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brazil84 comments on The Unfinished Mystery of the Shangri-La Diet - Less Wrong
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That's really interesting. When I think about it, it is plausible that rate of absorbtion would affect the addictiveness of alcohol.
Doesn't look too plausible to me. There are easy ways to increase the rate of absorption of alcohol, for example drink on an empty stomach, or drink carbonated alcoholic drinks. I haven't heard of these behaviors being associated with alcoholism.
That's an interesting point too. The basis for my reasoning above is Paul Graham's idea that if you take something you like and make it more intense it increases the potential for addiction. I do agree that the examples you give go against this intuition. What are the drinks of choice for alcoholics? There is the stereotype of the wino but not the champagne-o.
That's because alcoholics generally can't afford champagne on a regular basis.
A SodaStream and a bottle of vodka leads to... interesting results quickly and cheaply.
I don't see why not . . . it doesn't cost much to carbonate liquids, agreed?
I thought champagne referred to wine from the Champagne region of France.
It's interesting, the use of the word "champagne" is somewhat controversial. I believe that it used to be that you could call carbonated wine "champagne" if it were prepared in the Champagne style. According to Wikipedia, they changed the law in 2006 but grandfathered wines which were sold before then.
Anyway, this is a bit of a side issue. If you don't want to call it "champagne," you can call it "sparkling wine" and the same argument applies.
Differences in the rate of absorption can definitely be important to addiction; oral amphetamines are not particularly addictive, but amphetamines taken in other ways that increase absorption rate are very addictive. And the last I checked the research on that, there wasn't much understanding of exactly why the line there is where it is. Perhaps alcohol just works completely differently, but it is also possible that drinking on an empty stomach, or drinking carbonated drinks, doesn't increase absorption enough to make a difference. Or perhaps it does make a difference, but not enough to have turned up in any research yet; this isn't an area where small effects would be easy to detect.