Posts by Emma Hart
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Dyan, I'm still waiting for a response to my crticism that you confounded binge drinking and alcoholism. Or my comment that people should comment with some compassion for the groups they're talking about and not be quite so judgy-pants.
And it boggles me why you can't see what Russell is saying. Your criticism about them (binge drinkers and/or alcoholics) taking livers away from Decent People can be applied to any health problem that is the result of something people have done voluntarily. Hence people who have contracted AIDS through risky sexual behaviours. Wouldn't there also be a 'moral responsibility' to not 'squander' health resources on people who indulge in unhealthy sexual, sporting or eating practices, or is it only people who indulge in unhealthy drinking practices you find "morally reprehensible"? I genuinely can't see the difference you can see.
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The doctor that accessed me for my ACC claim, deducted %10 of that claim, because my dad was an alcoholic.
Oh Steven, that's horrible. I can sympathise - I was sent to an immunologist at one point who, while ignoring the results of my blood tests, diagnosed my chronic fatigue as depression solely because I said my father was an alcoholic. Even after the psychiatrist contradicted him, it remains the most frustrating experience of my illness.
What I've been trying to say is that genes and environmental factors inter-relate in alcoholism as in so many other health issues. But being taught about alcoholism as a disease and an addiction at high school made a huge difference to the way I viewed my father. For me it was very constructive, but I can totally see the other side of it.
Matthew: I think you're contradicting an argument no-one is making. We're not saying that women aren't binge drinking, or that their drinking habits haven't changed over the last (it seems) fifty years or so. It's the "women are drinking like men = OMG PANIC!" I have a problem with.
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I will dispute the genetic component, then add cultural.
Pretty much everything is a combination of genes and environment.
Psychiatric geneticists John I. Nurnberger, Jr., and Laura Jean Bierut suggest that alcoholism does not have a single cause—including genetic—but that genes do play an important role "by affecting processes in the body and brain that interact with one another and with an individual's life experiences to produce protection or susceptibility." They also report that fewer than a dozen alcoholism-related genes have been identified, but that more likely await discovery.
From here. Your genes affect how strong an effect a particular drug has on you, what levels of the enzymes that process alcohol you have. Given our children have two alcoholic grand-parents, I had a long chat with my doctor about this. She was adamant that while there is a genetic pre-disposition, environmental factors like family stability and good drinking role models were more important.
This is so complex and fraught with 'the fine line' of interpretation that it's doing my head in. Can't you all be a bit more simplistic about it?
Heh. I have this sort of mental guideline that if you're talking about a particular group, you should write as if members of that group are reading - because this is the internet, and they are. Hopefully this helps to regulate the urge to get all judgy-pants in most people.
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No they don't. But lets think about the 'It's not Ok!' campaign and the anti-smacking legislation. Do we agree that they had a positive impact? Sometimes people do actually have to be told, quiet loudly, not to make bad choices.
I really don't think that's an equivalent position. It's possible to drink heavily without actually hurting other people. It's not really possible to smack your wife round without hurting her.
Dyan then moves from criticising female binge drinkers to talking about alcoholics. Alcoholism is a physical addiction with a genetic component - I think calling it a 'bad choice' is a bit... I was going to say 'simplistic', but I think the word I want is 'unfair'.
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And the scary stat that the majority of heavily intoxicated youth at R&V were young women.
Actually, while that was clearly the inference being drawn, it wasn't actually the stat. The stat was that women heavily outnumbered men in the detox tents.
The missing piece of information in between those two statements is are heavily intoxicated women more likely to be taken to the detox tents (as opposed to laughed at by their friends and left in a paddock) than men are?
And Danielle, I don't think you're being over-sensitive. They actually had a guy there saying, and I admit I'm paraphrasing for angry, "Remember the good old days when drunk women were seen as sad and desperate?" Yes, because nice women were at home, taking care of the drunk men's children.
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I thought that was politer
Yeah, sorry, I just spent a good couple of minutes trying to find the comment of Craig's Hilary was objecting to.
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A very funny Media 7 last evening, which I watched before I fetched my hat and coat and went out.
My partner was briefly unable to understand why, when Russell said he was going to show us his favourite newsreader, I clapped and squeed. He gets it now.
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...my brain hurts:(
Still? Damn. Does this help?
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Why go out of your way to appoint someone who will be a bigoted douche... unless you actually believe that bigoted douchery is The Way Forward?
Yeah, I mean, okay, Jacquie Grant will be using him as a footstool inside of a week, but I can't see any scenario that justifies this appointment that isn't an attempt to nobble the Tribunal from the inside. Okay, so they kind of owe the guy for deselecting him in his own electorate in favour of John Key but that doesn't seen sufficient to me to put him there. Which just really leaves the question, can you complain to the HRRT about the make-up of the HRRT?
For about a week, this appointment simply reduced me to an unprecedented level of inarticulacy.
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Human Rights Review Tribunal.
Cheers. I had a funny feeling I was going to cock something up today.