Will you sign up to Dry January this year? If you do, you won’t be alone. According to its organisers, you’ll join a staggering nine million drinkers who are expected to don the hair shirt of for a whole month. Why would you do it? To prove to yourself you’re not an alcoholic, to virtue signal or to improve your health ? 0ne or more of those certainly.
Dry January was first invented 10 years ago by a U.K. charity called Alcohol Concern with a single purpose: “To reset after a month or two of holiday festivities (such as) office parties, fun nights out, and boozy nights in.”
Fair enough, perhaps, after an over-indulgent Christmas. But the goalposts have since been uprooted and replanted throughout the whole year. In February 2023, the charity (now rebranded as Alcohol Change) launched another abstinence drive: “Sober Spring – your three month break from alcohol, your chance to break habits, start new ones and experience life alcohol-free.” Hmm… What with the invention of two more monthly clones, Sober October and Sober September, there soon won’t be many more days in the year for drinkers to quaff a bevy or two without looking over their shoulders to see who’s eyeing them accusingly.
It’s beginning to look like a return of the Temperance Movement by stealth. In the 19th Century, drinkers were exhorted to “sign the pledge”, undertaking to renounce alcohol for life. Today, that pledge has now morphed into an app on your phone, enabling Alcohol Change to monitor your behaviour, and remotely shame you if you succumb to the temptations of the demon drink. In the 1800s, the Temperance Movement was all about preventing domestic violence; today it’s about preventing ill-health.
I’m a medical research journalist and I first got interested in this issue after stumbling across the fact that although booze “contains” lots of calories, it does not make you put on weight. Clinical trials on human volunteers, as well as experiments on rats and mice, have demonstrated this surprising fact conclusively. The evidence is clear: if you replace food calories with alcohol calories, you will lose weight. And yet the medical authorities have repeatedly told us that drinking causes weight gain, one of many health reasons to give up drinking.
That mismatch between medical advice and medical evidence set me on the path of seeing what else ‘they’ were misleading us about. That led to a deep dive into the published medical research and my discovery that, although the health authorities were routinely bombarding us with anti-alcohol rhetoric, there are astonishing health benefits from drinking.
Seriously? Can alcohol really be good for your health? Yes. In addition to the weight issue, the evidence shows that sensible drinkers have less heart disease, less diabetes, less dementia and often even less cancer than teetotallers. Those, plus a myriad of other health benefits, have the predictable upshot that moderate drinkers live longer and healthier lives than non-drinkers. Those discoveries were the meat of my 2013 book on the subject: The Good News About Booze, a deliberately populist title intended to disguise the fact that the book was a serious in-depth enquiry based on literally hundreds of references to evidence published in international medical journals.
After that, I thought I had finished with alcohol as a topic, but I recently had a rethink. In the last seven years, without any evidence to support the clampdown, the medical authorities have begun turning the screws on drinkers. Again, it all started in Britain where in 2016 the existing alcohol guidelines were slashed in half, setting the upper safe limit at two units a day. What’s two units? Less than a pint of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of whisky – so almost a maiden aunt’s level of intake. Nevertheless, we were warned that exceeding even that very low level would harm our health. In fact, England’s then Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, went further, trumpeting that the latest research showed that “there is no safe level of alcohol intake”. Really? How come?
It turned out she had commissioned a survey of the existing research data from Sheffield University– a questionable source, as Sheffield is a bit-part player on the international alcohol research stage. In any case, we now know, thanks to journalist Chris Snowdon’s Freedom of Information ferreting, that Sheffield initially reported quite a lot of Good News about alcohol and health. However, that displeased the CMO who ordered the university to downplay alcohol’s health benefits and ramp up its hazards. The final Sheffield report, which incidentally was never formally published in a peer-reviewed journal, then became the justification for the new British guidelines…. which were, to put it mildly, based on dubious science.
Nevertheless, the 2016 British anti-alcohol initiative soon spread around the world, with many countries also reducing their guideline levels, sometimes to ridiculously low levels. For example, Holland, despite its liberal laws about marijuana smoking, now reckons that drinking more than half a bottle of lager a day will shorten your life. And even the French, who until a decade ago had no official guidelines at all, have now decided that drinking more than the quarter litre carafe of wine which every Frenchman has with his lunch, is a health hazard.
