studies. What it shows is the overall effect (on your brain) of a concussion after 30 days is lower than the effects of intoxication.
The study Barr is citing is Grant L. Iversons 2005 paper Outcome from Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
Iverson didnt study alcohols traumatic effect on the brain per se, but he did find chronic cannabis use to be worse on overall neuropsychological functioning than an MTBI (mild traumatic brain injury) was on a person just one to three months after the injury had occurred. Likewise, he found chronic cannabis use to be slightly worse on future memory functioning than an MTBI.
For Barr, that was enough for him to deduce for me that alcohol abuse would be probably likewise worse on the brain than head injuries from playing football. Uh oh.
Barr isnt completely speculating, as he has co-authored his own significant studies. With a team of other doctors and PhDs he helped pen Cumulative Effects Associated with Recurrent Concussion in Collegiate Football Players and Acute Effects and Recovery Time Following Concussion in Collegiate Football Players.
Ive studied athletes more than the general population. With them we can get information before their injury and then after, he tells me. And what that shows is that 95 percent (of athletes who have a concussion) recover back to normal in 7 days or less.
He tests alcoholics brains in a similar manner to how he tests concussed athletes. He interviews them and then gives them a series of tests, ones mainly based on memory functioning (they have to remember a certain story).
So I might notice, this person has problems with attention and remembering things. In the past theyve been a 10-drinks-a-day alcoholic and now it looks like theyve pickled brain.
Though well-honored and quite thorough, you can probably see how Barr is considered a bit of a contrarian for his thinking on concussions.
Barr was even dismissed from the NFLs MTBI committee in 2004 by then-chairman Elliot Pellman, another former New York Jets team physician who is not without his own controversy.
I wanted another doctors opinion on my potentially pickling brain. Dr. James Paci, a professor and orthopedic surgeon, specializes in sports medicine at Stony Brook University Medicine. Hes also the football teams doctor.
First, he clarified that he was neither a neurologist nor brain physician. Despite that, he was trained to deal with concussions on a day-in, day-out basis in his own role as team doctor.
My expertise is how do we treat these athletes, Paci told me. What do we look out for? How do we prevent long term consequences?
However, unlike Barr, Paci somewhat struggled with the comparisons I was hoping he would draw for me.
Certainly there is some connection between alcoholism and Alzheimers, brain diseases. Drawing a parallel between drinking and football though? I dont think anyone has made that correlation. Though he does note, The rock n roll lifestyle and athlete lifestyle certainly do have some comparisons.
A man like Paci believes that both football and drinking are inherently dangerous, but thats OK, so long as we acknowledge the risk involved in both activities and, thus, let potential participants make informed decisions.
Ive had concussions before, Paci tells me. Anyone who plays sports has had one before.
Paci is about my age, having played football at Yale University in the late-1990s, while the slightly-older Barr played during a time head injuries werent treated all that seriously.
Back in the day when I played high school football, Barr tells me, you pretty much had to be in a coma before they did anything about it.
So both men had played football at a fairly high level, had head injuries on the field, and were still able to become prestigious doctors. But did they drink?
Not routinely, but I do, Paci tells me. Most doctors do. There are certainly benefits to some alcohol.
(Ive been saying that for years.)
I do, Barr also tells me. Everything in moderation. A little bit of alcohol can be good for the heart. Theres good data for the red wines. Some scotch in moderation, a finger a day maybe.
So you guys drink, but now knowing what you know, would you let your own children play football?
On that point Paci is fairly strict, believing young children simply dont have the body control and should stick to flag football or two-hand touch.
A parent cant consent to giving their kids a cigarette or a beerwhy can they consent to him playing tackle football?
Barr has a six-month grandson he absolutely wants to play football some day.
Should that boy play football or not? My take, from what we know right now: the chance of getting dementia, the prospect of a 13-year-old boy who starts football getting dementia one day is, lets say, 1 to 2 percent. Im being liberal, Barr tells me. But lets say that boy is not allowed to play football. Instead junior becomes fat and gets diabetes and high blood pressure. Now he has a 30 percent chance of dying of dementia.
So to Barr inactivity in this country is a much bigger problem than helmet-to-helmet contactinteresting, because drinkers on the whole are statistically much more active than non-drinkers according to the Center for Advancing Health.
That papers lead author, Michael French, a professor of health economics at the University of Miami, found that alcohol users not only exercised more than teetotalers, but the differential actually increased with more drinking.
I dont fully understand the relationship, Barr admits, though he has a speculation. Maybe people feel like after visiting the gym, they deserve to do something bad.
Its true enough anecdotally for myself, though Im a bit more of the reverse. I do something bad the night before, then feel the need to go jog five miles the next day.
I ask Barr point-blank, It seems like you ultimately think its safer to play in the NFL than to drink heavily?
Yeah, you could say that, he confirms.
This did not sound good for me. But what exactly did heavily mean? This week alone I sampled new whiskeys on Monday, drank wine with dinner on Tuesday, visited a hot new cocktail bar on Wednesday, went to a brewery opening on Thursday, and hit happy hour with friends on Friday.
Luckily, Barr relieved some of my concerns about any sort of future with dementia, simply telling me, You would not be on the phone with me, or even able to write this story, if you were drinking too much.
Regardless, I think Ill start trying to be more cognizant of my intake. As Paci ultimately summed up for me: The brain is an amazing thing. Your head hurts when you bang it. So you try not to bang your head again. With a hangover, theres obviously something similar going on there.
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/28/whats-worse-for-your-braindrinking-or-playing-football/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165813833432
0 notes