they’re…
they’re not?
Newp! Alcoholic seltzer!
Conversely, we had a small event at work with three different drinks, of which two were lemonade and the third looked like just another flavor of lemonade, but was actually an energy drink. You basically had to read the ingredients to find out.
As someone who has successfully cut down their alcohol intake this is cringe supreme for me.
In the 19th century all kinds of “snake oil” mixtures were sold as pain killers and energy tonics. The vast majority were just something suspended in alcohol. Alcohol dulls pain and makes you feel a rush of euphoria. So people thought it was “medicine.”
It continues to this day. My wife was convinced that a certain kombucha was benefitting her gut microbiome in some profound way because it made her feel so great to drink it. Turns out the brand got in trouble - their process was letting through 1.5-2% alcohol (yes my wife is a lightweight).
What brand?
White Claw
Mm yup. Fruit juice.
CHIT!
Michelob Ultra
Mike’s hard lemonade
Grain Belt
GT’s, around 15 years ago
Aww. I like their stuff. But I didn’t get to have more alchy fun! I started trying theirs out like 5 years ago.
Funnily enough I think now they sell a “hard” version that’s something like 1.5% so you can actually go have that fun! They’re just doing it legally now, with all proper labeling and licensing.
We like to talk about drugs like there’s this clear delineation between something that is and isn’t medicine… but it really comes down to the situation and the dosage.
For much of history and in most places, liquor was the most effective painkiller available. More recently, fentanyl started as a synthetic, medical grade painkiller. It’s still widely used across hospitals for that. Before synthetics, it was opium (otherwise known as heroin), derived from poppy plants.
Not just painkiller, a bit of alcohol will kill tons of nasties, so it was often the case that lightly fermented drinks are safer and healthier than many water sources.
Very true. The difference between medicine and poison is often just dosage.
Heroin is made from opium. It’s not the same.
It’s derived from petrochemicals but it works on the same receptors. And 50 years ago people were screeching about heroin, a completely unnatural man made synthesized drug far more potent than opium (which is roughly 10% morphine, heroin being around 2-3x stronger than pure morphine), in much the same way they are screeching about fentanyl now. “It’s a scourge, it kills people, it’s destructive” etc
All of those things can be true and fentanyl is absolutely far more dangerous given its potency (though giving someone with 0 opioid tolerance heroin isn’t necessarily safe either).
The real enemy is addiction, and the real real enemy there is a lack of resources and empathy. A lack of supports, a lack of housing, a lack of meaningful jobs and supportive welfare, a lack of healthcare, a lack of a society that doesn’t focus on punitive incarceration efforts over rehabilitative treatment and equitable respect
But keep focusing on the fentanyl boogeyman. Or tranq. That’s the problem. Just get that off the streets and it’ll all go away
No. Heroin is made from opium. From poppies. This has geo-political importance. Fentanyl is fully synthetic.
Yes I’m aware. fentanyl (it’s in my post) is derived from petrochemicals but still acts on the opioid system. The whole “being derived from petrochemicals” thing is what makes it “fully synthetic” which is just a creepy spooky nonsense weasel word that anti science nutjobs use to promote shit like anti vaccination. The fact that it is synthetically derived doesn’t make it any more or less dangerous, the fact that it’s significantly more potent does, but even with that to an experienced user it’s just a far more intense heroin, which is similar to how heroin is a far more intense morphine
Tbf I could’ve probably used the noun instead of “it’s” but I feel like the context is pretty clear if you read past the first sentence
The real enemy is addiction
With Fentanyl it’s different. It can be lethal the first time you try it. We might say addiction is one problem but lack of regulation and predictability in dosage is also a problem. Much of what’s dangerous about illicit drugs is not knowing quite what you are getting.
Heroin addiction can also be immediate, so I’d say the mere availability of the drug is a problem. It’s not just that sometimes an addiction develops and then there’s a problem.
I agree with most of what you said, just not this one part. It’s an antiquated point of view from rosier times with less dangerous drugs on the street.
Heroin can be lethal the first time you try it. People were dying of opioids because of heroin long before fentanyl was on the streets and people were dying from oxycontin too.
Does fentanyl kill more? Yes, because again I am not disagreeing that it is far more powerful, that there are scumbags who mislabel supply or purposely adulterate drugs to make them seem more potent, etc
I’d just argue that your point of view is a war on drugs bullshit take that only started to give a shit about the addiction crisis once vice and youtube dummies starting making fentanyl a buzzword. It’s overly myopic and ignores the systemic factors that drive people to use.
So you regulate supply. Then what? Fentanyl is already regulated. It still doesn’t address the fact that 95% of the people on the streets in Kensington are seen as utter trash and society is waiting for them to die. It still doesn’t address that someone on their way to that place has no real support if they don’t come from a rich family (and honestly even then it’s not great?)
I do absolutely agree with you that safe access to regulated drugs is absolutely necessary. If addicts could get pharmaceutical grade heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, etc it would ensure safe reliable dosing in a monitored site that could support overdose if it occurs (remember that overdoses are not inherently fatal), it would essentially completely disarm the cartels (unless they fully shift to avocados or whatever), and it would allow you to regularly connect with addicts to encourage treatment and connect with resources like housing and welfare
But whenever these programs get trialed (just the clean needle stuff, no way the dea lets the drug part happen) the conservatives go nuts and the libs let out their inner NIMBY conservative so they get their funding cut and often shut down, even when data supports their existence
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Okay, keep vilifying substances instead of systemic issues because someone wasn’t kind enough about it
addiction is never, ever immediate. dependency is only one part of addiction.
ragebutt is pretty on point here. you are correct though that the lethality of fentanyl is unique and does pose a significant problem in our society. i don’t think ragebutt is giving that enough credit.