I was puzzled. I was pretty sure the health evidence about drinking hadn’t significantly changed since my 2013 book, but I decided to check. Another deep dive into the evidence did indeed reveal some apparently worrying findings. There was a major Cambridge University research paper with a sample size of over half a million people which said it had disproved the idea that drinking had any health benefits whatsoever. An even bigger study conducted in China claimed the same. A third said that drinking wine is as dangerous as smoking.
However, on examination, none of these stacked up. The Cambridge claim was straightforward misinformation: its study had in fact found health benefits from drinking, but had buried the positive findings in the depths of a voluminous appendix. The Chinese study was of questionable value, as it’s well known that Orientals genetically respond to alcohol very differently from Europeans. As for the ‘wine is as harmful as tobacco’ study, it offered not a scrap of evidence for the claim.
By contrast, my deep dive into the research database did reveal some new, very positive information about alcohol and health – in particular, the benefits of wine. It also meant I could assess the value of the new entrants in the wine arena since my 2013 book: organic/biodynamic and alcohol-free wines. I was intrigued to discover what extra health punch they each might provide; the answers greatly surprised me.
The result is a new book The Very Good News about Wine, which came out this month. Citing over three hundred studies published from the 1970s to the present, the book is a serious challenge to the anti-alcohol propaganda increasingly dominating the media – largely driven by a nefarious alliance of the medical authorities, a small coterie of vocal anti-alcohol activists and Alcohol Change.
My hope is that people will use the book as an authoritative resource when they next hear another rent-a-pundit trotting out the old saw that wine’s supposed health benefits are “an old wives’ tale” (quote, Sally Davies). 50 years of solid medical data are a rare example of where the science is settled: it cannot easily be overturned by anything you might read in your daily newspaper, trumpeting the latest shock-horror discovery that a glass of wine will tip you into an early grave.
So will you sign up to Dry January?
Personally I won’t, as the medical evidence is overwhelming that drinking a few glasses of wine with an evening meal is good for one’s health. You may have different motives, of which proving to yourself you’re not an alcoholic seems superficially attractive. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to give up brushing your teeth for a month, or stop your daily exercise routines – two addictions you should embrace, as they’re obviously health-promoting. In principle, moderate wine drinking is no different.
Of course, it’s ‘your body, your choice’ whether you take the January pledge or not. However, Alcohol Change probably won’t give a toss one way or the other. The organisation’s latest accounts show that their dry months marketing ploys have already netted them over £12 million in assets.
Temperance propaganda is clearly Very Good News for them too.
The Very Good News About Wine by Tony Edwards is available on Amazon priced £10.99.
Stop Press: A woman with a sticker on her car window saying “I’m not drunk. I’m just avoiding potholes” was arrested and found to be twice the legal limit. The Mail has more.
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Not doing Dry January, no. I like drinking too much, drink moderately (IMO) so don’t see the point, and I find initiatives like this annoying so my natural reaction now is to resist them. Tired of being told what to do about things that are no-one else’s business. I’m not even convinced it’s helpful to anybody – if you have a “drinking problem” (by which I mean something that you feel impairs your enjoyment of life in some way, that you want to change) then I would think you either stop it completely for good, learn to like it, or learn to drink less. Stopping for a month then starting again sounds like a terrible idea. Perhaps during that month you realise you don’t need drink, and didn’t really enjoy it? I’m not convinced. I want the “public health” industry to shrivel and die; I suspect their motives.
Hmm, what’s too much?
Yeah, OK I’m quoting you out of context.
A work colleague and good friend used to do ‘Dry January’ much more than 10 years ago – so it was definitely a thing before it was ‘invented’. It was slightly frustrating because early January was the time the bars in London suddenly became bearable again after the Christmas insanity.
I see now that my wording was ambiguous. I meant that I am too fond of drinking to give up for a month. I drink little and often apart from the occasional large meal with friends blowout.
Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. Merely quoting for ‘comedic’ effect.
