Is Moderate Drinking Healthy? Scientists Say the Idea Is Outdated

This data is self reported of course, and "one drink daily" are people who actually drink a lot more.

If you actually drink less than daily, very little to worry about AFAICT.

I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.

That's probably the least true comment in this entire thread.

I'm not going to say alcohol is therapeutic, but it is considered a rite of passage the world over for a reason. For many it's their first time experiencing lowered inhibitions and handling adult consequences. That doesn't imply an addiction will follow, but it is very likely to expand their mind regarding what they believe about themselves and their identity. Those questions are at the heart of social anxiety.

I really don't know where society would be without alcohol. Probably much worse off. People would have their heads so far up their own asses they'd probably be even more anxious all the time.

Moderate meth use, uh, what does moderate mean? But when I laugh it's more that I doubt the very premise.

Moderate ecstacy use, go for it.

The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch

Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything.

In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.")

Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.

Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.

In a regulatory domain? Perhaps not; however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well.

> Should have skull and crossbones on it.

Which didn't work. So some people go the idea to poison it. Then people learned to re-distill it to avoid the blindness it would otherwise cause.

> Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline

Most people don't regularly drink to the kinds of excess that would make this an apt comparison.

Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much.

I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.

It makes far more sense than huffing gas.

It makes the most sense a couple maybe few times a year.

The worst thing to do is over hype the downsides. People tune out and then have no real guidance to draw from.

Birds do as well. Trout do not (in the wild). The LCU drinker might be "some tetrapod".

You've just replicated the "Watchmaker" argument of creationists: "Random chance can't account for these low probabilities that we can't yet quantified."