You mentioned the constant decision of whether to have a drink, which I find relatable. Do you find yourself getting dessert more often than you were choosing to have a drink before?
Somewhat consistent with my experience/thoughts. It's helpful and healthful, though not nearly as life changing as it is proselytized these days, unless you have a real issue.
As a biologist, I can tell you the health effects are quite overstated popularly now (as opposed to being understated for much of the last few decades). A 1% increase in a 1% chance of cancer is not worth thinking about.
I broadly agree, but can I push back on the idea that "1% increase in a 1% chance of cancer" is the right magnitude of risk?
Obviously, it's all hard to say without RCTs. But if you believe the correlations (See the graph at the top of https://dynomight.net/alcohol-trial/) then 2 standard drinks per day ~doubles your risk of lip / oral cavity / pharnyx cancer. The lifetime risk of those seems to be 1.2%, so that would be a 100% increase in a 1% risk of cancer, not a 1% increase.
Now, I stress that I don't really believe the correlations. But I see no reason to doubt that this is the right order of magnitude. And while a 1.2% (or larger) absolute increase of your risk of cancer isn't gigantic, it's not nothing either.
Ok fair, a bit of mild hyperbole on my part. But the idea around overstating the risks was centered around the huge increase in messaging around "any number of drinks at all are bad". The message "even light drinking increases your risk of oral cancer by 100%" is read extremely differently than "if you average 14 drinks a week for the rest of your life your risk might go from 1.2% to 2%".
Up to that 2 drinks a day number (and even then, I'm skeptical because the baseline numbers of these cancers are likely vastly driven by the heavy drinkers anyhow, they're not truly representative baseline). There really doesn't seem to be an effect. The paper you cite even finds some metabolic benefits that may balance out (fully acknowledging this may reflect a "healthy enough to trip bias" in the data).
Your point that zero is easier than “one drink a month” because it removes the decision is really a claim about cognitive architecture, not alcohol: bright lines are cheap, moderation is expensive. What’s interesting is that this cuts both ways—some people do better with abstinence not because they’re more virtuous, but because they’re worse at repeated self-governance, which is a much less flattering story than wellness culture likes to tell. There’s also a class angle lurking here: “damp January” feels like the managerial version of vice, turning appetite into a spreadsheet KPI instead of admitting you either want the thing or you don’t. The piece made me wonder how many of our “balanced” habits are just elaborate systems for keeping temptation theatrically alive.
I've done this, a couple times, for a year or more each, over the decades (never out of spite, though: cool MacGuffin!)
I just wanted to see if I could do it, and how it was. And for me, it was cake. I have a strong appetite for alcohol, enjoy the buzz, and am not generally a chemical adventurer in other respects. But I just stopped for a while. There was never really temptation, but some times an "Oh yeah, I forgot. Nope" situation. Such are habits.
I want to recognize that this experience makes me a tourist in the world of alcohol abuse. That others have significant, life-altering (and -destroying) addictions to alcohol, and many have significant problems that lead them there. My ease is pure privilege, and I don't discount the terrible struggles many others have.
I never really swore off "forever", I don't think I planned a time limit. I just told myself "I'm not drinking right now". One went from Halloween to Halloween. Another ended on a trip where I just wanted a beer. I think both times started with "This isn't fun anymore".
During his retirement, my Dad was diagnosed and treated as an alcoholic, was in recovery in the late years of his life. He said that NOT drinking came really easy. Because of my experience, I believe his claim. Some people drink a lot 'cuz they're strongly addicted, others drink a lot 'cuz they've never thought otherwise.
In thinking about alcohol recently, and getting the lecture from my Doc about drinking, I hear the medical definition of "heavy drinking" and think: "You think THAT is heavy drinking‽" I don't cross the "heavy" boundary by too much, but typical drinkers of the past and real struggling alcoholics today down a hell of a lot more than I do. I expect them to have significant health trouble, and I suppose they expect the same.