I have two large ish gins (with tonic obvs) and two larges glasses of wine every night. I cycle 60-100 miles every week, play golf twice a week and walk the dogs twice daily. I also help out with my Partner’s allotment. Just had my 70th birthday last August. So far as I know apart from the usual aches and pains for a man of my age I’m in pretty good shape. Cheers everyone oh and I’ll be having a very wet January.
Golf would drive me nuts as I get obsessed with trying to be good at things, but that sounds like an excellent mix of activities.
Thanks ToF, and you’re right to stay away from golf it’s a very frustrating game but I appear to be a glutton for punishment!
Tennis is hard enough for me (we’ve just played now) and that is with a bigger bat and ball! I didn’t realise until recently that losing balls in golf is a thing. Unexpectedly golf seems to be the sport of choice for working class men where I now live – I had always assumed it was mainly played by posh old people.
Think I might be considered one of those posh old people or just a crusty old f*** to paraphrase a famous England Rigby captain.
To be fair I go evenings and weekends so it’s possible a lot of the older members play weekday daytime, but the demographic is still going to be much less middle class than I expected
I was also surprised by how many teenage boys play
It’s also the crappest time of year when you need a drink the most!
I have always enjoyed a ‘tipple’ or twain, but in my 60s, I eschewed beer and cider in favour of vino, (largely white, occasionally red) mainly to cut down on the calories. In my early 70s I really enjoyed a nice Malt or two before bed. I’m now back on red vino and don’t touch spirits.
I’m minded of the chap who, on being asked, “do you consider you have a drink problem?” replied, “No! I drink, I get drunk no problem.”
Generally wine with food for me, which is kind of self-limiting unless I keep eating… Main “danger” is I do like an after-dinner digestivo and it’s easy to keep drinking those so some discipline is applied. As with everything, it’s a trade-off and a question of balancing competing priorities.
Thanks, you’ve just reminded me I have a large bottle of port somewhere that I really must try to empty soon, Cheers.
Completely agree tof.
I have put this post out to a couple of groups – about fifty people – and I must say it has been very warmly received.
We should all be allowed to go to hell our own way (or heaven for the virtuous among us).
Heaven? I’m not sitting up there all on my own!
I’m not sure I will make it, sorry
Very rarely drink, and never more than 2 pints in a pub. This article makes me want to drink more though. I’m starting to come to the conclusion public health policy should be renamed public death policy.
If I order 2 pints in a pub along with lunch I find I have difficulty with the fourth half, so just order a pint and a half at the beginning: means I don’t have to go back to the bar!
Nonsense article.
No alcohol is not good for you.
Reminds of the fraudulent French study in the 90s, that Red Wine possessed all sorts of magical properties including life extension. Study was paid by the viniculture industry of France. Fat bellied Americans ran off to their local outlets and French wine exports soared.
If you stopped drinking at all (as I have done) you notice; better sleep patterns, loss of weight, mental clarity, more energy and a reduction in chemicals and sugars which harm your body. Your overall health is vastly improved. That is reality, not this article.
That may be your experience, and your opinion, but there is no excuse for foisting it off on others who may wish to do differently..
Ah yes, the pious bigotry of converts, the most dangerous when it becomes moralistic then morphs into bullying and oppression. Each to their own, whatever your ABV.
Two comments:
I’m not sure your sample-of-one observational study necessarily provides more reliable evidence than the author’s in-depth review of many studies.
I think you need to differentiate between moderate drinking (2 glasses of wine with dinner or a pint of beer, say) and heavier drinking.
Yeast is everywhere, it is nature’s way of preserving fruity liquids. We recently pressed some apples, some of the juice we put for cider some we thought we would just bottle and put in the fridge for juice. We had forgotten the apple juice at the back of the fridge and so we expected to find it had gone off, but no it was fine but fermenting merrily away despite the fridge temperature, it had used natural yeast and produced its own alcohol and thus preserved itself.
I assume this is much how the human race discovered and used alcoholic drinks, it was not so much an option as an inevitability. The alcohol preserved the juice and probably also protected people from contaminated liquid.
As far as I am concerned accepting yeast and the alcohol it produces is part of living a natural life in a natural way.
