The Year We Realized Any Alcohol Is Bad for You

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My wife and I were responsible for this year’s Thanksgiving booze. Upon hearing that we bought seven bottles of wine—for a feast where barely half of the 11 in attendance were both of age to drink and known to enjoy a glass or two—my mother texted me one thing in response: “Geez!!!!!". And then, of course, despite the amount of alcohol we carted into my parent’s house as we arrived home the evening before Thanksgiving, we eventually made our way into the neighborhood bar later that night for pre-holiday beers.

I would perhaps feel worse about disclosing this information were it not for my belief that many Americans charge into Thanksgiving the same way. The data shows that Thanksgiving, along with the winter holidays and New Year’s Eve, are among the booziest holidays every year.

Celebrations often involve imbibing with friends and family. For some folks, a long day at work is justification enough for a drink or two. (A friend of mine is fond of telling me that “the cold Friday beer just hits differently.”) I don’t think I can count the number of times I’ve walked into the local American Legion Hall with my wife’s 86-year-old grandmother, who’s always ready to tack on a screwdriver after a couple of Corona Lights. Alcohol, for many people, is a fixture of life.

Yet studies, research, and the word of public health officials over the last year have revealed a sobering truth: Even a tiny amount of alcohol is not good for you. “Basically, our argument is that there’s no really safe amount of alcohol,” George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said during a podcast interview in April.

Koob’s statement mirrors what other national and international groups have said throughout 2023. Writing in The Lancet Public Health in January, the World Health Organization declared there’s no level of alcohol consumption that doesn’t affect health in some sort of adverse way. After years of saying that men should limit their weekly alcohol intake to no more than 15 drinks, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, in new guidance published the same month as the WHO report, argued the ideal amount of alcohol that someone can drink is none. Now, according to the CCSA, more than six drinks every week increases someone’s risk of cancer, cardiovascular conditions, and liver disease.

In the Time magazine article covering the CCSA changes, John Callaci, a researcher with the Alcohol Research Program at Loyola University Chicago, was quoted as saying that over the last two decades, “the evidence has been building and building that alcohol is not good for your health.” Such asseverations must have Daniel Craig’s James Bond turning in his martini-soaked grave.

Perhaps nothing in the U.S. did more to shine a light on the consequences of alcohol consumption than an article written by Dana G. Smith and published on the front page of The New York Times in January. The piece garnered nearly 900,000 views on X (née Twitter), and was notable for one of its central points. When people tend to think about the harmful health effects of consuming fermented liquid of any kind, they most often link it to excessive alcohol use.

Having a few drinks every night surely isn’t bad—just don’t think that 24-rack of Miller Lite you pick up on a Saturday morning means one beer for every hour of the day. “But,” as Smith wrote, “the health risks from drinking can come from moderate consumption as well.” Cell damage, higher blood pressure, coronary artery disease, colorectal cancer, being a belligerent jackass: Drinking modestly can bring all of this on.

For anyone following the recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (for anyone who even knows what that is), the Times’ piece wasn’t exactly news. The limit is two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women, regardless of whether you go Monday to Friday without touching wine, liquor, or beer.

Still, the abundance of public statements, interviews, and written pieces about alcohol over the last year tend to fly in the face of common public conceptions about healthy alcohol use. It’s not hard, for example, to find research indicating that alcohol might even be good for you. One article published in 1999 in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that “light-to-moderate alcohol consumption reduces the overall risk of stroke…in men.” (The article did note the benefit was seen with one drink a week, not necessarily one drink a day.)

Red wine, in particular, has been lauded for its polyphenic properties, especially the presence of resveratrol, which is a favorite of the anti-aging crowd. (It calls to mind the time the late Christopher Hitchens, certainly no stranger to booze, told Bill Maher that “all the Chardonnay drinkers have been wasting their time.”) Meanwhile, a much more recent analysis, this one published in March, found that having a drink or two a day doesn’t lower one’s mortality risk compared to not drinking at all.

Among all the conflicting notions out there, one thing seems clear: It is perhaps time we come to terms with the knowledge that any amount of alcohol is, in fact, detrimental to our well-being. That might explain the sales of alcohol-imitation products—think the craft stylings of the Athletic Brewing Company, officially the number two non-alcoholic beverage in this country behind Heineken 0.0—jumping by one-third in the last year alone, while sales of real alcohol have stagnated.

So what to do? The answer, probably, does not lie in cutting out booze entirely if you’re the type who likes to have a few—but maybe the phrase should take on a new meaning. Maybe “having a few” ought to mean just having one. And it would probably help if, next year, my wife and I cut back on the number of bottles we haul along to a family holiday.

Originally Appeared on GQ