Few vices are as enduring as alcohol. For millennia, people have been indulging with little concern in pleasures like wine and beer, often at a scale that doesn’t exactly paint a picture of health. It’s only in recent years that “wellness” has become much of a talking point. Major news outlets have, just in the last couple of months, weighed in on the fact that alcohol’s health benefits outweigh its potential benefits. But as I did Dry January (okay, maybe “Damp” January, as my line of work made total abstinence difficult) and reflected on my impulses around drinking, I found myself wondering whether there’s a benefit to drinking.
Does Alcohol Have Health Benefits?
Yes and no. Just to be clear: There are many, many reasons not to drink, including simply not enjoying it. No one should feel pressure to engage in a behavior they don’t want to engage in, let alone one that puts their health at risk. The presence of more sober options than ever before is a net good. In addition to the toxic load it places on your body, drinking can contribute negatively to your mental health, too, as a depressant substance.
But the WHO’s declaration that alcohol is a “a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance,” and that there is no safe amount of alcohol to consume, is perhaps alarmist. The recent reporting around alcohol’s health risks feels, sometimes, like another symptom of our society’s over-optimized, neurotic Protestant work ethic that prioritizes what is empirically Good and Pure over the nuances and subtleties that make life worth living.
Alcohol’s Health Drawbacks, Deconstructed
“Deep Links Between Alcohol and Cancer” from the New York Times seems damning at first glance. And, just to be clear, alcohol is not spinach. It’s caloric and sugary. And it affects your motor function and increases your impulsivity. It’s not exactly healthy. But neither is the standard American diet, rife with microplastics, carcinogens, ultra-processed foods, and God knows what else.
Alcohol is an easy scapegoat. Surgeon Vivek Murthy has even pushed for a cancer-risk label like those on tobacco products. But the risks of alcohol and cigarettes are not equal. And the results presented by the Times are a little misleading. It’s necessary to read these statistics with an understanding of relative risk and absolute risk. Relative risk is the outcome of a situation compared with other factors. Absolute risk is the outcome on its own merits. A clear way to think of this is that absolute risk looks at being struck by lightning out in the world. Relative risk, then, looks at being struck by lightning while holding a kite next to an electrical tower. Considering only the relative risk skews data to make something look more dangerous than it is.
Wine blogger Tom Wark broke this down. Using the numbers from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, a popular data set, in practice this looks like: 17 of 100,000 premature female deaths (1.73%) result from breast cancer. Drinking 2 glasses of wine per day, a female’s absolute risk of developing breast cancer increases to 2.2%. Alcohol adds only one half of a percent. For numbers geeks, Wark’s reporting is illuminating: the relative risk reported by the Times isn’t the whole picture.
This relative vs. absolute risk is a common misattribution in media statistics. It’s worth looking for this error in everything you read, not just reporting about alcohol risk. One of Rabin’s reporting’s main points, though, is that most people don’t know alcohol can increase your cancer risk (even if only by a very small margin). This is a fair point, as being an informed consumer is important. But if you’re obsessing over a 2.2% cancer risk in two glasses of wine while puffing on a mint-flavored vape pen ten times a day, you may want to consider the bigger picture. You may want also want to rethink about that processed ham sandwich you have for lunch almost every day. And the mini-pack of Oreos that follow it.
A Doctor’s Perspective
Dr. Laura Catena sits in the interesting position of being both a medical doctor and a fourth-generation Argentine winemaker. Catena has been outspoken about the fact that overconsumption of alcohol often comes from a lack of understanding of moderation. Americans, after all, aren’t known for their moderation.
In an interview with Forbes, Catena said of government regulations around drinking that “Countries should invest in education about what moderation means and how to drink in moderation. There are many tools available to do this: drinking from half bottles, marking your glass with a 3-ounce and 5-ounce line, only drinking with friends, putting alcohol in a hard-to-access location after you’ve had your daily allocation. In summary, the same things we do when we are trying to eat less chips and cookies.”
