Thursday, July 27, 2006

Great news about coffee! No wonder I am still alive!

Rarely does the mainstream media contain much to smile about. However, the article below from the British Guardian, reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald in June, is great news indeed!

Scientists have discovered that drinking large quantities of coffee stops liver rot in big drinkers! And the more coffee you drink, the better it works! Fantastic! This explains why I am still alive!

So, health-freaks, what do you have to say for yourselves now? "Oh, you shouldn't drink so much, it'll damage your liver" "Oh, don't you know how terrible it is for your health to drink four pots of coffee a day ". Blah fucking blah. How stupid do you feel now, eh, with your bloody herbal tea and your... what ever it is people who don't drink alcohol consume. Air. (And that stuff will kill you, by the way.)

It isn't even that I particularly like my liver. We really don't get on. I think it is the age difference. I'm 28, my liver is on the pension.

However, unfortunately, scientists are yet to find a way to live without one. So this is positive news. It makes sense as well. It is lifes natural rhythm. Coffee all day. Beer all night. Repeat. Now science has proven it.


Coffee stops liver rot in big drinkers

June 14, 2006

DRINKING coffee could help protect you from liver disease caused by alcohol, research shows.

People who drink one cup of coffee a day are 20 per cent less likely to suffer alcoholic cirrhosis than those who drink none.

And the protective effect increases with the more coffee you have: those who drink two or three cups a day are 40 per cent less likely to suffer cirrhosis, while people who drink four or more cups are 80 per cent less likely to get the disease.

The findings were conducted by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente health care organisation in California, and published in the US journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

The link between coffee and cirrhosis was first reported by Kaiser Permanente researchers in 1993, but this new study - which followed 125,000 people over 22 years - "solidifies the association", said Arthur Klatsky, the head researcher.

He said: "Consuming coffee seems to have some protective benefits against alcoholic cirrhosis, and the more coffee a person consumes the less risk they seem to have of being hospitalised or dying of alcoholic cirrhosis. [But] we did not see a similar protective association between coffee and non-alcoholic cirrhosis."

The researchers studied people who underwent a medical examination between 1978 and 1985 and who, at the time, had no diagnosed liver disease. Participants filled out a questionnaire detailing how much alcohol, coffee and tea they drank daily.

By the end of 2001, 330 of them had been diagnosed with liver disease, including 199 with alcoholic cirrhosis, a condition where heavy drinking causes progressive damage and impaired function of the liver.

Blood tests conducted on the heaviest drinkers confirmed that those who enjoyed coffee were less likely to have high levels of enzymes in the liver - a key indicator of liver damage. But drinking tea had no effect, suggesting the ingredient that protects against cirrhosis is not caffeine.

The Guardian

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

‘Filthy and full of drunk losers ... A complete dive’

This is my first post and my first piece of advice as part of an alcoholic’s guide to modern life is you need to find yourself a good home.


For Carlo Sands, that is the Shannon Hotel in Chippendale (inner-inner city Sydney).

A lovely review of this delightful drinking hole can be found here

Some of the comments posted include:

"What a miserable place. Filthy and full of drunk losers..."

"A complete dive. Full of pissed middle aged yobos."

"Full of sleazy barman [sic] and low life sad, insecure alcoholic punters."

and

"Great place for squatters!"

But some of the comments are negative.

In other words, it is a fucking great place for your modern alcoholic to get away from the mobs of marauding young people with their pierced toenails and stupid ring tones, and enjoy a decent drink.

There is nothing worse than trying to enjoy the process of getting drunk surrounded by large numbers of people who are a thousand times more attractive and cooler than you. It is simply distracting.

The Shannon presents no such problems. It is a pub that, trying to be nice, the best thing the reviewer can say about it is it has its own dartboard.

But it is a good dart board, and most importantly, almost always available.

It is an Irish pub, which is defined as one in which the bar manager is always drunk. Paddy, god bless his soul, is no exception. Ever.

He is the only bar manager I have ever seen be thrown out of his own pub. When asked about the incident later, he claimed he wasn't being ejected, merely helped to the door.

And anti-smoking laws remain a "nice theory" within the Shannon's walls.

This, no doubt, makes me a "sad, low life alcoholic". I can only hope so.

At least the rest of you bastards are not getting under my fucking feet when I am trying to down my umpteenth schooner and aim for the general vicinity of the dartboard.

All that said, I do have to confess that if I was to offer one point of constructive criticism, it would be that perhaps The Shannon Hotel could be improved by, maybe, the occasional cleaning of the toilets.

Just a suggestion.