I suppose I should expect it of myself as well, but as a noted orthopedist told me decades ago "there's a cost to not enjoying your life". I aim to enjoy my time while I'm here.
I’m struck by how someone could make the exact same decisions and it wouldn’t be much fun to read about. You make the whole process sound so fun and funny, it’s delightful ❤️ it makes me wonder about a writing challenge where writers are given the most utterly mundane prompts or topics and then seeing what they do. Almost like a way to split skill at style and skill at substance (not claiming the substance here is not interesting but I guess I am claiming the key appeal is your style of writing. Which is very cool!)
For data: my baseline is the same as yours (2-3 drinks a week), and I've also previously given up alcohol for lent and then almost entirely for a year.
My conclusion was the opposite, that alcohol is great in moderation!
Having a drink after work, while playing a board game with friends, or at a pub after a long walk is a pretty clear net positive. No noticeable impact on sleep, I live somewhere with a huge range of drinks available with interesting tastes, and the net effect of additional extroversion, lower inhibition and lower anxiety are positives for me.
So, readers: your mileage may vary.
Obviously if you're a binge drinker you should stop, but I think as a social technology it's real and Chesterton's fence applies (look at the middle east and genZ!)
quitting out of spite is honestly the most reliable motivation there is... did it stick on its own or did you eventually need a different reason to keep going?
This accords with my experience. Historically I drank enough that my doctor told me to cut down to one drink a day. One drink a day is really hard, because drinking makes you more vulnerable when your brain wants a thing. And hey - you’re drinking. But not drinking at all on a given day is easy.
I quit alcohol while pregnant twice, and never slipped, but found myself really craving glasses of white wine or cold cider in the summer.
There is nothing quite like alcohol for non sweet tasty cold drinks. The best non alcoholic alternatives are the 0.5% lagers and Guinness 0, but there's nothing to touch white wine.
It's not about NEEDING a drink, like a drug, or even the social aspect. It's just the nicest thing to have in a bunch of situations. If you hate the taste of alcohol or even dislike it, it's easy to give up. If you enjoy it, nobody will believe you that you like the taste that much and will accuse you of being an alcoholic for having a beef dinner with half a bottle of Barolo.
I never understood the appeal of alcohol since the symptoms of drunkenness are so similar to those being poisoned. I guess it helps that I'm an extrovert and not all that inhibited by nature, but it feels like practicing at it (I mean, approaching people, learning to have fun with others even if the music sucks, or idk) a little in one's teens completely eliminates every benefit alcohol offers.
This was delightful. My favorite was “Thanks for the chocolate, I ate it instead of dinner, it’s all gone, this is what will always happen if you give me chocolate.” I'm exactly the same. For candy and desserts. For alcohol I'm even weirder than you: as a teenager I concocted elaborate philosophical reasons to oppose all mind-altering substances on principle and somehow just stuck with that (except for caffeine and such). I still don't know what being tipsy even feels like, which seems dumb to me now, but I have yet to break the teetotaling inertia.
I do love the concept of Generalized Dry January. Prove you don't have a substance abuse problem! If that's super silly because you *obviously* don't have a substance abuse problem, then, great, the Dry January should be easy. Like, either it's easy and you might as well or it's hard, in which case it's actually important.
On the topic of Damp January and abstinence being easier than moderation, that's a key selling point of Beeminder: to construct a red line for moderation that's as bright as the red line for abstinence naturally is. Here's an old post where we make that argument for the case of eating less meat: https://blog.beeminder.com/vegdays
That paragraph about a perfect drug was probably the best thing about this whole article. Thank you.
You mentioned the constant decision of whether to have a drink, which I find relatable. Do you find yourself getting dessert more often than you were choosing to have a drink before?
Unfortunately yes!
Somewhat consistent with my experience/thoughts. It's helpful and healthful, though not nearly as life changing as it is proselytized these days, unless you have a real issue.