I like a drink and do drink more than the current guidelines. I’ve met people who seemed healthier after giving up drinking alcohol – I think they may have had problems limiting their intake (often called addiction).
I take issue with your comment on a couple of points:
Bar, humbug!
Sadly (as I enjoy white wine) you’re right. I wonder if quite a few teetotallers had a drink problem in the past and that skews the research. Also, those who drink probably enjoy social benefits which provide some protection against the effects of alcohol consumption but alcohol in and of itself is a poison.
“alcohol in and of itself is a poison”
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, DS99, but hasn’t our biology evolved over tens of thousands of years to process things like salt, sugar and alcohol such that any harm is eliminated or mitigated. And maybe the beneficial health impacts (antioxidants in red wine, reduced stress) outweigh any harmful impacts.
I can’t really speak to that in a scientifically informed way but my commonsense thought would be that I don’t see any evidence of that. My sense is that over time your body stops giving you the warning signals that alcohol is not good for you (i.e. you build up a tolerance for it) – alcohol causes your body to constrict the blood vessels, that’s just not good in my opinion. But having said that, I have more than a few dietary bad habits involving sugar, caffeine and modest amounts of alcohol but I don’t kid myself that they’re healthy or good for me in any way.
Alcohol can cause blood vessels to constrict or expand depending on the amount consumed and the age of the drinker. High blood pressure can be a result of alcohol’s vasoconstrictor effect, which can increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, and kidney damage. Also alcohol is very much not recommended if you are going back out into the cold because it causes the blood vessels to expand and the blood to rush to the surface (flush) giving warmth to the extremities.
After the first bottle of red I do notice the stress evaporating.
That is true! If you injected alcohol into the blood stream you’d be dead in 10 mins, thankfully, the liver filters it out!
alcohol in and of itself is a poison
Obviously. That’s why the teetotaller claim of people drinking alcohol is total nonsense. Should they try to do so, the outcome will be unconsciousness and then, death. All kinds of beverages humans have consumed for millennia also contain alcohol, but that’s something entirely different.
BTW, in and of itself, parsley is also poisonous and was even used in the past as such, eg, concentrated parsely tea to affect abortions. Yet, there are no health warnings on parsely packs and there’s no recommened maxium dosis in order to avoid endangering one’s health.
To quote you Ferdi “No alcohol is not good for you.” Merry Christmas !
The missing comma, well spotted!
The worst kind of ale is no ale!
If you stopped drinking at all, you’re going to die of thirst. That will arguably put an end to all other health problems.
But I’d hate to die healthy.
I’d sooner slide sideways into my box shouting ‘ oh sh#t, wad a ride!’
Gave up drinking alcohol too and now just stick to good quality coffee and a cigarette and feel so much better.
Everything in moderation…as my Father used to say.
The whole Temperance thing is just crass and ignorant. Have these people never studied the 40 year run up to prohibition in the US, and what happened when the 18th Amendment was passed..?
I recall Tony Benn saying that his father was in the Temperance movement, and used to sing a little song with the words, “The good ship Temperance is heading for the port” – apparently unaware of the double meaning.
Including moderation. Attrib. my Grandfather.
I will contemplate reducing my reasonable intake of carefully chosen wine, once all the bars in the houses of parliament have been permanently closed.
Yet again the fanatical virtue signalers want to tell you how to live your life.
I need to pull apart this paragraph, mainly because the author hasn’t linked to any sources to support this assertion, but I know authors sometimes read the comments here so maybe Tony might see this and respond;
”I’m a medical research journalist and I first got interested in this issue after stumbling across the fact that although booze “contains” lots of calories, it does not make you put on weight. Clinical trials on human volunteers, as well as experiments on rats and mice, have demonstrated this surprising fact conclusively. The evidence is clear: if you replace food calories with alcohol calories, you will lose weight. And yet the medical authorities have repeatedly told us that drinking causes weight gain, one of many health reasons to give up drinking.”
