7 ms·

The reason that moderate drinkers (i.e. 1-2 doses/day) appear to enjoy less risk of disease than the abstainers, is that the group of the abstainers includes pe

The reason that moderate drinkers (i.e. 1-2 doses/day) appear to enjoy less risk of disease than the abstainers, is that the group of the abstainers includes people that used to drink but stopped to (e.g. they were alcholics and sobered up or they got sick and had to stop because of it) which still have hugely elevated risk profiles. When you account for that, the dip vanishes. [1] https://youtu.be/l3ilpQ-_IME https://youtu.be/l3ilpQ-_IME

rybosworld 5y ago
This is the right explanation. We just need a formal study to assert the obvious here. It boils down to: Self control is strongly correlated with good health
kurthr 5y ago
Classic survivorship bias.
nostromo 5y ago
We now know that isn't true, especially not for heart disease. This study, as one example, separated out "never drinkers" from "former drinkers" to address this bias and found drinking to still be beneficial. https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-02040-2 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291... I can't help but feel bias against drinking has religious roots. This has been studied to death, and generally moderate drinking is shown to be beneficial, or at very least not harmful. But some folks are so opposed to that result they keep moving the goal posts.
- oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
  Beneficial implies casualty, which is clearly not established in the association study you linked.
- prof-dr-ir 5y ago
  Of course we 'know' nothing for sure - which is a truism that applies both to the original comment and to yours... but my point is that you should rarely be convinced by a single study. That said, I have no specific criticism on the paper you refer to. It might be that the lower risk of heart disease is outweighed by an elevated risk for e.g. cancer? In that way both results can be true.
- dionidium 5y ago
  > I can't help but feel bias against drinking has religious roots. I don’t think it’s necessary to propose novel explanations for opposition to drinking. Alcohol has enormous negative effects on society and individuals. Nobody who has ever lived with an alcoholic is even remotely confused about this, but even those of us who have been lucky in that respect can easily observe large societal detriment. A staggering percentage of all violent crimes are committed by drunk people, most of us know someone who died in a drunk-driving related incident, and we’ve all been around drunk people who we found to be incredibly annoying (and often actually violent). Opposition to drinking doesn’t require additional explanation.
  - switchbak 5y ago
    The majority of drinking is done in a pro-social manner, and you're missing a large part of the picture when you say "Alcohol has enormous negative effects on society and individuals" as if it's a blanket negative impact. I agree that it does have a substantial negative component of course. There was a (ineffective and violent) prohibition on drinking a century ago. Some religions also have strong views against drinking. To ignore these societal influences on western culture and call it a novel explanation is a bit of a stretch.
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - deleted 5y ago
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    - dionidium 5y ago
      This is a bit of a non sequitur. The benefits of drinking are obvious! And, yes, religions and political parties have opposed alcohol...because the harmful effects are equally obvious. The causal arrow runs that direction. There was indeed a prohibition on drinking a century ago, spearheaded mostly by women who were tired of their husbands beating them when drunk. Prohibition is widely regarded today as an obviously ridiculous blunder, but that's mostly revisionist and ahistorical. German Lopez at Vox did a couple good pieces on what people get wrong about it: * https://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9566935/prohibition-myths-misconceptions-facts https://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9566935/prohibition-myths-mis... * https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit... There's also a bit of an asymmetry that makes weighing the pros and cons difficult. If 40 people enjoy a night at the bar, but one one of them goes home and beats their wife and another kills a family in a drunk-driving accident on the way home, do we just say, "well, 38 of the 40 peacefully enjoyed their evening, so it's mostly good." That looks like a horrific outcome, to me.
- deleted 5y ago
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- tpoacher 5y ago
  Not sure how you've reached the "religious" conclusion. With the glaring exception of Islam, alcohol plays a central role in most religions. Obviously drunkenness is another issue altogether, but that's not what such studies examine in the first place, so that's a different discussion. As for the benefits of wine in moderate drinkers, I remember reading a study which compared consumption of wine vs equal amounts of other types of alcohol, and concluded that the antioxidants and tannins in wine were the main carriers of that benefit, and if anything alcohol still had negative effects but simply the benefit from the other substances in wine overrode the harm caused by the moderate amounts of alcohol in wine. Obviously since I don't remember the study to cite it, this makes it an anecdotal claim here, but ...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    In the US the temperance movement that led to prohibition was motivated in no small part by evangelical Christianity.
