I’m begging y'all, put at least minimum care into how you present your fics to the public.
“idk man you name it im tired” as a title tells me you didn’t care.
“This is STUPID” in the tags. Okay, I won’t read it then.
“I don’t know how to do tags” tells me you didn’t bother taking one look at any page in the archive to see how others tag and use it as reference. Or, you know, you could have asked, too.
“idk if this is trash, bc I worte this in the middle of the night bc idrk” in the summary doesn’t really encourage me to open the story.
3 lines of tags on a 4k monitor, none of which are actual searchable tags but a stream of consciousness about the author’s sleeping habits and music preferences, tell me you don’t know what your story is about if you can’t give us 2-4 main tropes and themes. Also, this isn’t tumblr, come on mate.
“I hate myself for this fic” okay? Why did you write it then if it brought you discomfort? Moreover, why did you post it???
“Why Did I Write This?” well, hobbies are about joy and fun, if writing doesn’t make you happy then maybe it’s time to look for something else to do in your free time? No point in making yourself miserable.
“The Author Regrets Everything” paired with more self-deprecating tags suggest I better not bother opening the fic because it clearly made the author miserable and why would I be miserable as well?
“killing myself rn” please get help.
0 additional tags is better than that. Writing and sharing fics should be an act of care, not anguish.
Also just adding that if you put “sorry this is disgusting and bad and i’m going to hell for this,” the people who think you are bad for writing it will not forgive you and the people who clicked eager to read the story you advertised think you think they’re nasty.
“we need to stop the stigma towards drug users and addicts” and “we need to challenge the idea that being sober makes you boring” and “we need to stop acting like binge drinking to the extent you’re doing medical damage is fun and normal for young people” are all ideas that can and should coexist.
just so we’re clear, the threshold for “binge drinking to the extent you’re doing medical damage” is waaaay lower than you think.
I work in an obstetrician and gynaecologist’s office. we have to tell patients on a regular basis that they are binge drinking weekly when they think they are simply consuming a normal amount of alcohol on the weekends.
having more than 3 drinks in a single sitting if you have an estrogen based endocrine system is a binge that is medically significant.
having more than 5 in a sitting is a medically significant binge for someone with a testosterone based endocrine system.
every time you do this, it significantly impacts your risk of getting breast cancer, and damages your liver. it takes time to recover from that liver damage. if you’re having a 3-5 or more drink binge on a weekly basis, you are an alcoholic, medically speaking, and your liver is not recovering.
again: the bar for what binge drinking is, medically, is so much lower than what you think it is.
alcohol is a really toxic substance and not something you should fuck around with.
again: if you have an estrogenized hormone system (common for most women), then 3 drinks is a binge. if you have a testosteronized hormone system (common for most men), then 5 drinks is a binge.
anything above that number, consumed as frequently as weekly or more, and you’re medically a binge drinking alcoholic.
also, if you’re drinking any quantity of alcohol 6 days a week or more, that’s another threshold at which, medically speaking, you meet the definition of alcoholism. your liver needs more days without alcohol in your system than just one a week to recover and be healthy.
I don’t say any of this to shame anyone—to me, alcoholism or substance use disorders aren’t a sign of weakness or moral failing. and most of us genuinely don’t know this stuff.
rather—I point this out because it’s important to reduce harm, and find ways to live healthier, happier lives. there is a life outside of constant binge drinking. it’s not always easy to find it. but it’s out there. you deserve a life where your emotional needs are met by something other than alcohol, and a life in which your liver is healthy, and the ways you cope and celebrate and find joy don’t put you at increased risk of cancer.
also–even if alcohol is the only way you can self-medicate, or if you choose to go on with your alcohol usage anyway regardless of other options–you still deserve to know what it’s doing to your body.
information is key. you don’t have to stop drinking, but the utter lack of education on alcohol + the normalization of binge drinking in current society leads to many people drinking without any idea of what it’s doing to their bodies.
addicts deserve accurate medical information regardless of what they decide to do with it. for some people, losing liver function is worth the benefits they get from binge drinking, but they can’t make that choice if they don’t know what the consequences are to begin with.
addicts deserve accurate medical information regardless of what they decide to do with it.
ALT