Firstly booze does not have lots of calories, not when we look at spirits, such as vodka, gin etc, as these are pure alcohol. It’s the mixers that contain all the calories. Then we move on and compare spirits to beer, lager etc. The latter contain shed-loads of calories in comparison, and it’s basically like consuming liquid bread. Anyone who gives up or cuts down on beer/lager knows the effects it has on their waistline, and aren’t there plenty of beer-bellied men waddling around as evidence for this? Then there’s the ‘wine-waisted’ women….Beer, wine, cocktails etc, they all put on weight, this is an irrefutable fact. Then there’s the fatty-liver aspect, another cause of weight gain.
But it’s the second to last sentence which makes no sense to me. Other than perhaps an alcoholic, who replaces food calories with alcohol calories? Nobody normal! People drink *in addition* to eating. In fact, many drinks can encourage over-eating because they give you the ‘munchies’ plus your normal judgement and restraint can go out the window. If I go out for a ‘cocktail night’, I’m not going to skip dinner because I’ll be drinking those calories instead. I’ll be having dinner then going out drinking, which is the norm for most sensible people I think. If you’re taking in excess calories via alcoholic beverages in addition to your normal caloric intake from food, of course you cannot fail to put on weight over time.
“If you replace food calories with alcohol calories, you will lose weight” Really? Surely a calorie is a calorie. This sounds like the old wives tale that ‘celery takes more calories to digest than it puts in your body, therefore the more you eat the more weight you lose’
Personally, I find the trouble with alcohol is it makes you want to eat more, and it can also have the effect of taking the brakes off any resolve you may have had not to scoff down extra tasty nibbles, mince pies or Christmas cake, despite not being particularly hungry.
The government suggested limits for consumption are arbitrary and somewhat nonsensical, and is probably a figure plucked out of the air, like so many of their pronouncements. (Whenever I am asked how many units I drink in a week, I always say ten, I have found this keeps TPTB happy. How much I drink is actually none of their business).
Anyway, we have got some lovely wines and local beers to keep us sustained – probably well into the new year, and we shall enjoy it guilt free. Happy Christmas.
“If you replace food calories with alcohol calories, you will lose weight” Really? Surely a calorie is a calorie.
That’s true. But the question is What is a calorie? The answer to that is it’s a (obsolescent) measure of the amount of energy which is released when burning something. Alcohol has a lot of calories, ie, it burns well. But that’s not quite the same as It’s very nutrious.
I have heard that alcohol is an astringent, it removes water from the body. The liver requires more water to thin the alcohol than the body would normally require so uses more calories in doing so. So a 4% pint of beer requires more than the water content within that pint for the liver to remove the 4% alcohol, that’s why your so thirsty the day after!
Muslims are the perfect evidence of the damaging psychological effects of not drinking alcohol.
I’m surprised no comment has been made so-far that the reduction of alcohol aligns with the concerns over Islamification of the country.
The friend I referred to in a comment above is a Muslim. Won’t eat pork as ‘Mum wouldn’t like it’, does enjoy a quiet pint like his Dad.
What a wonderful observation.
This is the most superb article by Lord Edwards. If he is not yet a noble Lord, then he should be ennobled immediately for charitable services to English vineyards.
Tobacco is also good for you in moderation, probably that Christmas cigar….
‘….in the Peruvian Amazon, the geographical region believed to be tobacco’s historical birthplace, this plant is associated with a strikingly different usage and repute: Tobacco (especially Nicotiana rustica L.) in this area is described as a potent medicinal plant, used topically or via ingestion to treat a variety of health conditions……refined knowledge on this plant’s therapeutic properties and scope, safety profile, and application techniques. The main indications mentioned included “problems of the mind,’
“Tobacco Is the Chief Medicinal Plant in My Work” Frontiers Vol. 11 2020
‘Evidence is growing that cigarette smoking and nicotine may prevent or ameliorate Parkinson’s disease, and could do so in Alzheimer’s, dementia.’
NIH, J.A. Baron 1996
We are going to need all the help we can get over the next six years at least……
If you must have a ‘dry’ month, I recommend February. Important seasons are over for another year and it is precisely four weeks long…..sufficient for any conscience, surely?
29 days next year. Happy Christmas!
And a very Happy (and merry) Christmas to you!
