alcohol is effectively destroying lower class society out in the Po.
drug use not helping. but alcoholism has just become the norm out here.
he’s pretty old. I can’t imagine he’s all that focused on how to get that second term.
You know, they could have made one bar black and one bar white.
Was alcohol much of a problem before people figured out how to distill it? I’ve seen some ideas that beer/wine kinda made civilization possible (safer to drink than water in cities).
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I don’t think any drug was a problem. People have been doing coca and poppy for millennia without issues
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I think “become” is probably not right, or at least there have been times in the past where it was at least as bad as today. That was one of the drivers of the temperance movement that resulted in Prohibition.
I think changes in abundance and potency are big issues. Along with other changes in culture and standards.
Like alcoholism was probably less of a thing when the average life-span was 30 years, cars drove themselves, and spousal abuse was cool.
Same for obesity.
People have big bags of coca leaves for sale in the markets in Peru. The old ladies like to chew them while doing laundry down at the river*.
I’m sure there’s quite a potency difference between chewing the leaves and snorting the processed stuff. Granted - I haven’t tried either…
*those ladies are tough. They’ll carry multiple bundles of damp laundry home on their backs. I offered to help once and could barely handle one pack.
By and large, drugs that are less potent and slower-acting are less problematic. And chewing coca leaves is a lot less potent as a drug than purified cocaine, and you absorb it more slowly.
Fwiw, at least half my friends who have visited the Andes tried coca tea, and none had an unpleasant reaction and none felt anything resembling addiction. As best as I can tell, chewing the leaves and drinking tea brewed from them is about as dangerous as tea and coffee.
Yeah - they had that in the hotel rooms in Cuzco. It’s supposed to help with altitude sickness. The altitude never bothered me, though.
I thought about getting some leaves and mailing them home as a joke, but then realized that was a truly, remarkably stupid idea.
One friend says that the guides offered it to his group for altitude sickness, and every person who declined it ran into troubles the next day, when they hiked up some mountain. He said he didn’t notice feeling “high” in the drug sense, but he also appreciated not having altitude sickness.
Cuzco isn’t all that much higher than some places I’d lived in for several months at a time over the previous 2 years (and a good 4000 ft lower than the top of a mountain pass I’d driven over 8 times). Machu pichu is quite a bit lower, although there are hikes nearby that take you up a ways.
I never really noticed much altitude sickness in any of those places, but I’m sure I am an anomaly.
I did close an empty soda bottle up tight at the top of that pass and watch it get crushed as we went down to sea level. That was pretty cool.
likely. when I first started drinking coffee in the office, I was get such crazy high that I couldn’t even focus on my work.
I can only imagine how caffeine pills must feel.
Trying to help the old lady (she would have had both on her back and probably not thought twice about it).
Not sure exactly how high this was, but the bottom down there was about 10K ft.
That was a sheer dropoff to my right. I didn’t realize that till after the picture was taken and I looked over.
cute boyfriend
He was actually by far the best friend I had down there. I haven’t talked to him for a while…
I won’t post the picture of him and me in a treehouse thing that had a sign that said “love nest”.