
Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you? - tomp
https://www.popsci.com/moderate-drinking-benefits-risks
======
carbocation
1\. The _best evidence_ that there is no safe amount of alcohol consumption is
the Mendelian randomization (MR) by Holmes et al from 2014 [1]. I believe that
the more recent paper making such claims is no better than the usual
observational studies. But the MR paper is convincing to me. The risks for
mild drinking appear to be low enough that I don't abstain, and I am happy to
tell my patients about my thought process.

2\. While we like to claim that a study randomizing people to alcohol wouldn't
be ethical, pre-2014 I don't think that would have been true. I think there
was enough equipoise. Post-2014, I would need to see some strong counter-
evidence to make me think there is equipoise once again.

3\. The environment changes. A trial came out last week showing that ASA may
be harmful for older healthy people [2]. This probably reflects that our
bloodstream is no longer nicotine-filled, etc., so the heart attack risk is
low enough that the bleeding risk may outweigh it. There may be something
about alcohol that was helpful in the 1950s that is no longer so today, due to
these environmental changes.

1 = (Free full link):
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091648/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091648/)

2 =
[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1800722?query=fe...](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1800722?query=featured_home)

~~~
alexlikeits1999
Thank you very much for that first link. It seems to be severely under-
publicised considering the huge amount of exposure that the topic gets.

Do you happen to know if rs1229984 is linked to any particular group that
could make this result problematic? I noticed that the paper mentions that
"There was also some evidence for a difference in years of education, and,
while the size of the effect was small, this requires further investigation."
That sounds like a decent-sized red flag.

~~~
carbocation
Yes, there is almost always stratification across populations for any chosen
marker. You can check out gnomAD for this SNP:
[http://gnomad.broadinstitute.org/variant/4-100239319-T-C](http://gnomad.broadinstitute.org/variant/4-100239319-T-C)

Take a look at the population frequencies on the right. While the minor allele
is infrequent in Europeans, it is extremely common in East Asians, for
example.

------
another-cuppa
Obviously I can't say anything about my own longevity, but over the past few
years my alcohol consumption has decreased to virtually zero and I've never
felt better. I was never a big drinker, but I would semi-regularly go out and
drink a few pints of beer or have wine with dinner. I never intended to cut
down on alcohol, but my lifestyle changed, I stopped going out so much, and
the drinking went with it. I would still drink maybe once a month, but I've
realised that it makes me feel bad every time, so I now completely abstain.

The interesting thing is how people react to it. For some reason you are
expected to provide a reason for why you don't drink. I don't smoke either but
nobody asks me why. I've noticed also that it makes people uncomfortable if
you're not drinking. When I do go out now I drink diet soft drinks so that I
don't get constantly asked why I don't have a drink.

I foresee a shift in cultural views towards alcohol much like the shift with
respect to tobacco of last century. I wonder if the USA and UK will again lead
the way with this leaving much of continental Europe behind.

~~~
akvadrako
Unless you were getting wasted it's quite unusual for a few drinks to make you
feel bad.

Also, there is more and more a _decent_ selection of <0.5% alcohol beers - I
find this the easiest way to not get strange looks when at a drinking
occasion.

But then again, maybe the point of drinking together is it provides some kind
of bonding effect, being a shared vice. It makes it harder to lie and shows
you value others more than your own health (relatively).

~~~
lloydde
How do you define quite unusual? I’m not East Asian, but I most often get
symptoms similar to Alcohol Flush Reaction with even only a single drink. I
often find a single beer strong. I’ve never been able to figure out why
sometimes I’ll get a headache after a single beer.

“Approximately 36% of East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) show
characteristic physiological responses to drinking alcohol that includes
facial flushing, nausea, headaches and a fast heart rate.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction)

~~~
justtopost
Diabetes, poor liver and/or kidney function, similar genetic mutation, etc.
There are a host of reasons, I would bring it up with your physician, as they
may have more insight than a psudoanonymous commenter.

~~~
copperx
It could be some other cause too. A couple of years ago I started noticing
that one or two beers would make me almost drunk and to feel terrible the next
morning. I attributed it to aging (36) but I also noticed none of my friends
had the same problem.

Later, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and after daily treatment now drinking
a few beers is completely ok.

I don't understand what the relationship between those two things are. I would
have never imagined.