    - dionidium 5y ago
      And where did evangelicals get the idea to ban alcohol? They didn't read in the Bible that alcohol was bad. They looked around at society and blamed a lot of its ills on problematic alcohol use. Some background here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou... Everybody gets this causal arrow strangely backwards. Alcohol causes people to sin; that's why Christians opposed its use. It's the negative effects of alcohol that led people to oppose its use, not "religion" per se (or even in any kind of explicit scriptural or liturgical sense).
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        Given that "sin" is a purely religious concept, and that one's culture around alcohol has a pretty big effect on whether alcohol is associated with misbehavior (there are lots of people and places for whom alcohol does not cause "sin"), it's totally fair to say that alcohol bans were at least partially religiously motivated.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  >> This study, as one example, separated out "never drinkers" from "former drinkers" to address this bias and found drinking to still be beneficial. Careful. That result is not so clear-cut: >> In the few studies that excluded former drinkers from the non-drinking reference group, reductions in risk among light-to-moderate drinkers were attenuated. [Section Abstract/Results] >> Pooled analysis of estimates relative to non-current drinkers showed a reduced mortality risk for an alcohol intake up to approximately 75 g/day. However, when studies with former drinkers in the reference group were excluded, the association was considerably weakened (see Additional file 1: Figure S9). In addition, among those studies using post-event alcohol measures, the result did not change substantively; a similar trend was seen in studies with multiple measures but failed to reach statistical significance, probably because of the low number of curves (n=2) in this subgroup (see Additional file 1: Figure S10). [Section Alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality among CVD patients] Btw, "post-event" means that participants reported their results after they had their major cardiovascular event: >> In addition, most of the included studies asked patients to report their average consumption since the occurrence of their primary events (post-event alcohol assessment), whereas three studies used alcohol intake in the year prior to primary events (pre-event), assuming drinking habits remained stable over time, even following events [14, 44, 45]. [Section Data extraction and quality assessment].
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Is there any data that points to causation? Is there any reason to believe the chemicals in alcoholic drinks would boost your health? My intuition is it's behavioral or emotional in that maybe drinking a glass of wine a day is relaxing, maybe more likely to be drinking with friends?
  - nostromo 5y ago
    I’ve heard a number of theories, here are a few: Alcohol thins the blood, much like aspirin, which at small doses decreases all cause mortality. Some types of alcohol, especially wine, are rich with antioxidants and flavonoids. Alcohol may decrease stress and anxiety. Alcohol is often consumed with friends and family, and we know socialization is correlated with better health.
    - dillondoyle 5y ago
      Thank you. I have not heard of thinning blood that is interesting! Kind of on that topic I have read a lot about inflammation casual relationship to lots of problems. As I'm getting older in my sport I take a lot more Ibuprofen than I used too ;) maybe going daily isn't such a bad idea? Yes 100% on socialization that was my first intuition.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ninjinxo 5y ago
  Feels somewhat disingenuous to combine the data for men and women, not sure about that discrepancy between surveys either: https://i.imgur.com/BVJvRx6.png https://i.imgur.com/BVJvRx6.png
- beebmam 5y ago
  Why is everyone so confident with their conclusions without RCTs? This article points out how deeply complicated ethanol consumption is with our biochemical systems. Without RCTs we really can't measure the overall effect of ethanol without quantifying the effects of ethanol on each of those systems. Can't we just reserve judgement here, and use some humbleness in the face of our ignorance to drive for a real RCT funded by the public? Can we try to avoid the trap of becoming confidence-men?
  - nostromo 5y ago
    This is an impossible ask and exactly what I mean about moving the goalposts. For example: there are zero RCTs that prove to us cigarettes cause cancer. But we're still comfortable in saying cigarettes cause cancer. It's entirely ridiculous to suggest we do a RCT and ask someone to smoke for 30 years to remove all doubt that cigarettes cause cancer. And who would pay for it? So all we have are mountains of data showing that cigarettes shorten lifespan. The same is true here, but the opposite result. Doing a RCT on alcohol for decades will never happen. All we have are mountains of data showing either no harm or a small benefit on lifespan. So that should be our null hypothesis: that moderate drinking is either harmless or slightly beneficial.
    - bena 5y ago