She also noted that “There is good literature showing that many people can drink wine in moderation. We do not see this with heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and even cigarettes.”
Social Benefits of Alcohol
Rather than trying to die on the hill of alcohol being as physically healthy as kale juice, I want to propose something else. Going out for drinks with a friend, to me, is a “healthier” behavior than spending those two hours at home in front of my computer binge-rewatching Succession while scrolling on Instagram in another tab. The epicurean pleasure of enjoying wine, beer, and spirits is one that grounds you in the moment, in the physical world, and is best enjoyed in the company of others. Most young millennials and Gen Z people fall much more into binge-watching than binge-drinking.
If you’re really going to think about your health, your digital diet is as important as your culinary one. Your social life is also worth taking into consideration. One statistic that troubles me as much or more than alcohol’s cancer risk is how lonely Americans are. People host fewer gatherings on average, maybe due to the risks associated with socializing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Loneliness and social isolation puts you at a higher risk of both mental and physical ailments.
An Ayurvedic Take
Perhaps you read all of this and think okay, of course wine writers and winemakers think wine isn’t bad for you. Ayurvedic teacher Kyle Roberts, who has no relation to the alcohol industry, also had a take. “The Ayurvedic perspective is that everything is medicine and everything is poison. To say that alcohol isn’t poison is wrong, but to say that it isn’t medicine is also wrong.” Alcohol has the potential to become addictive. “It’s a force, and you have to figure out how you relate to that force,” he said.
Roberts pointed to the fact that his meditation teacher starts drinking beer early in the day. Drinking or not drinking shouldn’t be a measure of spiritual purity. “You can think of drinking as more what benefit do you get, and at what cost? For people that like to drink, maybe that little bit of cost—compromised sleep, something with weight management—is worth it. For many people in communities that are long-lived, in Blue Zones like Greece and Italy, there’s a modest amount of alcohol. It just depends on the individual.” He also added that historically, alcohol, particularly wine, had a place in religious and spiritual traditions, including Ayurveda. He added, “They don’t call it ‘spirits’ for nothing.”
Risky Business
There are plenty of high-risk behaviors many of us engage in every day that we don’t analyze nearly this deeply: driving, flying, taking both hormonal and non-hormonal birth control, eating food laced with microplastics, or wearing clothing with synthetic fibers. Here is a perhaps less empirical proposition. If you’re going to be ingesting chemicals anyway, you might as well have some fun in the meantime. But, really. None of us are going to live forever, whether we drink two glasses of wine a day or five.
Harry Eyres, writing for Master of Wine Tim Atkins in “Is There Any Justification for Wine?” reflected that: “Wine, like other artforms, has purely sensuous, emotional, intellectual elements, and can be appreciated at all those levels. Above all, it is, or can be, part of culture, not merely a gluggable route to anaesthesia or oblivion […] hobbies need no justification beyond the pleasure one derives from them.” In contemporary life, we’re more and more often asked to optimize, monetize, and streamline every element of who we are. You can just like wine. Or beer. Or whiskey. It’s okay. The Morality Police aren’t coming for you.
A Way Forward
It is important to note that, as stated earlier, there are real reasons not to drink. Some people should not drink. Period. Alcohol has wrecked lives, and twelve-step groups and other sobriety methods are a necessary way to take back some control and heal. We aren’t trying to argue that drinking is entirely good or bad.
Addiction to alcohol is a real risk, and like sugar, tobacco, and many other substances, brands and producers have incentives to sell it to you without acknowledging those risks. We have no interest in being an advocate for the liquor industry, or in denying that addictive substances are addictive. But a neo-Prohibition world where we obsess over the potential health risk of alcohol creates a world where people have less developed risk analysis skills. Socializing, too, poses a risk, of embarrassment or judgment. Falling in love opens you up to pain, and a loving, long-term relationship correlates to gaining weight. Life itself isn’t risk-free, nor is alcohol. That doesn’t mean that it should be treated like poison.
Story by Emma Riva
Photo by Laura Petrilla
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