------
rossdavidh
"But if the same 100,000 people drank nothing at all, 914 would still have one
of those same problems. That’s only 4 more people per year (per 100,000) who
will have a problem that’s attributable to alcohol—that’s tiny. But it’s also
not zero." ...and it's also far too little to be statistically significant.

Moreover, nutritional studies of any kind have been infamously bad at giving
reliable information. The advice from one decade is almost routinely found in
the next to be invalid, or even the opposite of the truth. That's for things
like carbohydrates, about which there were few religious injunctions or
political polarization. For a topic with as much emotional and political
baggage as alcohol, I find it unlikely to be any better. Whatever your
decision about alcohol, I think the reliability of the science (pro- or anti-)
is just not sufficient to help you make your decision.

------
_null_
I have been reading for years about the numbers of studies being done
(especially in the public health field) that can be whittled down to
correlation without any strongly proven causality. Is this an issue with
science, or with how the media reports on science? Is it really as bad as it
seems?

I understand that it's difficult to control for various factors when doing
large scale studies of health and behavior, but my perception as a layman is
that there is some willful ignorance or absence of rigor. I realize this is
perhaps too harsh a statement; I'm just trying get my point across.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
>correlation without any strongly proven causality

How would one really prove causality or does it even matter. When I think of
science, I try to think of it like how I think of physics, where we create a
model that best describes the evidence but which doesn't have any guarantee of
being how things really work.

Take Newtonian gravity. It is a pretty good model that describes a lot of
basic interactions. Given a state at a given moment in time, it lets us
determine things going forward or backwards (though for more complex physics,
backwards stops working because of assumptions and estimates in the model).
But at the same time, it is wrong. More complex physics shows there is a model
that fits even more experimental data which contradicts what we thought was
happening in the Newtonian model. Mass doesn't attract mass. Mass bends space
time and impacts objects traveling through it in such a way that it appears
mass attracts mass (though even this may end up being wrong and something else
entirely is at play).

So, is it really important to describe why a ball falls to the ground when I
release it, or is it good enough to have a system that describes the
interactions enough that I can apply it to problems? If I solve a problem, say
what angle and what speed I need to throw a ball to get over fence, does it
really matter if I think the ball falls back to earth because mass attracts
mass or because mass bends spacetime? Or is it just important for my equations
to be accurate enough that any error is less than what is innate in applying
the solution to real life (measuring the exact height of the fence, throwing
at an exact angle).

What does applying a similar mind set in something dealing with vastly more
complicated systems, such as in medicine, looks like?

~~~
thrmsforbfast
_> So, is it really important to describe why a ball falls to the ground when
I release it, or is it good enough to have a system that describes the
interactions enough that I can apply it to problems?... does it really matter
if I think the ball falls back to earth because mass attracts mass or because
mass bends spacetime?_

I think you answer this question in your own post. The answer depends entirely
on your goals.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful".

If all we ever wanted to do was shoot cannon balls over/into walls accurately,
then we probably would've never bothered inventing modern physics.

But we did want to do other things, so we built better models. It's worth
noting that some of those things we wanted to do were more philosophical than
others, e.g., engineering ("put satellites into orbit"), explaining empirical
observations that seem important ("explain how electricity really works") and
philosophical ("understand the nature of reality") are all answers to the
question "what are you goals?" that have inspired progress toward better
models in physics.

 _> What does applying a similar mind set in something dealing with vastly
more complicated systems, such as in medicine, looks like?_

It takes a certain amount of philosophical sophistication to realize that even
the most perfect model is still a model and to then reason through what that
entails -- epistemologically -- for less perfect models and for the entire
scientific enterprise.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
>what are you goals?

I'm personally a fan of the 'make a better model to have a better model and
let someone else figure out the application' model, but that one is harder to
get funding for.

------
nadont8
Cache link:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:73LY6v...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:73LY6vG7EDcJ:https://www.popsci.com/moderate-
drinking-benefits-risks+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=en)

(I am shown a consent dialog that does not work.)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
For me it works only after enabling JS and disabling adblocking, but the
contents is appalling:

> To continue enjoying the free content made available to you on this website,
> you must indicate that you understand and accept Bonnier Corp.’s use of
> cookies by selecting the "Allow all cookies" button below.

------
coldtea
What about the loss of quality of life from not drinking?

Are those things ever taken into account?

We could a nutritionally determined portion of specific foods every day, sit
at home to avoid accidents outside, get out enough for the required sunlight,
and exercise the optimal around.

While it's good to know whether a "glass of wine" is good or not, it bad when
such research is used to cut off any bad-for-us enjoyment we get.

Besides, it's a bunch of factors which makes the whole "one glass of wine is
harmful" a moot point if you can take care of the rest (and why not start with
them?).

In the "blue zone" of Icaria for example, one of the places in the globe where
people live the most, people regularly drink several glasses of wine per meal
and have been doing so for millennia. Yet, there they are regularly at 90+ and
100+. Then again, they're stress free, sleep whenever they feel like (no
really, they'll casually open their shops at 2pm or at 3am if they feel like
it), and don't eat junk food.

------
sytelus
Glass of wine in the night is a very bad habit and you don't need a large
scale study to prove it. If you have a watch that can track your sleep cycle,
you will see that your deep sleep doesn't start until much later if you
consuming alcohol before going to sleep. In other words, a glass of wine might
make you feel relaxed but it robes you from your deep sleep.