      This is a fun one because it's a good example of how to bend the truth with the truth. About 80 to 90 percent of people who have lung cancer were smokers. Only about 10 to 15 percent of smokers will develop lung cancer. So it's not a guarantee. It increases the risk. Just like alcohol (https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...) The problem with doing RCT with alcohol and with smoking is that we're talking about lifestyle studies. You can't really do a study with the goal being "see if we can give this dude cancer during his lifetime". And let's also remember that the study that people who drink moderately had longer lifespans just really notes correlation. It does not prove a causation. Drinking is ubiquitous. Most people drink. Drinking is also a luxury. So if you're poor, you either drink a lot or very little. Because you either have a problem or you're too broke to afford it. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185179/) Guess which income bracket engages in moderate drinking the most? That's right, the income bracket that also allows you to afford better health outcomes overall. So while it may be true that moderate drinking correlates with longer lifespans, it's a knock-on effect to the fact that being poor sucks.
- Lewton 5y ago
  Do you really think the bias against drinking (that might or might not have religious roots) is stronger than the massive bias that comes from the vast majority of people enjoying alcohol a lot?
- stefan_ 5y ago
  This meta study you link literally cites 6 papers authored by our main villain Mukamal. Is this "no one reads the article anymore" again?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  On the individual level the science is still murky, but we do know that people from cultures that have a glass of wine in the evening tend to be healthier and live longer that those who don't. That said, I don't necessarily think the magic is in the antioxidants in wine, nor do I think it has something to do with the cardiovascular effects of having alcohol in the bloodstream. My complete layperson theory is that no amount of alcohol is "healthy" per-se: its negative effects are well known and documented, and almost assuredly outweigh the few dubious positive effects. Instead, the benefits of drinking small amounts of alcohol might be entirely tied to stress management. Stress kills. It absolutely ages people and leads to early death. Having a wind-down ritual in the evening is probably the important bit. A glass of wine with dinner is a firm punctuation mark in a person's day. It signals that work is now over, and what's been left undone can be resumed tomorrow.
  - tcgv 5y ago
    That's exactly how I appreciate a beer after work every couple of days. A personal ritual to relax, taste a different - if possible craft - beer, and unplug from work. One small bottle (35 cl) is enough to make me happy ;)
- kart23 5y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily about religion. I have nonreligious, very sciency type friends who are simply opposed to drinking. Even after I show them the studies, they do as you describe, move goalposts and desperately try to justify their beliefs in some type of science. It's just a morality/cultural issue. They see people drinking & driving, excessively drinking and being violent, depicted IRL and in movies, and want to distance themselves from these bad types of people that drink alcohol.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    It can be argued that Americas Puritan rejection of alcohol and tobacco was retained with a different justification. Plenty of very secular countries have drink and smoke a lot (for communist countries, for example).
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      There was never a Puritan rejection of tobacco.
- vintermann 5y ago
  "Religious roots", hah. The Catholic church was opposed to teetotallism, as were lots of conservative denominations. Modern Teetotalism started as a secular movement out of dismay at the visible damage of alcohol use, just like socialism started out of outrage against industrial labour exploitation, and the sanitation movement started out of literal physical disgust at foul smells. The common thread wasn't religion, but progressivism: seeing society change immensely around them due to technological process, they believed (far more than we do today, ironically) that society could and should be consciously reformed. And of course, what those "studies to death" you mention have established is that alcohol is even nastier than suspected, causing birth defects and cancer like no comparable substance we consume, in addition to all the obvious negative health effects we all can see. The supposed dip at the low end, for only a few of the nasty effects, is a counter-theory to distract from the (pink?) elephant in the room. And even that counter-theory has been discredited by mendelian randomization studies.
taeric 5y ago
I confess I've harbored the idea that any benefits were simply benefits of not drinking soda. Another giant industry protected item.
throwaway81523 5y ago
I'd expect 1-2 drinks a day to be pretty far up there in the distribution where 0 (abstention) is the minimum. There'd be a spike at 0, then a drop, and then a gently sloping upward curve, maybe flattening to a local minimum somewhere lower than 1-2 drinks per day before climbing again. I'd be in there somewhere. I drink occasionally, but orders of magnitude less than 1-2 drinks per day. More like go to a user group 1x or 2x a month and have a drink or two there, or maybe lift a few with buddies after work with similar frequency. With that stuff curtailed by the pandemic, it drops to near 0. That's not abstention, it just doesn't come up. I think that has to be typical of a significant chunk of population. People on the wagon due to alcoholism exist but are likely to be a smaller group.