I am very disappointed to see this obvious advert for a highly dubious book on DS. Telling people that alcohol is good for them panders to the strong drive that people have to relieve their cognitive dissonance about drinking. The idea that alcohol helps you lose weight is farcical, as literally everyone who has ever drunk alcohol regularly will attest. Studies claiming health benefits or increased longevity and all confounded by other factors, such as diet and genetics. Alcohol is toxic and even small amounts drunk regularly have an impact on health. Now, some people might be prepared to make that trade-off and that’s their business, but pretending that alcohol is the elixir of life is profoundly disingenuous. If you want to understand the impact of alcohol on your health, I recommend this podcast by neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, and avoid this nonsense.
Some bloke off the internet pushing supplements against Prof. Sikora (and others), take your pick. 56 grams/week (7 UK ‘units’) is the bottom of the ‘J’ curve but it’s pretty flat so a couple of bottles of wine/week is close to the bottom. No alcohol is associated with significantly increased risk. Decent food, good company, a glass or two of wine are associated with a better and likely longer life.
“Science writer Tony Edwards has gathered the evidence about the health effects of alcohol from medical journals and processed it in a very understandable way, and with a great sense of humour.”
Professor Karol Sikora, Leading Cancer Specialist
Huberman isn’t just ‘some bloke off the internet’, he has a BA an MA and a PhD. He leads the Huberman Lab at Stamford carrying out research in brain function, plasticity and regeneration. But he’s not exactly a lone voice in the wilderness claiming that alcohol is bad for you – there is a massive body of evidence that supports that hypothesis, for example this meta analysis of 200 studies:
“This meta-analysis found that alcohol most strongly increased the risks for cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, and larynx. Statistically significant increases in risk also existed for cancers of the stomach, colon, rectum, liver, female breast, and ovaries.”
Now I know here we do not consider the mere quantity of evidence as the deciding factor, but you also have to look at the incentives in play. Telling people that alcohol is harmful is not a popular message.
‘In April 2022, Huberman entered into a partnership with a Utah-based sport and nutrition company, Momentous. With it, he offers a line of Huberman Lab–branded dietary supplements. He became Scientific Advisor for the supplements retailer Athletic Greens the same year.’ (Wiki)
https://www.profkarolsikora.co.uk/
As I said, ‘take your pick’.
You know what, you believe that alcohol is good for you if you want. I would just advise you not to have any conversations with adults about Father Christmas. You may be in for a shock.
Leave Santa’s out of this! I’ve always liked him
And of course Santa’s is a binge drinker! 5 billion glasses of wine/sherry in one night!!
I’ve learned a thing or two in my three score years and ten. I’ve been learning and doing engineering for 50+ years, starting at Trinity, Cambridge so I flatter myself I have some understanding of science and the scientific method. John Ioannidis’s research indicates that 50% of scientific papers are not reproducible and that figure rises to 67% in medical research. Your man has BA, MA, PhD (I have MA plus membership of the world’s oldest professional engineering institution, first president Thomas Telford, followed by Rennie, Cubitt, Stephenson, Bazalgette and others, Brunel was vice-president before his untimely death, mainly from overwork). Prof Sikora has MA, MBBChir, PhD, FRCR, FRCP, FFPM, starting out with a double first in medicine at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. As I say, take your pick. I find at my age my tolerance for alcohol has decreased and I mostly try to stick to the formula above; decent food, good company and a glass or two of wine.
And why should we believe what he says over the writer of this article? You believe it because it panders to/reinforces your prejudice.
No, I use critical thinking to arrive at my conclusions. I start by thinking about whether the author has anything to gain by making this claim. He has – making people feel better about drinking is a strong selling point for his book, but that does not mean we can dismiss his claim purely on this basis. Next, I consider what I know about biochemistry and consider whether Huberman’s arguments make sense. They do. They are logical and supported by research. Next, I consider the obvious – is alcohol a toxin? Yes, it is obviously. If you drink a lot in a short period you will probably vomit and may even die. So, is it feasible that even in moderation it might cause poor health outcomes? Well, yes again. Obviously. Next, I turn to the literature. Is there a body of literature that suggests alcohol is bad for you? Again, obviously yes. And finally, do I personally know people whose health has been damaged by drinking? Yes, again that is true.