~~~
dhimes
_If you have a watch that can track your sleep cycle, you will see that your
deep sleep doesn 't start until much later if you consuming alcohol before
going to sleep._

Maybe that's good.

~~~
akvadrako
That seems ridiculous but indeed, we shouldn't make assumptions. We have to
measure assumed negative effects, like impaired cognition. Or maybe that's
good too.

~~~
dhimes
Agree. It speaks to the broader point that studies in fields like this- with
so many degrees of freedom, are _hard_.

------
sildur
That’s why I drink what I want and I eat what I want. I stopped caring about
studies changing each year. Also, I’d very much prefer to die earlier from a
heart attack than live longer and die from Alzheimer’s.

------
negamax
Alcohol consumption and our attitudes towards it, is pretty much the result of
marketing, movies and shows. We are literally made consumers of literal
poison. Has anyone paid attention to recent WHO report that 5% of all deaths
are due to alcohol, number has high as 23% in 20 somethings.

~~~
ardfie
Humans have been making alcohol since prehistory. There are plenty of
breweries, distilleries, and vineyards in Europe and Asia that have been
continuously active for centuries.

~~~
negamax
True and it was never mass consumed and celebrated to this extent. Current
situation is that despite the facts and knowledge, social pressure makes
people drink. _Despite the facts_.

The facts are overwhelming and we shouldn't just keep consuming alcohol
because _muah cultur_. Many alcoholics end up causing traffic accidents and
require lots of state support in other ways. Just walk into ED on any
Saturday/Friday night. I have done that

~~~
malvosenior
Alcohol was consumed en mass more than it is now. Little kids would regularly
drink. Often alcohol was drank instead of water for sanitation reasons. It's
been a huge part of nearly every culture for thousands of years.

~~~
negamax
In that case we need to give up on a previous era bad habit as there’s
overwhelming evidence that it’s bad

~~~
sebastos
You seem somewhat unperturbed that the entire crux of your original argument
was faulty... maybe time for an update on your priors? Don't mean to sound
unfriendly :)

~~~
negamax
Unperturbed because I know the endgame on this :). World without alcohol is a
better world. The arguments about the past. I can list down counter arguments.
But that’s not the point. People often respond with emotions about alcohol
consumption. Media brainwashing has done its job well.

~~~
malvosenior
> World without alcohol is a better world.

Not for me. I truly enjoy a good drink with or without friends. It's possible
to drink in moderation and enjoy yourself.

> Media brainwashing has done its job well.

Again, _heavy_ drinking was extremely common well before mass media. I don't
think you can pin this particular issue on them.

~~~
negamax
You are ignoring the fact that our lifestyles have changed completely. We
don’t work in the fields and at mercy of cold

~~~
malvosenior
How am I ignoring that? I'm saying I actually like a drink now and then.
Honestly, your argument seems all over the place.

~~~
negamax
I am happy to coherently type my argument.

Alcohol consumption in the past was necessity because of cold climate and
manual labor. Alcohol is made from ethanol is made from sugarcane and is
extremely calories rich. 100 gm beer contains 43 calories. One can contains
154 calories

It was quite fine in the past as most of the calories were burned due to harsh
living conditions.