rybosworld 5y ago

This is the right explanation. We just need a formal study to assert the obvious here. It boils down to: Self control is strongly correlated with good health

kurthr 5y ago

Classic survivorship bias.

nostromo 5y ago

We now know that isn't true, especially not for heart disease. This study, as one example, separated out "never drinkers" from "former drinkers" to address this bias and found drinking to still be beneficial. https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-02040-2 https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291... I can't help but feel bias against drinking has religious roots. This has been studied to death, and generally moderate drinking is shown to be beneficial, or at very least not harmful. But some folks are so opposed to that result they keep moving the goal posts.

oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
Beneficial implies casualty, which is clearly not established in the association study you linked.
prof-dr-ir 5y ago
Of course we 'know' nothing for sure - which is a truism that applies both to the original comment and to yours... but my point is that you should rarely be convinced by a single study. That said, I have no specific criticism on the paper you refer to. It might be that the lower risk of heart disease is outweighed by an elevated risk for e.g. cancer? In that way both results can be true.
dionidium 5y ago
> I can't help but feel bias against drinking has religious roots. I don’t think it’s necessary to propose novel explanations for opposition to drinking. Alcohol has enormous negative effects on society and individuals. Nobody who has ever lived with an alcoholic is even remotely confused about this, but even those of us who have been lucky in that respect can easily observe large societal detriment. A staggering percentage of all violent crimes are committed by drunk people, most of us know someone who died in a drunk-driving related incident, and we’ve all been around drunk people who we found to be incredibly annoying (and often actually violent). Opposition to drinking doesn’t require additional explanation.
- switchbak 5y ago
  The majority of drinking is done in a pro-social manner, and you're missing a large part of the picture when you say "Alcohol has enormous negative effects on society and individuals" as if it's a blanket negative impact. I agree that it does have a substantial negative component of course. There was a (ineffective and violent) prohibition on drinking a century ago. Some religions also have strong views against drinking. To ignore these societal influences on western culture and call it a novel explanation is a bit of a stretch.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dionidium 5y ago
    This is a bit of a non sequitur. The benefits of drinking are obvious! And, yes, religions and political parties have opposed alcohol...because the harmful effects are equally obvious. The causal arrow runs that direction. There was indeed a prohibition on drinking a century ago, spearheaded mostly by women who were tired of their husbands beating them when drunk. Prohibition is widely regarded today as an obviously ridiculous blunder, but that's mostly revisionist and ahistorical. German Lopez at Vox did a couple good pieces on what people get wrong about it: * https://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9566935/prohibition-myths-misconceptions-facts https://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9566935/prohibition-myths-mis... * https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit... There's also a bit of an asymmetry that makes weighing the pros and cons difficult. If 40 people enjoy a night at the bar, but one one of them goes home and beats their wife and another kills a family in a drunk-driving accident on the way home, do we just say, "well, 38 of the 40 peacefully enjoyed their evening, so it's mostly good." That looks like a horrific outcome, to me.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tpoacher 5y ago
Not sure how you've reached the "religious" conclusion. With the glaring exception of Islam, alcohol plays a central role in most religions. Obviously drunkenness is another issue altogether, but that's not what such studies examine in the first place, so that's a different discussion. As for the benefits of wine in moderate drinkers, I remember reading a study which compared consumption of wine vs equal amounts of other types of alcohol, and concluded that the antioxidants and tannins in wine were the main carriers of that benefit, and if anything alcohol still had negative effects but simply the benefit from the other substances in wine overrode the harm caused by the moderate amounts of alcohol in wine. Obviously since I don't remember the study to cite it, this makes it an anecdotal claim here, but ...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  In the US the temperance movement that led to prohibition was motivated in no small part by evangelical Christianity.
  - dionidium 5y ago
    And where did evangelicals get the idea to ban alcohol? They didn't read in the Bible that alcohol was bad. They looked around at society and blamed a lot of its ills on problematic alcohol use. Some background here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou... Everybody gets this causal arrow strangely backwards. Alcohol causes people to sin; that's why Christians opposed its use. It's the negative effects of alcohol that led people to oppose its use, not "religion" per se (or even in any kind of explicit scriptural or liturgical sense).