So when I consider all of this,a more honest re-write of Edwards argument would be:
“I considered all of the evidence and decided that a book telling people alcohol is good for them would sell, so I wrote it.”
And Huberman wants you to buy his ‘supplements’. Critically overthinking perhaps?
Cheers! I’ll drink to that
An article on the health benefits of fluoride would be interesting.
Overthinking, a solitary pursuit, is bad for you.
Social drinking in moderation is good for you…..particularly with that once in a blue moon Havana cigar…….
We need a study into the proliferation of nagging picaninies that have sprouted up over the last decade or so. What is it about sucking on the public money/charity teet that makes them so anti-fun?
As having some experience in drink related problems I’d say alcohol intake effects the mental side of your being more than your physical health.
Family relationship and job problems and ,thankfully never in my case, physical violence are very real problems with it!
They are the reasons alcohol can be harmful!
It has been suggested violence may not be a direct consequence of alcohol consumption. Have a look for:
Desired Image of Power, Alcohol Expectancies,and Alcohol-Related Aggression, 2002
Fair enough, it’s not an exact science but just my meandering experience
I enjoy a drink. In fact, according to this article, I’m very healthy. I did recently have an epiphany though: why is alcohol the one drug they happily allow us? In fact, not just allow us but encourage us to consume. Could it be that it’s because it dulls the senses and keeps us happy? Just a thought (from my slightly dulled, increasingly conspiratorial, but happy, mind).
Downvotes. Over the target?
Off-licenses were considered essential during COVID but exercise was to be severely limited unless you had the space at home.
Keeping the senses of the masses numbed and engaged in simple pleasures would be consistent with that. The book The Net Delusion makes a similar comment on Soviet East Germany accessing Western TV shows: that little bit of luxury was enough to keep many happy enough to tolerate everything else.
There’s likely some powerful lobbying also but we know it was nothing to do with health and wellbeing. Government doesn’t do that.
Revenue. Excise duty with VAT on top (unless you make your own beer or cider; even then, there’ll be revenue from the process.
What, you mean like cigarettes? No, I think DHJ has nailed it, it’s about compliance. It’s also why they used to get soldiers p*ssed before going into battle. Alcoholic induces a degree of control. A very certain type of control. As unpalatable a thought that that is.
Now, where did I leave that whiskey? Sod it, where’s the Toilet Duck?
How about a month called Leavemethefuckaloneuary
Sign me up for that one
Observation I made during lockdown: One of the effects of alcohol is that it causes muscle relaxation. Perhaps less effective than benzodiazepines. I cannot compare this directly because benzodiazepines are nowadays the prohibitest of all prohibited drugs. I sometimes get the nagging suspicion that that’s because they’re one of the preciously few producs of the pharmaceutical industry which actually help people and we just cannot have drugs that work if we want to continue sellling ibucetamol and paraprofen and all of the drugs whose positive health effects are essentially apocryphal while their negative side effects a very real.
Be that as it may, alcohol works which is one of the reasons why I always have bottle of Scotch here (besides me enjoying the taste, but in different situations). Consumed in small quantities, it’s effective against all kinds of pain caused by muscles cramping, the most notorious example of that being back pain. It’s also useful to tone things down when the cardiovascular system goes into amok mode, ie, situations where doctors would first prescribe beta blockers and ultimatively, blood pressure pills¹. It works faster than the former and in smaller quantities (ie, you don’t have to keep drinking all the time in order to hold things at bay while you’re never supposed to stop taking beta blockers once you’ve started to take them).
NB: This is based on ‘unscientific’ personal observations and may or may not be generally applicable.
¹ That’s really a death sentence because once your body has gotten used these, you’ll have to keep taking them because otherwise, you’ll die. And I certainly wouldn’t want to bet my life on always having a timely supply of these pills available.
Since physiology and physique varies between individuals, it is junk-science and dishonest to make blanket claims about the effects of alcohol – and other foods and drink – or set blanket limits.
As for ‘medical research’ – this should be renamed Pharma Companies fill-tills – part of the Medical-Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex.