Fast forward to 21st century. We are hardly exposed to extreme cold. We live
in extremely protected environments. From temperature controlled office to car
to home. But we haven’t changed our drinking habits to reflect that.

Add to that mass media consumption due to profits. We have an epedicmic which
can easily be prevented. 5% of all deaths are due to alcohol.

Just visit ED of any hospital on Saturday night if you want to see the ills
for yourself

~~~
malvosenior
No doubt alcoholism is bad and shouldn't be encouraged. But there's a _huge_
difference between ending up in the ER and having a craft beer on a Friday
after work (and everything in between).

You are discounting the positive psychological benefits that can be attributed
to alcohol. Even if it really is bad to ever drink, _ever_ , it's not like
you're going to instantly keel over and die, it's a very subtle effect if it's
there at all. People will weigh that risk against the benefits they get from
drinking and act accordingly.

One could say that a lot of these "soft limits" are already in place due to
humanity's long relationship with alcohol. It's already not seen as a good
thing to get black out drunk for instance...

~~~
negamax
Don’t get me wrong. Personal choice precedes everything. I do think however
that there’s lack of information spread. And profit seeking encourage drinking
and discount the ill effects.

Facts weigh against alcohol consumption and I hope people choose their,
societal and environmental health

------
kurtisc
This same reasoning was in Bad Science by Ben Goldacre 10 years ago.

------
archagon
If anyone's interested, I recently built a free and open source¹ drink
tracking app for iOS called Good Spirits:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/good-
spirits/id1434237439?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/good-
spirits/id1434237439?mt=8)

You set a weekly limit and the app tells you when you're getting too close.
Features Untappd integration, HealthKit calorie syncing, and various charts
and stats of your drinking over the past year. Figured I'd build it after
reading numerous articles like this and deciding that 100g/week was the
optimal risk/reward point for my health.

¹ [https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits](https://github.com/archagon/good-
spirits)

------
KozmoNau7
There has been a rather disturbing post-2000 neo-puritan thing going on for a
while now, shaming people for purely personal choices, such as eating meat,
smoking, drinking alcohol, enjoying cannabis in various forms, and generally
acting in ways that are "impure".

Sure, banning smoking in restaurants makes sense, as it actively ruins the
experience for other people. But this whole vegan teetotaler thing is getting
extremely aggravating.

Shaming people for enjoying alcohol responsibly is just as bad as shaming
people for choosing to not drink. Both groups of shamers need to cut it the
hell out.

------
JohnJamesRambo
That page was nearly unreadable in Chrome on my phone due to bizarre scrolling
ads everywhere and eventually crashed and died. A pity, I was learning a lot.

~~~
seandougall
Same on mobile Safari. On page load it immediately scrolled halfway down the
article and covered up half the screen with a “trending articles” popover
whose assets — including the dismiss button — failed to load.

Seriously, does anybody in publishing actually visit their own sites? I see UX
like this and all I can think is, “gee, somebody got _paid_ to make this?”

Edit: I see from another comment that the scrolling was (partly) a result of
the link being to an anchor tag. I stand by the rest of my point, though.

------
mcguire
I've often felt that there was something sketchy about meta-analysis,...

" _But as the headline-generating study in The Lancet notes, “Until recently,
most meta-analyses of alcohol consumption have not controlled for the
composition of the reference category,” and that “subsequently, assessments of
harm relying on these studies have been biased.”_ "

...but overall systemic bias wasn't what I was thinking of.

------
nibs
Because the studies that looked at it didn't control for wealth.

~~~
tomp
Nah that’s an obvious one. Having unrelated health problems is a more
important confunder (i.e. people with health problems, or old, or mentally
ill, are mole likely to not drink).

~~~
wjnc
People with health problems or mentally ill are more likely not to drink? That
seems false. Any sources? I found [1] that suggests comorbidity.

[1]
[https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://...](https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/15771/1/cheers_report%255B1%255D.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj90bDmsNHdAhUFDuwKHauYBckQFjAMegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw3NxmGCkmEurvp_foYKyvq8)

~~~
mpweiher
People with health problems are told by their doctors to stop drinking
alcohol.