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Given that "sin" is a purely religious concept, and that one's culture around alcohol has a pretty big effect on whether alcohol is associated with misbehavior (there are lots of people and places for whom alcohol does not cause "sin"), it's totally fair to say that alcohol bans were at least partially religiously motivated.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
>> This study, as one example, separated out "never drinkers" from "former drinkers" to address this bias and found drinking to still be beneficial. Careful. That result is not so clear-cut: >> In the few studies that excluded former drinkers from the non-drinking reference group, reductions in risk among light-to-moderate drinkers were attenuated. [Section Abstract/Results] >> Pooled analysis of estimates relative to non-current drinkers showed a reduced mortality risk for an alcohol intake up to approximately 75 g/day. However, when studies with former drinkers in the reference group were excluded, the association was considerably weakened (see Additional file 1: Figure S9). In addition, among those studies using post-event alcohol measures, the result did not change substantively; a similar trend was seen in studies with multiple measures but failed to reach statistical significance, probably because of the low number of curves (n=2) in this subgroup (see Additional file 1: Figure S10). [Section Alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality among CVD patients] Btw, "post-event" means that participants reported their results after they had their major cardiovascular event: >> In addition, most of the included studies asked patients to report their average consumption since the occurrence of their primary events (post-event alcohol assessment), whereas three studies used alcohol intake in the year prior to primary events (pre-event), assuming drinking habits remained stable over time, even following events [14, 44, 45]. [Section Data extraction and quality assessment].
dillondoyle 5y ago
Is there any data that points to causation? Is there any reason to believe the chemicals in alcoholic drinks would boost your health? My intuition is it's behavioral or emotional in that maybe drinking a glass of wine a day is relaxing, maybe more likely to be drinking with friends?
- nostromo 5y ago
  I’ve heard a number of theories, here are a few: Alcohol thins the blood, much like aspirin, which at small doses decreases all cause mortality. Some types of alcohol, especially wine, are rich with antioxidants and flavonoids. Alcohol may decrease stress and anxiety. Alcohol is often consumed with friends and family, and we know socialization is correlated with better health.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Thank you. I have not heard of thinning blood that is interesting! Kind of on that topic I have read a lot about inflammation casual relationship to lots of problems. As I'm getting older in my sport I take a lot more Ibuprofen than I used too ;) maybe going daily isn't such a bad idea? Yes 100% on socialization that was my first intuition.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ninjinxo 5y ago
Feels somewhat disingenuous to combine the data for men and women, not sure about that discrepancy between surveys either: https://i.imgur.com/BVJvRx6.png https://i.imgur.com/BVJvRx6.png
beebmam 5y ago
Why is everyone so confident with their conclusions without RCTs? This article points out how deeply complicated ethanol consumption is with our biochemical systems. Without RCTs we really can't measure the overall effect of ethanol without quantifying the effects of ethanol on each of those systems. Can't we just reserve judgement here, and use some humbleness in the face of our ignorance to drive for a real RCT funded by the public? Can we try to avoid the trap of becoming confidence-men?
- nostromo 5y ago
  This is an impossible ask and exactly what I mean about moving the goalposts. For example: there are zero RCTs that prove to us cigarettes cause cancer. But we're still comfortable in saying cigarettes cause cancer. It's entirely ridiculous to suggest we do a RCT and ask someone to smoke for 30 years to remove all doubt that cigarettes cause cancer. And who would pay for it? So all we have are mountains of data showing that cigarettes shorten lifespan. The same is true here, but the opposite result. Doing a RCT on alcohol for decades will never happen. All we have are mountains of data showing either no harm or a small benefit on lifespan. So that should be our null hypothesis: that moderate drinking is either harmless or slightly beneficial.
  - bena 5y ago