As a biologist, I can tell you the health effects are quite overstated popularly now (as opposed to being understated for much of the last few decades). A 1% increase in a 1% chance of cancer is not worth thinking about.
I broadly agree, but can I push back on the idea that "1% increase in a 1% chance of cancer" is the right magnitude of risk?
Obviously, it's all hard to say without RCTs. But if you believe the correlations (See the graph at the top of https://dynomight.net/alcohol-trial/) then 2 standard drinks per day ~doubles your risk of lip / oral cavity / pharnyx cancer. The lifetime risk of those seems to be 1.2%, so that would be a 100% increase in a 1% risk of cancer, not a 1% increase.
Now, I stress that I don't really believe the correlations. But I see no reason to doubt that this is the right order of magnitude. And while a 1.2% (or larger) absolute increase of your risk of cancer isn't gigantic, it's not nothing either.
Ok fair, a bit of mild hyperbole on my part. But the idea around overstating the risks was centered around the huge increase in messaging around "any number of drinks at all are bad". The message "even light drinking increases your risk of oral cancer by 100%" is read extremely differently than "if you average 14 drinks a week for the rest of your life your risk might go from 1.2% to 2%".
Up to that 2 drinks a day number (and even then, I'm skeptical because the baseline numbers of these cancers are likely vastly driven by the heavy drinkers anyhow, they're not truly representative baseline). There really doesn't seem to be an effect. The paper you cite even finds some metabolic benefits that may balance out (fully acknowledging this may reflect a "healthy enough to trip bias" in the data).
Creatine is a candidate for a drug that makes us healthier and smarter, etc., but if so the effects are very small.
Yeah, I totally agree, creatine is probably the best candidate.
Your point that zero is easier than “one drink a month” because it removes the decision is really a claim about cognitive architecture, not alcohol: bright lines are cheap, moderation is expensive. What’s interesting is that this cuts both ways—some people do better with abstinence not because they’re more virtuous, but because they’re worse at repeated self-governance, which is a much less flattering story than wellness culture likes to tell. There’s also a class angle lurking here: “damp January” feels like the managerial version of vice, turning appetite into a spreadsheet KPI instead of admitting you either want the thing or you don’t. The piece made me wonder how many of our “balanced” habits are just elaborate systems for keeping temptation theatrically alive.
Not as eloquently put, but in a post-Inkhaven haze, I wrote that abstinence was easy; daily blogging less so.
https://angadh.com/goodhart-1
I've done this, a couple times, for a year or more each, over the decades (never out of spite, though: cool MacGuffin!)
I just wanted to see if I could do it, and how it was. And for me, it was cake. I have a strong appetite for alcohol, enjoy the buzz, and am not generally a chemical adventurer in other respects. But I just stopped for a while. There was never really temptation, but some times an "Oh yeah, I forgot. Nope" situation. Such are habits.
I want to recognize that this experience makes me a tourist in the world of alcohol abuse. That others have significant, life-altering (and -destroying) addictions to alcohol, and many have significant problems that lead them there. My ease is pure privilege, and I don't discount the terrible struggles many others have.
I never really swore off "forever", I don't think I planned a time limit. I just told myself "I'm not drinking right now". One went from Halloween to Halloween. Another ended on a trip where I just wanted a beer. I think both times started with "This isn't fun anymore".
During his retirement, my Dad was diagnosed and treated as an alcoholic, was in recovery in the late years of his life. He said that NOT drinking came really easy. Because of my experience, I believe his claim. Some people drink a lot 'cuz they're strongly addicted, others drink a lot 'cuz they've never thought otherwise.
In thinking about alcohol recently, and getting the lecture from my Doc about drinking, I hear the medical definition of "heavy drinking" and think: "You think THAT is heavy drinking‽" I don't cross the "heavy" boundary by too much, but typical drinkers of the past and real struggling alcoholics today down a hell of a lot more than I do. I expect them to have significant health trouble, and I suppose they expect the same.