A lot of people got sold what they thought were prescription pain pills, but were actually fentanyl. Some died the first time they took. No amount of empathy is solving that, you need the drug and dealers off the streets.
Watched my boss drink one of those and a red bull at the same time. Regular thing for her apparently.
That’s a Redbull Vodka with soda water.
Is this from a Trailer Park Boys episode?
This lady makes six figures for sure. Sounds like it though.
Like alternating between, mixed drink, or just both cans right to the mouth at once?
She had two cans open, alternating between the two. It was like watching a train wreck.
Bet he’s been having a very good work time though.
That’s just one drink a day, not that bad for your liver. (For some anyway, I have no idea how some people drink so much.)
Depends on how strong and how much, some comments saying 2.5% though which probably isn’t too bad.
Claws are 5%
If it’s in the car, it’s pretty illegal a lot of places.
If one was to drink a beer first thing in the morning to get an energy boost it would be called “hair of the dog”. IMO, dude in this fictional story has a hangover and the malt liquor alleviates his symptoms.
source: reformed boozehound
Do people not read the package at all for the food they consume? It says right on the front the alcohol content.
Yeah that’s kind of insane. I kind of get it if you’re seeing it for the first time and someone else is holding it, but to actually buy it and not realize it’s alcohol is a completely different level.
Assuming this is real, maybe the wife bought them for herself and hubby thought, “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I started snagging these bad boys”. She notices that some are missing, asks about it, and we have our reveal.
Party pooper
Put it near enough to the energy drink case in the convenience store, and this kind of mixup seems plausible.
He knew
It’s not easy to tell the difference between a can of kombucha and a can of thc sparkling juice at first glance either. Both have similar designs.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or if you’re leaning into the joke bc here in america they take all of the alcohol out of kombucha so both drinks would be intoxicating anywhere else
Yes almost all the alcohol is removed from kombucha so it is not intoxicating.
AFAIK that only happens in the US due to tax/age restriction reasons. https://youtu.be/7o2dILl8Fhc
Meanwhile I’ve seen thc as high as 50mg in a single can!
“50g”
Laughs in 1000mg doses from the Joey Diaz THC chocolates.
Or maybe it was mg?? Impossible to say really.
I’m sorry, you don’t know what an alcohol buzz feels like? I’m caling bullshit on this one.
“thought”
In some sense it shows how beautiful this community is that I had to scroll all the way down here to find the “he knew” comment.
All the rest are just supportive, like “I almost made the same mistake”.
If a 12 oz can at 5% ABV once per day makes you feel liver pain, there’s probably something wrong with your liver, and maybe the drinking life isn’t for you.
I miss feeling things
It’s fine, I’ll just take more Tylenol to deal with the pain.
Just drink Painquil! It’s acetaminophen, and it’s 10% alcohol! The old liver double whammy.
If God was real, PainQuil would be morphine and blue raspberry instead of black cherry
If the devil was real, it would be anise and krokodil.
Is…is that real?
That website is surreal.
“Non-habit forming… Delicious taste.”
All the reviews are just 4-5 stars and read only:
“This reviewer received incentives from the manufacturer.”
It’s okay, they only recommend it for children older than 11.
I am a children older than 11.
had to look up that this is real lol
Oh no
Never been ID’ed for an energy drink.
Be glad you don’t live in the UK then. You have to be able to prove that you’re over 16, or 18 - I forget which. Luckily I don’t have to worry about that being 27, but it does get annoying when I forget about it and take a monster through the self checkouts. Normally I have to wait maybe 5 minutes for the overworked employee to notice me and authorize the purchase.
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Technically you dont have to, its not an actual law just supermarkets being melts
hmm, there’s gotta be some agreement or contract that makes them.
no business is going to willingly get in the way of their own profits like that. no companies id for alcohol because they’re concerned for your health lol. if there isn’t a law or legal incentive for them to do that then they have credible evidence that there will be if they don’t.
you can’t survive as a business in 2025 if you willingly do things that could show down sales for something silly like “health and safety”
Honestly caffeine should be age restricted to like 15+. Its a very addictive psychoactive drug.
Energy drinks are 14+ in my country. No idea whether it’s enforced though. Only became interested in the during uni.
They did this in Sweden too. Then people stopped buying energy drinks, because most people self checkout and you had to wait for an employee to come check that you are an adult. And swedes being swedes, they would rather die than go through that.
Now they have a permanent employee checking from afar with a tablet, approving people without any intervention or interruption. I wouldnt be surprised if the energy drink brands partially pay for them.
I need to move to Sweden
I’d be awesome PR for them if they were paying for it because waiting for an employee to check your ID for a damn energy drink while you’re trying to get on with your day sounds annoying as shit
I tolerate it for alcohol but energy drinks would be too much
I only know about Sytembolaget thanks to Nanowar of Steel
Energy drinks are pretty bad for you though. Probably should do the same thing in the US.
We don’t do public health here anymore. Soon RFK will advise babies drink energy drinks.
We are like two years max from the Brawdo timeline.
Soylent green has electrolytes
Why do people have to be ID’d for an energy drink? We don’t have to be ID’d for them here
There’s no legal minimum age, but some retailers voluntarily limit sales of high-caffeine drinks to under 16s.
UK retailers also mostly operate a “challenge 25” policy, which means for any age-restricted items (alcohol, tobacco, blades etc.) with an 18 or 16 limit they ask for ID from anyone who looks under 25, to make sure they’re catching people who look old for their age.
im rarely id’d for beer…
I never got ID’d buying Sparks (basically four loko before four loko was cool). The places I went that had it, stocked it with the RedBull and it only says it has alcohol in it in the smallest of print. I was getting that shit when I was still just 18.