    This is a fun one because it's a good example of how to bend the truth with the truth. About 80 to 90 percent of people who have lung cancer were smokers. Only about 10 to 15 percent of smokers will develop lung cancer. So it's not a guarantee. It increases the risk. Just like alcohol (https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...) The problem with doing RCT with alcohol and with smoking is that we're talking about lifestyle studies. You can't really do a study with the goal being "see if we can give this dude cancer during his lifetime". And let's also remember that the study that people who drink moderately had longer lifespans just really notes correlation. It does not prove a causation. Drinking is ubiquitous. Most people drink. Drinking is also a luxury. So if you're poor, you either drink a lot or very little. Because you either have a problem or you're too broke to afford it. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185179/) Guess which income bracket engages in moderate drinking the most? That's right, the income bracket that also allows you to afford better health outcomes overall. So while it may be true that moderate drinking correlates with longer lifespans, it's a knock-on effect to the fact that being poor sucks.
Lewton 5y ago
Do you really think the bias against drinking (that might or might not have religious roots) is stronger than the massive bias that comes from the vast majority of people enjoying alcohol a lot?
stefan_ 5y ago
This meta study you link literally cites 6 papers authored by our main villain Mukamal. Is this "no one reads the article anymore" again?
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
On the individual level the science is still murky, but we do know that people from cultures that have a glass of wine in the evening tend to be healthier and live longer that those who don't. That said, I don't necessarily think the magic is in the antioxidants in wine, nor do I think it has something to do with the cardiovascular effects of having alcohol in the bloodstream. My complete layperson theory is that no amount of alcohol is "healthy" per-se: its negative effects are well known and documented, and almost assuredly outweigh the few dubious positive effects. Instead, the benefits of drinking small amounts of alcohol might be entirely tied to stress management. Stress kills. It absolutely ages people and leads to early death. Having a wind-down ritual in the evening is probably the important bit. A glass of wine with dinner is a firm punctuation mark in a person's day. It signals that work is now over, and what's been left undone can be resumed tomorrow.
- tcgv 5y ago
  That's exactly how I appreciate a beer after work every couple of days. A personal ritual to relax, taste a different - if possible craft - beer, and unplug from work. One small bottle (35 cl) is enough to make me happy ;)
kart23 5y ago
I don't think it's necessarily about religion. I have nonreligious, very sciency type friends who are simply opposed to drinking. Even after I show them the studies, they do as you describe, move goalposts and desperately try to justify their beliefs in some type of science. It's just a morality/cultural issue. They see people drinking & driving, excessively drinking and being violent, depicted IRL and in movies, and want to distance themselves from these bad types of people that drink alcohol.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  It can be argued that Americas Puritan rejection of alcohol and tobacco was retained with a different justification. Plenty of very secular countries have drink and smoke a lot (for communist countries, for example).
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    There was never a Puritan rejection of tobacco.
vintermann 5y ago
"Religious roots", hah. The Catholic church was opposed to teetotallism, as were lots of conservative denominations. Modern Teetotalism started as a secular movement out of dismay at the visible damage of alcohol use, just like socialism started out of outrage against industrial labour exploitation, and the sanitation movement started out of literal physical disgust at foul smells. The common thread wasn't religion, but progressivism: seeing society change immensely around them due to technological process, they believed (far more than we do today, ironically) that society could and should be consciously reformed. And of course, what those "studies to death" you mention have established is that alcohol is even nastier than suspected, causing birth defects and cancer like no comparable substance we consume, in addition to all the obvious negative health effects we all can see. The supposed dip at the low end, for only a few of the nasty effects, is a counter-theory to distract from the (pink?) elephant in the room. And even that counter-theory has been discredited by mendelian randomization studies.

taeric 5y ago

I confess I've harbored the idea that any benefits were simply benefits of not drinking soda. Another giant industry protected item.

throwaway81523 5y ago

I'd expect 1-2 drinks a day to be pretty far up there in the distribution where 0 (abstention) is the minimum. There'd be a spike at 0, then a drop, and then a gently sloping upward curve, maybe flattening to a local minimum somewhere lower than 1-2 drinks per day before climbing again. I'd be in there somewhere. I drink occasionally, but orders of magnitude less than 1-2 drinks per day. More like go to a user group 1x or 2x a month and have a drink or two there, or maybe lift a few with buddies after work with similar frequency. With that stuff curtailed by the pandemic, it drops to near 0. That's not abstention, it just doesn't come up. I think that has to be typical of a significant chunk of population. People on the wagon due to alcoholism exist but are likely to be a smaller group.