DailyDirt: Experimenting With Alcohol

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Freakonomics had an interesting podcast discussing which is more dangerous: alcohol or marijuana? If alcohol didn't exist and was discovered tomorrow, would it be as acceptable as it currently is? It probably would have hard time getting FDA approval, but then the same could be said of Aspirin, if it didn't have its long history as a wonder drug. Here are a few more questions to ponder about alcohol the next time you're not so sober, perhaps.

• There are a bunch of supposedly effective ways to reduce drunkenness, but how effective are they really? Jim Koch (founder of Sam Adams beer) swears by a teaspoon of yeast to minimize the effects of alcohol, but a small sample test -- along with some microbiologists' opinions -- suggest that this is an urban legend. So cancel that order of yeast, unless you want to try your own experimental procedure. [url]
• As with many medications and drugs, we don't actually know how alcohol induces intoxication. The causes of hangovers are similarly unknown, even though there seem to be no shortage of recommended cures (of dubious effectiveness). [url]
• Professor David Nutt has been working on an alternative to alcohol for years, but it's not easy to displace ethanol in our culture (or in our legal regulations). We've mentioned this synthehol-like project before, but more recently, Nutt is appealing to investors to fund his research to develop an alcohol substitute that has an antidote -- which he claims could have a significantly positive impact on human health since it might eliminate drunk driving and other unwanted effects of intoxication. Perhaps a crowdfunding campaign is in order? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alcohol, david nutt, drinks, drunk, hangover, hangover cure, intoxication, synthehol, synthetic alcohol, yeast