I suppose I should expect it of myself as well, but as a noted orthopedist told me decades ago "there's a cost to not enjoying your life". I aim to enjoy my time while I'm here.
I’m struck by how someone could make the exact same decisions and it wouldn’t be much fun to read about. You make the whole process sound so fun and funny, it’s delightful ❤️ it makes me wonder about a writing challenge where writers are given the most utterly mundane prompts or topics and then seeing what they do. Almost like a way to split skill at style and skill at substance (not claiming the substance here is not interesting but I guess I am claiming the key appeal is your style of writing. Which is very cool!)
For data: my baseline is the same as yours (2-3 drinks a week), and I've also previously given up alcohol for lent and then almost entirely for a year.
My conclusion was the opposite, that alcohol is great in moderation!
Having a drink after work, while playing a board game with friends, or at a pub after a long walk is a pretty clear net positive. No noticeable impact on sleep, I live somewhere with a huge range of drinks available with interesting tastes, and the net effect of additional extroversion, lower inhibition and lower anxiety are positives for me.
So, readers: your mileage may vary.
Obviously if you're a binge drinker you should stop, but I think as a social technology it's real and Chesterton's fence applies (look at the middle east and genZ!)
Good article.
quitting out of spite is honestly the most reliable motivation there is... did it stick on its own or did you eventually need a different reason to keep going?
This accords with my experience. Historically I drank enough that my doctor told me to cut down to one drink a day. One drink a day is really hard, because drinking makes you more vulnerable when your brain wants a thing. And hey - you’re drinking. But not drinking at all on a given day is easy.
I quit alcohol while pregnant twice, and never slipped, but found myself really craving glasses of white wine or cold cider in the summer.
There is nothing quite like alcohol for non sweet tasty cold drinks. The best non alcoholic alternatives are the 0.5% lagers and Guinness 0, but there's nothing to touch white wine.
It's not about NEEDING a drink, like a drug, or even the social aspect. It's just the nicest thing to have in a bunch of situations. If you hate the taste of alcohol or even dislike it, it's easy to give up. If you enjoy it, nobody will believe you that you like the taste that much and will accuse you of being an alcoholic for having a beef dinner with half a bottle of Barolo.
I never understood the appeal of alcohol since the symptoms of drunkenness are so similar to those being poisoned. I guess it helps that I'm an extrovert and not all that inhibited by nature, but it feels like practicing at it (I mean, approaching people, learning to have fun with others even if the music sucks, or idk) a little in one's teens completely eliminates every benefit alcohol offers.
This was delightful. My favorite was “Thanks for the chocolate, I ate it instead of dinner, it’s all gone, this is what will always happen if you give me chocolate.” I'm exactly the same. For candy and desserts. For alcohol I'm even weirder than you: as a teenager I concocted elaborate philosophical reasons to oppose all mind-altering substances on principle and somehow just stuck with that (except for caffeine and such). I still don't know what being tipsy even feels like, which seems dumb to me now, but I have yet to break the teetotaling inertia.
I do love the concept of Generalized Dry January. Prove you don't have a substance abuse problem! If that's super silly because you *obviously* don't have a substance abuse problem, then, great, the Dry January should be easy. Like, either it's easy and you might as well or it's hard, in which case it's actually important.
On the topic of Damp January and abstinence being easier than moderation, that's a key selling point of Beeminder: to construct a red line for moderation that's as bright as the red line for abstinence naturally is. Here's an old post where we make that argument for the case of eating less meat: https://blog.beeminder.com/vegdays
I'm surprised at how sure you are about the sleep improvement you experienced without the n=1 self-blinded studies we have come to expect
I've considered randomization, but self-blinding with alcohol consumption would be quite a challenge! (Would you... use an IV?)
Because you can taste the difference? I guess we need a study on your minimum detectable alcohol concentration.