From TFA:

"An analysis from 2007 by an international group of alcohol epidemiologists
and addiction researchers, published in Annals of Epidemiology, notes that “as
people progress into late middle and old age, their consumption of alcohol
declines in tandem with ill health, frailty, dementia, and/or use of
medications.” That decline means that, as people become less well—even if
they’re not elderly—they will also tend to stop drinking."

~~~
wjnc
I might have been too subtle since you TFA so nicely.

The article points to adverse health related events that cause abstainment.
Clear and good the AoE-article works that out.

I however point out that it's pretty clear within the drinking categories you
have effects that go in tandem with other illnesses as well (like self-
medicating with alcohol for psychological issues).

So the whole argument they propose should at least be carried out to its full,
working both ways. You've got illnesses moving people into abstainment and
illnesses moving people into moderate or high alcohol usuage. The only way to
control this is to use changes in comorbidity over time as a factor.

TBH the scientists in the underlying article write this down as an issue as
well.

------
huffmsa
Popular science. It answers its own question in the name of the publication.

Not the best way to get your ad revenue up.

------
kens
Link is to page 2 of the article (in case you wonder why you ended up in the
middle). Maybe someone can update it?

~~~
sctb
Updated! Thanks.

------
known
L-ornithine L-aspartate pill can flush out excess alcohol from body

~~~
justtopost
They increase urea, which lowers blood ammonia. I have never heard of using
LOLA for alcohol, but seems possible. Got any links, and rurthermore, how this
would be useful in this context?

------
thrownaway954
because more people are becoming alcoholics and the penalties for a DWI are
getting harsher. bottom line is... if you think you have a problem, you
already have a problem. Get help and get help now before you hurt someone (you
don't want this on your conscience... trust me). Go to AA, NA, a therapist, a
doctor, rehab, a detox, doesn't matter, open up and tell someone you have a
problem and get the help you need before you destroy your life or someone
elses.

[https://www.aa.org/](https://www.aa.org/)

[https://www.na.org/](https://www.na.org/)

~~~
jMyles
> because more people are becoming alcoholics

Do you have a source for this claim, which both does a good job of defining a
measurement schema for alcoholism and also shows convincingly that it is on
the incline?

Do you also have a source for the claim that this particular increase is the
reason (or even a contributing factor) to the apparent decline in correlation
between moderate wine consumption and positive health outcomes?

> if you think you have a problem, you already have a problem

Now this just seems like toxic thinking to me. Plenty of thoughtful,
responsible people continually ask themselves whether they are experiencing
various problems in life, and sometimes the answer really is "no."

> Go to AA, NA, a therapist, a doctor, rehab, a detox, doesn't matter

Really? It _doesn 't matter_?

Your links at the end of your comment are only to AA and NA. Can you explain
what aspects of these programs are preferable to you?

I hope that my comment isn't minimizing the issues of drug abuse (including
alcoholism) in our culture - I totally respect that these are serious issues
with many grave outcomes. I just want to be sure that we're discussing them in
a way that is... well, sober.

Anyway, even if you don't have answers to the above questions, your
perspective is welcome IMO.

~~~
darpa_escapee
This study[1] purports that alcoholism doubled during the decade after the
turn of the millenium. It also has a concrete criteria for what they consider
alcoholism.

> Now this just seems like toxic thinking to me. Plenty of thoughtful,
> responsible people continually ask themselves whether they are experiencing
> various problems in life, and sometimes the answer really is "no."

To you it may seem like "toxic thinking", but to anyone with a problem who had
the insight to ask themselves such a question, it can be a life changing
moment.

If someone is at a point in their alcohol consumption career where they step
back and have to ask, "Do I have a problem?", that insight usually stems from
encountering a problem most people don't face.

The nature of alcoholism is to tell yourself everything is fine and normal,
that there is no problem even though your life is falling apart.

To wish to portray as truly pivotal insight that an alcoholic would be _lucky_
to have as "toxic thinking" is, IMO, minimizing the issues of drug abuse in
our culture.

> Really? It doesn't matter?

When you're at the point where a substance controls your life, there's no
saying when you might overdose or drink too much and plow your car into
innocent people.

Finding _someone_ who can direct you to help _now_ is paramount.

> Your links at the end of your comment are only to AA and NA. Can you explain
> what aspects of these programs are preferable to you?

There are no months-long waitlists for AA or NA like there are for rehabs,
detox clinics, therapists, psychiatrists and addiction specialists.

There is no pretense of requiring an in-network insurance provider that will
cover the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars worth of treatment
you might require.

As much as I disagree with some aspects of those programs, their existence is
infinitely better than the alternative. Which, for most people with that
problem, is the destruction of what is left of their life.

[1]
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2647079)

~~~
astura
AA and other 12 step programs can be positive to some people but they can also
be very harmful to others. AA teaches a lot of falsehoods. If AA was actually
honest about what it was, I wouldn't dislike it so much.

