Alcohol

Some people called Medscape thought fit to send me a short questionnaire about alcoholism. Thinking that perhaps they knew something that I didn't, I took the test, which took the form of five multiple choice questions. Questions which all included a blue prompt against one of the answers, but I was too slow to work out what that was about. 

As it turned out, I made an informed guess to the first question and got that right. Uninformed guess to the second and got that right. Informed guess to the third and got that wrong. Not a clue about the fourth. And guessed the second most popular answer - for the fifth and last. This being that Diazepam, aka Valium, the stuff I take to get me through dental injections, could be used in mild cases of alcoholism, presumably to calm down the craving. Sadly, more people thought that something else that I had never heard of was better.

The answers came with helpful text, including a fair bit of material on behavioural symptoms. But given that it had turned out that the idea was to test doctors' knowledge of the matter, rather than to test their customers, I shall stick with the rule I that I got from a piece in Murdoch's 'Sun', many years ago now, that one should have at least two days clear of alcohol every week. 

A rule now qualified by the need to keep my INR (the thing that warfarin interferes with) reasonably steady.

PS: I remember that when I was young, front line medical people often drank a good deal. Presumably, the result of stress. Not to mention the public houses frequented by the medical students from the big London hospitals. Presumably also, no more.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/public-service.html. Notice of a public house near a big London hospital. The landlord of this establishment once told me that he declined to host their rugby team events on the grounds that they were a lot more bother than they were worth. Horror stories from a colleague.