Opinions - The party line: alcohol is alcohol: T or F?

[bcubed]

Generally the addiction community tries to state that it's "all about the ethanol": 50ml of alcohol from beer=50ml from wine, etc, in its addictive potential.

This seems to fly in the face of experience with every other drug: coca leaves contain the same active ingredient as powder, yet powder is more addictive, and freebasing is more addictive still. Same applies to smack. How is booze immune to this?

It's obvious everclear is more risky than beer: easy to drink a lot before the effects are felt, leading to overshooting the mark, plus most experienced drinkers simply can't fit the necessary volumes required to drink a lethal dose of beer. I think it might be impossible to fatally OD on beer without intent to do so; at least it's much more difficult.

Any hard data to support either side?

[paranoid_android]

Technically ethanol is ethanol, but in practice things can change. Essentially the differences you described have to do with how much ethanol is consumed over any given perioid of time. If you chugged 5 beers in 20 minutes, it would hit you about as hard as 5 shots in 20 minutes, the only difference being the incredible bloating you'd get from the beer. Now if you want to talk hangovers, that's another thing. Certain drinks contain congeners like methanol that may be partially responsible for hangovers. Generally, most vodkas and many other hard liquors are filtered for these congeners, whereas beer isn't. It's not uncommon for people to feel much worse hangovers from beer or red wines than from clear grain alcohol like Everclear or Smirnoff. Hope that helps.

[Benga]

Originally Posted by bcubed

Generally the addiction community tries to state that it's "all about the ethanol": 50ml of alcohol from beer=50ml from wine, etc, in its addictive potential.

This seems to fly in the face of experience with every other drug: coca leaves contain the same active ingredient as powder, yet powder is more addictive, and freebasing is more addictive still.

coca leaves contain between 0.2 and 0.9 cocaine and cocaine related alkaloids, which are not all extracted when a wad is "chewed" with an alkali. The amount of cocaine actually entering the bloodstream is very low, and progressive, and the mouth is a physical limiter, since you can only fit that much leaves in. Besides the alkaloid is broken down more easily than with insufflated powder cocaine, and the cocaine and cocaine related alkaloids in coca are counterbalanced alkaloids of the leaf, which means that the leaves also have a slight sedative effect for instance. The addiction to cocaine, a powerful psychological addiction depends on the strength of the cocaine experience, and this is related to how much cocaine alkaloids enter the bloodstream how fast. This is when freebase or iv cocaine is more addictive then insufflated cocaine. Coca leaves are really hard to compare with extracted cocaine.
as swiy mentioned in your post, for alcohol it's about the volume, because more volume means more to process hence a limitation of the speed of alcohol entering the bloodstream, say in the case of beer vs grain alcohol.

b

[ironmics]

Originally Posted by bcubed

Generally the addiction community tries to state that it's "all about the ethanol": 50ml of alcohol from beer=50ml from wine, etc, in its addictive potential.

This seems to fly in the face of experience with every other drug: coca leaves contain the same active ingredient as powder, yet powder is more addictive, and freebasing is more addictive still. Same applies to smack. How is booze immune to this?

It's obvious everclear is more risky than beer: easy to drink a lot before the effects are felt, leading to overshooting the mark, plus most experienced drinkers simply can't fit the necessary volumes required to drink a lethal dose of beer. I think it might be impossible to fatally OD on beer without intent to do so; at least it's much more difficult.

Any hard data to support either side?

Well this is kind of an add on to bengas post because he is very correct.
Well it's commonly held that cocaine is almost only psychologically addicting and not very physically so, since there are not much in the way of withdrawal other than pretty bad depression. So the only thing that matters in the form is how much euphoria it causes. However alcohol is very physically addicting with bad withdrawls. This means all forms of alcohol with have the exact same addiction potential when it comes to physical withdrawls, and as a pretty experienced drinker I know alcohol is alcohol. The only thing that changes the effects are the mindset when drinking. However, no form of alcohol will cause euphoria(unless mixed with amph, coke, or opiate) and therefore a resulting dysphoria. So all forms with have the same psychologic dependency and physical dependency.

[bcubed]

no form of alcohol will cause euphoria(unless mixed with amph, coke, or opiate) and therefore a resulting dysphoria. So all forms with have the same psychologic dependency and physical dependency.

I think you're on target w/r/t the addictive potential, but I have to disagree about the lack of euphoria.

The buzz SWIM gets when the alcohol starts taking effect is unsurpassed in pleasure for him with the sole exception of one time he was given IV Fentanyl pre-op. He fooled around with prescribed Percocets and would rate them roughly equivalent to alcohol (if anything very slightly less fun).

SWIM's proud of the fact that he can, if conditions warrant, moderate, but it's a conscious effort. SWIM sometimes has a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that anyone could have, say, three drinks, and not crave a fourth once that delicious warm glow takes hold.

Granted an addicted drinker isn't having much fun, but that's true of any addict.