‘The medical evidence is overwhelming that drinking a few glasses of wine with an evening meal is good for one’s health’ A FEW glasses?! Every evening? Sorry – not buying it.
Prior to the advent clean tap water in every household, people would either drink wine or beer all the time as this as a lot less unhealthy than drinking possibly contaminated water instead. That was obviously before the tee-totaller fairy tale that people would only drink beverages contaning alcohol because they want to get drunk which they want because they’re morally inferior beings and/ or soo addicted to it could gain any traction.
Drinking a few glasses of something with a meal is perfectly normal. In contrast to this drinking alcohol as sort-of a guilty pleasure every now and then, ie, not drinking something because you’re thirsty and like it but because of the secondary effects of some of its ingredients, is a sign of an unhealthy fixation on drug consumption for the sake of it (as is total abstinence for the same reason, for that matter).
I wonder whether the Prohibition years in the United States actually made any difference to Americans’ overall health, or did it just make alcohol more interesting?
The water of life. An English translation of ‘Uisce beatha’ (Gaelic). Of course, there are loads of publications about our relationship with ethanol, e.g.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txNISaSN9OM (about 10 m). It appears that the interim product, acetaldehyde, is toxic. The producer of the link above suggests that around 7g/hour is a typical processing rate for ethanol.
There’s a study out there that concludes that you should always drink on an empty stomach because “eating is cheating”. An addendum to the study states a caveat: “As long as you have a massive kebab at the end of the evening.”
I wrote it and also peer-reviewed it, but it’s not yet published!
I think it’s also the fact that it is often about sharing a moment that leads to improved health and longevity. If you were on your deathbed some of your best memories would likely be epic drinking sessions with your friends, beery talking jags, carousing with sumptuous women. Omar Khayam said “Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses, drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life”. The desire to leave the mundane and rational and increasingly the desert of the real. There was a strong temperance movement in Scandinavia in the laste nineteenth century when heavy drinking of spirits started leading to social problems. They are still very strict with alcohol over there and this has led to a strange and schizophrenic drinking culture in contemporary Norway.
Very true indeed.
When we were ‘courting’ many years ago, my husband was a nervous passenger and much to my annoyance he would hang onto the car door handle as if his life depended on it, however he claimed after a couple of drinks my driving improved dramatically.
Cheers! I’ll drink to that!
Indeed, moderation is the key. Aristotle, quite a wine drinker himself, was a wise man. Or to paraphrase Nietsche, finding the proper balance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
Transmissionofflame, I usually agree with your posts, but I have to ask – do you sit, poised over your computer screen, 24 hours a day, never taking your eyes off the screen in order to be the first to comment on more or less every single article published by the Daily Sceptic? This isn’t a critical or sneering question – I’m just intrigued. (And once again, I agree – I drink perhaps half a bottle of red a day, occasionally more, occasionally less, and won’t be observing any faddy, knee-jerk, media-driven ramadans).
Excellent article, warmed the cockles just ordered the book. Happy Christmas everyone hic…
“That mismatch between medical advice and medical evidence set me on the path of seeing what else ‘they’ were misleading us about” The mismatch between evidence and advice has am awfully familiar ring to it.
“Dry January”? No way.
I’ve been on the Zoe Programme since March. I queried why recording one drink prompted a response “drink responsibly ” and having three units crashed the score. I was advised:
“I’m sorry to hear that our programme isn’t meeting your expectations at the moment. Let’s have a look at this for you:
Alcohol affects the daily score because it has been shown to influence all three factors which we focus on- blood sugar, blood fat, and microbiome. Please take a look at the articles linked for further information.I understand that having a couple of pints may not be considered ‘irresponsible’, but in our commitment to enhancing metabolic and microbiome health, we’ve opted to impose stricter boundaries than those recommended by the government for our programme.That said, there is very strong evidence for the positive health benefits of drinking red wine on metabolic markers, and you may notice that a small glass of red wine won’t harm your score…..” [my underlining]
I suspect this is an example of anti alcohol action that does really not ‘follow the science ‘?
I gave up on Zoe, after they moved the goal posts on many occasions during the covid crisis so their figures didn’t prove the lie of what the government were saying.
This is a relief!