wine

ASTROLIQUOR for September 7-13—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, even if you’ve been feeling your age lately, this week brings new energy. Whatever age you were happiest, that’s the way you’ll feel. Hark back to relatively mature times and you may find yourself sipping a Grey Goose martini. But good luck if you long for less mature times—you could end up shotgunning beers at the park. With apologies for gross stereotyping, this is a kick-ass way to feel young.

Taurus, this is the week to complete important negotiations. The terms won’t get more favorable, so sign the documents already. The sooner you get this boring task done, the sooner you can hit that box of white wine that’s been giving you come-hither looks. Mix it up with some Galiano (after you finish the financial stuff).

When things are tough, Gemini, the stars advise hitting the bars and finding a stranger to listen to your troubles. A real psychologist would just cost you money ($100 and hour? or four bottles of Smirnoff?…you do the math), plus they’d have all sorts of rules about bringing flasks to the office, etc.  Who needs professionals? Any stranger with a sufficiently high blood-alcohol level will be happily regaled by you.

Life feels hard right now, Cancer, but you just need some perspective. The world is full of real problems, and you…well, your worst hardship is having to settle for a mocktail when you want a cocktail. But the stars are recommending mocktails to you this week. What total BS. The stars are zillions of light years away, and arguably their recommendations are therefore zillions of years old. Read no further; go and get drunk.

Leo, you suddenly realize you’ve been living behind a façade. Look at yourself in the mirror…who the hell are you anyway? Getting to know the real you may take time and involve a stack of gooey self-help books, which sounds like totally boring busy-work. Instead of engaging in an uphill battle to know thyself, learn to love the fake you—then mix yourself a glitzy gin-and-Goldschlager to celebrate the joys of artificiality.

You’ve worked so hard, Virgo. You’ve slaved away and put everything you had into a project at work, only to receive faint praise. Nor are you happy with the results. As for what your boss thinks…you might need a cardboard box. You certainly need a supply of Hypnotiq, Blue Curacao, and Malibu. Because when you’re blue, there’s nothing like a blue drink.

Libra, you are fretting about small things. Cut yourself some slack. With all your worrying, you’ve barely noticed that you have a well-dressed admirer. The stars (which don’t like being wrong) say this potential flirtation features an Aries, an Aquarius, or a Gemini. Talk about hedging your bets, stars. But they also call for shots of Bailey’s and butterscotch schnapps, so you can’t very well argue.

Your personal life is out of control, Scorpio. Since this is fairly normal for you, there’s no need to sweat it. Distract yourself by rearranging the furniture or discovering what you get when you combine red wine and rum in equal parts, then toss some random fruits into it (the booze, not the furniture). Maintain a permanent vat of this on your coffee table and you’ll never want for visitors.

Sagittarius, you get a break from being designated driver, which calls for a big Stolichnaya-Jagermeister bender. But don’t get so hammered that you won’t realize it when a drunken friend tries to get behind the wheel. Peel that moron out of his/her car, moralize drunkenly, and call a cab. Drinking is awesome—we don’t need it spoilt by idiots.

A charity hits you up for money, Capricorn. If you don’t agree with its message, don’t feel pressured to give. If you do agree, by all means give, but save some cash for the liquor cabinet. Maybe you can volunteer time rather than money? Otherwise you won’t be able to afford this week’s celestial recommendation: Vana Tallinn. Plus you’ll meet cool new people volunteering (maybe an interesting Leo). But watch out for “frenemies” this week!

Aquarius, are you by any chance an organ donor? Consider filling out a card this week; practically everything barring your liver should be usable. If that’s a little too morbid for you, why not donate blood? Unless it’s full of rum. Come to think of it, maybe you could just be nice to people this week…which you usually are anyway. Hmmm, what do the stars suggest, then? Just go and get a haircut or something.

Pisces, this week features unlikely meetings with people you thought you’d never see again. If you’ve been hankering for social connection, this is a good thing. If you’re in the witness protection program, this is a bad thing. Accordingly, be careful whether you stay in or go outside. If you have a partner, life may get turbulent this week. Smooth it out with as much Kahlua as you can absorb.

Win a house, win a car…win a deer’s head

We bears had the house to ourselves all day while the family went to the Pacific National Exhibition. They did not buy a ticket for the showhome, despite its having a wine cellar in the freaking foyer of the house. They said it also had a deer head in the foyer, which could just have easily have been a bear’s head.

I don’t think it’s even a real deer’s head. I could live with it, even if Chuck Testa couldn’t.

Does alcohol relieve stress? Why we need more studies…

My Fellow Inebriates,

I’m still pondering whether our moving-related alcohol consumption is helping our stress.

What the hell is stress anyway?

There’s bad stress (distress), and there’s good stress (eustress).

Distress can make you feel like you’re in a life-threatening situation, even when you’re not

Distress is what we’re talking about when we experience flight-or-fight symptoms despite not being chased by a leopard. Sweaty palms, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and anxiety all arise from a threefold assault on the body’s systems—the central nervous system, the adrenal system, and the cardiovascular system—which, if prolonged, threatens homeostasis, or equilibrium.

Eustress, or positive stress, describes the feeling of completing a grueling run, planning a wedding, or completing a demanding task—mental,  physical, or both. While the same physical symptoms may present, the critical differentiator here is often that you’re in control of the situation, and the outcome corresponds with satisfaction and well-being.

And I forgot to mention the kids…

So if I spend most of my time trying to lose control, that’s stressful, right? In a bad way? And when I don’t manage to lose control, I find myself hanging out with characters like Scarybear and Fluffy, who scare me with apocalyptic and paranormal threats respectively (although Scary also throws in some old-fashioned physical violence). LBHQ is a stressful place!

(I haven’t even mentioned the silverfish in the bathroom, which Fluffy is apparently summoning from the Other Side. He didn’t think of doing it at the townhouse, I guess, but he must have remembered that particular Dark Power when we moved here.)

Okay, then, can alcohol help?

The stress response is much too complex for my two brain cells to understand, but apparently chronic stress initiates a cascade of equilibrium-adverse events in the body:

Corticotropin Releasing Factor (CRF)

  • The hypothalamus secretes CRF (corticotropin releasing factor), which gives the pituitary gland a kick.
  • The pituitary secretes ACTH (adrenocorticotropin hormone), which gives the adrenal glands a kick.
  • The adrenals secrete steroids that affect temperature, appetite, arousal, alertness, and emotional state, priming the body to direct oxygen and nutrients where they’re most urgently needed.

All this is okay, but you wouldn’t want it to go on all day, which is what we’re talking about when we refer to chronic stress.

Researchers have found that stressed-out people will seek alcohol if:

  • Other resources are unavailable.
  • Alcohol is accessible.
  • They think it will help.

Wow! That seems like a bit of a no-brainer. What’s more interesting is that monkeys raised by their peers consume twice as much alcohol as monkeys raised by their mothers. And rats exposed to unavoidable electric shock (omg!) demonstrate a greater appetite for alcohol than rats who can control whether they receive a shock.

The take-home message is that lab animals are getting a lot of alcohol. So if the well is indeed drying up here at LBHQ now that the stress of moving is almost over, perhaps I could moonlight at a lab.

I contacted the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR).

Some studies show that low doses of alcohol actually improve the stress response and even enhance performance. Other studies show that alcohol initiates the stress response. Moreover, the response depends heavily on whether the subject is an occasional drinker or an established alcoholic. Stress may play a role in relapse among abstinent alcoholics, but genetics may also play a dominant role.

We definitely need more alcohol studies, using lots of different subjects, especially bears.