There have been some changes in the people around us lately. Haven’t you noticed?

One is weight gain: the old college “Freshman 15” (extra pounds – often pizza related) of students has become the “Covid 20” because a constant supply of snacks plus anxiety will expand the humans, girth-wise.

Another change has been a well reported increase in alcohol consumption. From a personal, anecdotal perspective the glass recycling bin in your correspondent’s Manhattan apartment building doth overflow! The unpredictability and unprecedentedness of our current “Covidacene” era heightens anxiety: divorce rates are up and many people are enjoying various drugs though most of them are less harmful than alcohol.

The whole sanity bell curve has been shunted to the right so that normally stable people are rattled and the hothouse flowers among us at the right end of the distribution go bananas.

People “take it out on others” and due to lockdown that’s usually co-habitants. It is very primate – very human – to bite the nearest ape which is as effective as it is damaging: glucocorticoid stress hormones (like cortisol) are actually reduced by this externalization of aggression which is a horrible glitch in our behavioral psychology.

Journalists are conflicted as to the dynamics of alcohol and its effects: many say alcohol isn’t really that bad – particularly in moderation. Perhaps. But you could argue they have a dog in this fight and if you’ve ever met a writer you’ll know alcoholism fits well with that profession. So journalistic reportage of the dangers of alcohol can be mixed and a tad cherry picked.

But actual medical opinion isn’t: alcohol is a toxin (a real toxin, not a Goop “toxin” needing a coffee enema or jade vag egg) to every organ in the human body and unlike most other drugs causes a constellation of horrible consequences from cancer to stroke to heart disease.

And a certain percentage of the humans, at the more aggressive end of the spectrum with their inhibitions reduced get really mean and violent.

Remember though: neurologically speaking alcohol does not cause violence or aggression: rather, it reduces inhibitions which let already aggressive or violent people run wild.

And it costs. Cirrhosis is the 11th most common cause of death worldwide and that refers to just the imbibers and not the collateral, societal damage inflicted by booze. Actuarially, an alcoholic’s projected life span is reduced by 24- 28 years and there’s a medical slideshow here which makes for very “sober” reading to explain the mechanisms of that reduction.

Further, alcoholism is more difficult to escape than many realize. Dis-served by “solutions” like A.A. – the best of 1930s medical knowledge – but even with way more effective medication assisted cessation quitting, the attendant troubles are life damaging physically and mentally.

Only staying drunk is worse. One of the nastier consequences of increased booziness lately is an increase in domestic violence, a life wrecking or life ending phenomenon. It is a problem relevant to our pandemic because not only are people drinking more but they’re also cooped up and forced by lockdowns to spend time with loved ones they could previously escape.

Domestic violence can take many forms; slapping, punching, dousing with scalding water, emotional abuse, hurling objects, imprisonment or lock-outs, several forms of emotional abuse and strangulation.

It is to this last category we now turn our attention and there is even a DoJ backed “Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention” devoted to it. People not in the legal biz are oblivious to the enhanced sentences and seriousness with which strangulation is treated at law. Punishments have been cranked up to felonious assault or attempted murder in nearly all states and federally over the past two decades. We’re a long way from the “Homer throttles Bart” Simpsons jokes.

Legislatures, lobbied by women’s and medical groups changed the status of strangling for three reasons.

The first is that strangulation is exceptionally dangerous: not only is hypoxia (lack of oxygen) potentially fatal but in a strangulation/choking the damage to veins, capillaries, trachea and most importantly nerves can all kill the victim surprisingly sometimes even hours after the crime.

Secondly, strangulation often leaves few marks unlike other forms of domestic violence where hemorrhage or bruises are hard to deny.

The third and most compelling argument for the legal changes is statistical: a strangler is seven (7) times more likely to ultimately murder their victim: that’s seven times more likely than a “standard issue” batterer who is already many times more likely to kill their partner than a nonviolent spouse. That’s quite a statistical height. Consequently penalties are (rightfully) through the roof.

Strangling, like all domestic violence is often co-related with alcohol abuse. Horribly, due to anterograde amnesia (a.k.a. “blackouts”) many don’t remember or admit to past behavior: “If I can’t remember it, it didn’t happen” is the theme here. OK, drunkie.

An analogous psychology joke is it is the kind of lack of self-awareness an obsessive compulsive patient exhibits when he complains to his psychiatrist not about having to wash his hands four hours a day but rather complains that he can’t get his damn hands clean.

The unpredictability and dread of living with an alcoholic is challenging: the typical “turn on a dime” emotional oscillation has the drunk smiling and joking one minute, a rage filled violent maniac the next. The oscillation rate (speed of change) is faster than with bipolar patients and terrifying. It wears partners down.

Booze as the primary mechanism in domestic violence is a double misfortune because there are a lot better drugs than alcohol out there: pretty much all of them actually.

Psychedelics are “mind expanding”, powerful, therapeutic and pleasing: they aren’t physically harmful, aren’t addictive and don’t turn people into raving, fist swinging assholes like beer does.

When used correctly (important caveat, that) opiates relax and place the user quietly on the couch happily dozing in their own little lethe paradise. Marijuana is similarly passive or “chill” and is hard to use incorrectly.

For a comparison ask any cop how many fights, disasters and murders s/he deals with which involve alcohol verses the other drugs listed above.

In this upside-down world you’re better to call your dealer than the liquor store. And if you do call your dealer – to avoid the “Covid 20” stay off those Doritos!