Plus "just do anything" can lead you to the abusive profit seeking sketchy
"rehab" industry, and that's probably going to leave you worse off. I think
the worst offenders have been shut down recently though thanks to exposés.

Most people are able to reduce alcohol consumption to less harmful levels on
their own. That's not saying you shouldn't seek help if you need it, just you
may not need it. Everyone is different. If you wish to reduce your alcohol
consumption don't assume you are "powerless" just because AA says you are.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-
irr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-
irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/)

>The 12 steps are so deeply ingrained in the United States that many people,
including doctors and therapists, believe attending meetings, earning one’s
sobriety chips, and never taking another sip of alcohol is the only way to get
better. Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and rehab centers use the 12 steps as
the basis for treatment. But although few people seem to realize it, there are
alternatives, including prescription drugs and therapies that aim to help
patients learn to drink in moderation. Unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, these
methods are based on modern science and have been proved, in randomized,
controlled studies, to work. For J.G., it took years of trying to “work the
program,” pulling himself back onto the wagon only to fall off again, before
he finally realized that Alcoholics Anonymous was not his only, or even his
best, hope for recovery. But in a sense, he was lucky: many others never make
that discovery at all.

>Whereas AA teaches that alcoholism is a progressive disease that follows an
inevitable trajectory, data from a federally funded survey called the National
Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions show that nearly one-
fifth of those who have had alcohol dependence go on to drink at low-risk
levels with no symptoms of abuse. And a recent survey of nearly 140,000 adults
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nine out of 10
heavy drinkers are not dependent on alcohol and, with the help of a medical
professional’s brief intervention, can change unhealthy habits.

>AA truisms have so infiltrated our culture that many people believe heavy
drinkers cannot recover before they “hit bottom.” Researchers I’ve talked with
say that’s akin to offering antidepressants only to those who have attempted
suicide, or prescribing insulin only after a patient has lapsed into a
diabetic coma. “You might as well tell a guy who weighs 250 pounds and has
untreated hypertension and cholesterol of 300, ‘Don’t exercise, keep eating
fast food, and we’ll give you a triple bypass when you have a heart attack,’ ”
Mark Willenbring, a psychiatrist in St. Paul and a former director of
treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism, told me. He threw up his hands. “Absurd.”

>But many in AA and the rehab industry insist the 12 steps are the only answer
and frown on using the prescription drugs that have been shown to help people
reduce their drinking.

>People with alcohol problems also suffer from higher-than-normal rates of
mental-health issues, and research has shown that treating depression and
anxiety with medication can reduce drinking. But AA is not equipped to address
these issues—it is a support group whose leaders lack professional
training—and some meetings are more accepting than others of the idea that
members may need therapy and/or medication in addition to the group’s help

------
mindfulplay
Why is it that hard to do actual research? Like science? Observe what alcohol
does to the body and identify risks. I know this is hard.

Lazy survey door to door salespeople posing as scientists dominate this field
unfortunately.

This is not science. This is guesswork. And this causes serious problems to
people who trust this crap.

Throw away your shitty biased studies and start doing actual science.

It took Newton a lot of time to observe and repeat and prove the physics of
gravity. And that stood the test of time for several decades at least.

This shitty research area needs to stop. People post media coverage as somehow
being the final validators of their crappy research.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Because there isn’t sufficient funding to pay for non biased scientists who
have the understanding of statistics and probability to perform the correct
experiments and analysis. And there isn’t sufficient funding for the types of
large scale control groups needed for studying health effects on a complex
organism such as humans, especially when mechanisms of actions can’t directly
be observed.

~~~
mindfulplay
Economics should not play a role in science. I agree it is hard.

But this isnt a choice between hard science and shitty survey based science.

I am saying this is a choice between hard science and NOTHING. Do nothing.
Don't do lazy work. That's my point.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Yes, I was answering why it’s so hard to do legitimate research. I agree that
it would be better if the garbage research didn’t exist at all. No info is
better than bad info.

