Ever since I read articles that covered the U.S. Surgeon General’s January 2024 report about alcohol consumption, I haven’t touched a drop. The report suggested that even moderate drinking could increase cancer risks, recommending scary warning labels on all alcoholic beverages. And then I learned that each drink supposedly takes away 5 minutes of your life. As someone who enjoyed their occasional glass of alcohol this was pretty unsettling.

But this weekend I was listening to Derek Thompson’s podcast that has pushed me down a rabbit hole and made it easier for me to reconsider my choices. And here’s the thing - this isn’t just a modern worry that I individually have. We’ve been worrying about alcohol consumption for literally thousands of years.

“It is hard to say whether wine does good to more people than it harms”? Sounds like it could be from today’s health magazine, but nope. That was Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century AD. Even back then, people were debating whether moderate drinking was okay.

Fast forward to 1991, when something fascinating happened. CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a segment about the “French Paradox” - how the French, despite their butter-rich diet, had lower cardiovascular disease rates than Americans. Their secret weapon? Red wine. This single TV segment caused U.S. wine sales to surge by 40%!

But here’s where things get tricky. Most alcohol studies are what scientists call “observational studies,” and they’re not as reliable as you might think. It’s like trying to figure out if umbrellas cause rain just because you see them together often. These studies have several problems:

  1. No control groups (imagine trying to study a medicine without having a group that doesn’t take it)
  2. Tons of confounding factors (wealthy people tend to drink moderately AND have better healthcare)
  3. Self-reporting issues (what’s “one drink” to you might be very different from what it means to me)
  4. Selection bias (moderate drinkers often have healthier lifestyles overall)

Here’s a perfect example: researchers once found a correlation between mouthwash use and mouth cancer. Scary, but it turns out people were using mouthwash because they had mouth cancer symptoms, not the other way around.

The scientific opinion on moderate drinking has done a complete 180° over the years. In 2011, Canada said men could safely have up to 15 drinks per week. By 2023? They said anything more than two drinks per week puts your health at risk. This reminds me that in the early 20th century, smoking was often portrayed as a healthy activity, with endorsements from medical professionals and athletes. For instance, in the 1930s, advertisements featured doctors promoting specific cigarette brands, suggesting health benefits.

Additionally, Olympic athletes were paid to endorse tobacco products. In 1928, Helen Wainwright, a silver medalist in swimming and diving, appeared in a Lucky Strike advertisement, claiming the cigarettes didn’t affect her “wind or throat.” And now we all know the harmful effects of smoking. This is exactly why I take most stats with a bucket of salt.

But let’s talk about these risks in real terms. When you hear “moderate drinking increases breast cancer risk by 10-20%”, it sounds terrifying. But in absolute terms? It raises the lifetime risk from 11% to 13%. For mouth cancer, while moderate drinking increases relative risk by 40%, the absolute risk increase is just 0.3 percentage points.

Now, about those 5 minutes. According to researcher Tim Stockwell, each drink does take away about 5 minutes of your life. But here’s something interesting - according to Stanford scientist Ewan Ashley, one minute of exercise adds 5 minutes to your life! So technically, you could jog for a minute to offset that glass of wine.

But this piece from Derek Thompson in the Atlantic article got me really thinking:

An underrated aspect of the surgeon general’s report is that it is following, rather than trailblazing, a national shift away from alcohol. As recently as 2005, Americans were more likely to say that alcohol was good for their health, instead of bad. Last year, they were more than five times as likely to say it was bad, instead of good. In the first seven months of 2024, alcohol sales volume declined for beer, wine, and spirits. The decline seemed especially pronounced among young people.

To the extent that alcohol carries a serious risk of excess and addiction, less booze in America seems purely positive. But for those without religious or personal objections, healthy drinking is social drinking, and the decline of alcohol seems related to the fact that Americans now spend less time in face-to-face socializing than any period in modern history. That some Americans are trading the blurry haze of intoxication for the crystal clarity of sobriety is a blessing for their minds and guts. But in some cases, they may be trading an ancient drug of socialization for the novel intoxicants of isolation.

So next time I’m out with friends, enjoying a good conversation over a glass of whiskey, will I be counting the minutes I’m losing? Probably not. Besides, I can always go for a jog tomorrow.

Ps: This blog was written largely with Claude to bring clarity and polish to the ideas presented. I can outline like a pro but write like a toddler with a crayon.