Jared Clavin belonged to a religious system where alcohol was forbidden. Then Jared discovered his system didn’t have all the answers. As he begin questioning his faith he in turn had to question all the things his faith told him were good and were bad including alcohol. Once Jared stepped away from the faith of his Childhood he was now free to experiment for the first time with alcohol and to as an adult navigate and figure out this scary thing. We talk today about Jared’s written blog post on his journey titled “My First Year with Alcohol“. ‘Jared tells us about his good experiences, his bad experiences, what a hangover feels like, what alcohol does as a social lubricant, and how he managed discovering what he liked and what he didn’t and how to do this thing in a healthy and responsible way.
RESOURCES:
https://medium.com/@jaredclavin/my-first-year-with-alcohol-11281cabd5ef
Casual Drinking, Problem Drinking & Alcoholism
How to Drink Responsibly and Enjoy Alcohol
How to drink responsibly
How to Drink Responsibly at That Party and Still Have Fun
How to Get Past the College Phase and Drink Alcohol Like an Adult
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My own limit has changed. I love the taste of some types, others might be acquired. Taste is great on some, but not to the point I’m drinking more than once a week, one or two drinks at that. But, that’s me. That feels good, to me, and does not have any negative effects. Without knowing my overruling limits well, I could just keep drinking hard lemonade, ginger-lemonade, some wines, homemade wines or root beer… My choice to keep it mellow how I like. On the other hand I do have alcoholics in the family, so, that could have been a risk for me.
Healthy? I think there is plenty of support on that keeping to lower limits, unless you have an auto-immune disease, alcohol can irritate it. If it hurts you or those around you, time to cut back. I had my “fun” drinking till it made me sick when I was young. I’ve found my own healthy points with alcohol.
I like your goal of it making time with family and friends more enjoyable, for them too, even if they are not drinking, and they don’t have to, just like you don’t have to Not.
Thank you for doing this episode. I was a TBM who took great pride in trying alcohol as a youth or adult, so after my faith transition it was a hard for me to accept drinking as a normal life activity. And I have over-studied the topic. Although I tried a drink occasionally, and always out of site of my children, I feel I didn’t break free from the emotional chains of the church until I made it a normal part of my life. I now drink one or two glasses of wine or beer with dinner openly with my family and let them taste it if they are interested. I started with craft beers and used the Untapped app to keep track of what I liked. I then got into wine, and admittedly it can be intimidating but pairing a good wine with dinner just makes it so much better, and I would recommend someone exploring alcohol for the first time to do so during meals.
I also recommend the BBC documentary The Truth About Alcohol for its demonstrations on the effects of alcohol (but I think it’s conclusions are weak).
Below I’m linking a couple of articles below that discuss whether moderate drinking is healthy, and it looks at how strong (or weak) the studies are.
I like the disclaimer that drinking is not for e
https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/a-glass-of-wine-wont-shorten-your-life-moderate-drinking-is-still-good-for-you/
https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/the-campaign-to-make-alcohol-the-new-tobacco/
Interesting story, before I was a member, my friends took me to try all sort of nasty alcoholic beverages. As it turns out, I turn sour when drunk. I’m probably better off without it.
However, one very hot summer in Veracruz was my last conscious sip of an Alcoholic beverage. I was so thirsty and that beer tasted like heaven. To bad it wasn’t mine and I was allowed to have more than three gulps of it.
Since then, I became a member of the church at the age of 17 too. The closest thing to having alcohol again was a recent convert at a party where they had apparently spiked punch at a Christmas party, but to this day I swear that they only told me that to stop drinking that delicious punch strawberry flavor cocktail.