Maybe, but if this thing works it's way more appealing to me and I would quit completely alcohol. I've been looking for a healthier replacement but it's pretty hard to find.
To me proper beer in a proper bar is to a short-acting benzodiazepine what a proper meal is to Soylent. Drugs are part of human culture after all, like food, and part of the enjoyment comes from the social environment.
I don't think the health effects are that much of a concern. The liver is quite capable of dealing with alcohol consumed in moderation, and if you are drinking that much that you are getting worried about the state of your liver you should also worry how you are treating the people around you while continuously under the influence.
> I don't think the health effects are that much of a concern.
Very many people (especially in the UK) do not drink alcohol in moderation. Liver disease and cirrhosis is seen more commonly in young people than it used to be.
> and if you are drinking that much that you are getting worried about the state of your liver you should also worry how you are treating the people around you while continuously under the influence.
This appears to over-estimate the amount of alcohol needed to destroy a liver. A person does not need to be continuously drunk to severely damage their liver. Tolerance to alcohol would probably mean that they are not drunk all the time.
A woman drinking a glass of wine each evening, with an extra glass on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is drinking (10 glasses of wine per week) is drinking something like 26 units a week, assuming a 200 ml serving size and a 13% ABV strength. WHO suggest that women drinking more than 14 units per week are at risk (although this is old advice) and men should drink less than 21 units per week. This woman will not see her drinking as anything extreme, and most people in the UK wouldn't see that as a worrying drinking pattern.
Current recommendations include some alcohol free days to allow the liver to repair itself.
> Very many people (especially in the UK) do not drink alcohol in moderation. Liver disease and cirrhosis is seen more commonly in young people than it used to be.
The British problem is more of a social problem of really, really overdoing it on the weekend - Everything2 has a lovely writeup on the "vertical drinking establishment". If you substitute benzos for alcohol you may have less vomiting in the streets, but just as much fighting at chuck-out time.
There seem to be more cases of liver diseases in Britain than in other European nations. Since binge-drinking does not affect the liver quite as much as drinking smaller amounts more often, it seem that these are due to alcoholism. If you substitute benzodiazepines for alcohol, this wouldn't be much of an improvement, instead of a whiny, angry alcoholic whose life revolves around his stash you'd have a whiny angry benzo addict whose life still revolves around their stash. Their liver would be in better shape, though.
(Full disclosure: I have alcoholic family members and am deeply suspicious of quick cures)
Are we sure alcohol alone explains increases in liver problems? People are also increasingly fat and have poor diet related problems that would impact the liver.
The main risk factors for cirrhosis are alcohol and hepatitis B and C. The UK doesn't have a worse drug problem than the rest of Western Europe, consequently it must be the drinking.
This report from the British government says that virus hepatitis and alcohol are the biggest risk factors and that a strategy needs to be devised against these to fight chronic liver disease.
The majority of beer consumed in, say, UK is not "proper beer" in any sense, it is huge bottles of ethanol-solution designed to be cheap and get people drunk, and with some coloring and flavoring to make it somewhat tasty. The same market can easily be filled by huge bottles of the same coloring/flavoring with short-acting benzodiazepine, if only it was legal.
"The majority of beer consumed in, say, UK is not "proper beer" in any sense, it is huge bottles of ethanol-solution designed to be cheap and get people drunk, and with some coloring and flavoring to make it somewhat tasty."
