
Two standard alcoholic drinks a day no longer safe, health officials say - laurex
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/16/two-standard-drinks-a-day-no-longer-safe-health-officials-say
======
HONEST_ANNIE
Imagine a sci-fi story where you encounter human settlement that consumes
solvent that is known to causes violence and accidents and is addictive
carcinogen. The inhabitants use various methods to add little taste into it,
bottle it into fancy bottles. Sophisticated solvent enthusiasts recognize
different tastes and treat solvent fruit juices as the highest form of
sophisticated hedonism.

Alcohol as a solvent is very similar to many inhalants as a drug. Closer to
paint thinner than nitrous oxide. Similar cultural affection to hallucinogens,
pot or even pure methamphetamines would be less harmful.

Some things are hard to perceive odd when it's everyday phenomenon. Women
wearing high-heels is be another very odd cultural artifact.

~~~
MadWombat
> similar cultural affection to hallucinogens, pot or even pure
> methamphetamines would be less harmful

As someone who lived in a region with heavy meth use, I can tell you that I
would much rather deal with drunk people than meth heads. Also, your sentences
before this one don't make any sense, "alcohol as a solvent is very similar to
many inhalants as a drug" what does that even mean?

> Imagine a sci-fi story where you encounter human settlement that consumes
> solvent

In your sci-fi story you forgot to mention that this solvent people drink also
tastes very good, produces a sense of euphoria, lowers social inhibitions and
reduces stress.

> Women wearing high-heels is be another very odd cultural artifact

No, same as your sci-fi story it would not. The reasons behind high heels are
sad and ridiculous, but rather obvious. High heels make you look taller, give
more definition to your legs and make you look a bit helpless and fragile. All
of this is in tune with making females look more attractive in a male
dominated society.

~~~
HONEST_ANNIE
Illegality increases harmful effects.

Methamphetamines were used legally long time before they became illegal. Paul
Erdős was probably the most famous (amphetamine and methylphenidate) user.
Using meth when studying was also common.

Methamphetamine derivatives have reentered the society in the form Adderall
and other drugs.

~~~
MadWombat
> Methamphetamines were used legally long time before they became illegal

Methamphetamine was invented in 20th century. So "long time" is a few decades
max.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Nitpick: Invented in the 19th century. Mass manufactured for OTC self-
administration from 1921 onward. At least in Germany, available OTC for the
next 70ish years. Became prescription-only in 1988, became banned from
prescribing in 2008 -- i.e. it's been legal a lot longer than it's been
illegal.

------
vorpalhex
These guidelines generally shift both ways over time, but anecdotally, I
notice that "a few drinks a night" every night is a lot more harmful than
occasionally having a few drinks at once with friends. The folks who go home
and have a whiskey or two every single weeknight end up with a lot more
repercussions.

~~~
empath75
I think it's often because "a couple of drinks a night" is more like "drinking
yourself to sleep".

------
rogerkirkness
The original studies didn't control for wealth. Wealthy people drink
moderately, and live the longest. So technically it was never safe if you
control for wealth.

~~~
barrkel
Wealthy people drink more; drinking is correlated with income [1][2]. The
catch is that wealthy people don't suffer like poor people do when they drink,
and wealthy people are less likely to be full-blown alcoholics. It's not clear
which ways the causality goes, though.

[1] [https://www.healthline.com/health-news/rich-people-
drinking-...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/rich-people-drinking-
more)

[2]
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170511095038.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170511095038.htm)

~~~
thrownaway954
"wealthy people are less likely to be full-blown alcoholics" \- total
bullshit. Sorry, but walk into any once a week church AA meetings and you will
find many wealthy alcoholics there. The difference is that wealthy people can
afford a lawyer and don't suffer the same devastating economic consequences
from their drinking as the poor so it takes them longer to hit their bottom
and finally admit they have a problem they can't control.

~~~
csallen
_> Sorry, but walk into any once a week church AA meetings and you will find
many wealthy alcoholics there._

This type of anecdata is meaningless for assessing anything. Not only is your
sample size tiny and biased based on where you live, but there's selection
bias due to the fact that some types of alcoholics don't go to church AA
meetings.

 _> The difference is that…_

As usual, there are likely many differences, rather than just one. Studies
have shown that wealthy people drink more, likely because they can afford to
drink more. They're also more likely to seek and afford healthcare, therapy,
gyms, healthy food, etc., not just lawyers.

------
scottlocklin
Most public health officials fail to use statistics properly; this is about as
useful as advice that broccoli gives you cancer (or cures it; whatever it is
this week). It's obvious that health effects of moderate use of alcohol are
... moderate.

I certainly appreciate public health officials for their efforts; not dying of
cholera when I drink water is a nice feature of modernity, but them jabbering
on about how many drinks you can have before you have "health effects" is just
a lot of horse shit. I'm pretty sure oral sex is more dangerous than consuming
alcohol at such levels (it's statistically mildly carcinogenic).

There are obvious things these people could be doing which are tremendously
more useful: assessing the human health impacts of ... pesticides, herbicides,
widespread use of soy protein (which is highly estrogenic and has almost
certainly had a huge negative impact on human health), BPAs and so on. Such
things should be reassessed by public health officials, and are likely vastly
more dangerous than people having a couple of beers, but somehow we keep
getting obsessive advice from teetotal nitwits.

------
unpythonic
I find it funny when satire from the past becomes the truth of the present.
It's not hard to find examples such as the dystopian satire of "Network"
(1976) becoming depressingly accurate.

In this case, Mitchell & Webb performed a sketch on the power of having just
shy of two drinks. The Inebriati is "a group bound by the creed that humanity
is better and more noble after very nearly two drinks than at any other time."

Video here: [https://streamable.com/wtsn](https://streamable.com/wtsn)

~~~
blaser-waffle
See also: XKCD's "Ballmer Peak"

[https://xkcd.com/323/](https://xkcd.com/323/)

------
blhack
A lot of the doctors I know seem to agree on something: more than anything you
can do, decrease stress to improve your health. Alcohol does that.

Sitting and having drinks, even sitting and having a LOT of drinks
occasionally, with your close friends, is good for you because it helps
decrease your stress.

~~~
phonypc
No. If having a good drunken time with your friends actually does decrease
stress in the medically important sense, it's in spite of the alcohol, not
because of it. Metabolizing alcohol is inherently stressful for the body.

~~~
blhack
Exercise is stressful for the body too, but that doesn't mean it's bad for
you.

(I'm not equating these two)

------
globular-toast
Strange wording. Saying it's "no longer safe" implies that it once was and
maybe alcoholic drinks are now more dangerous or humans are now more
susceptible. I suppose it means it is no longer _considered_ safe. That's a
non-trivial difference.

Personally, I've stopped using alcohol completely. At first I just tried to
drink less, but that's difficult because using it lowers inhibition and makes
it more likely to be overused. It's much easier to just stop entirely and
remove any possibility of a bad decision. I've found that I actually enjoy
mocktails, alcohol-free beers and soft drinks when I go out and don't miss
alcoholic drinks one bit. I know I won't get a hangover or be in a compromised
mental state at any point. It feels great.

Even though I only did this for personal reasons I do now see many more of the
negative effects of alcohol as an outside observer. I hope that within my
lifetime I'll see much less use of this drug much like what's happened with
tobacco.

~~~
bluedino
People don't drink for the taste.

~~~
chrisseaton
What do you think people are doing at wine tastings?

And what do you think is the point of alcohol free beers and wines?

~~~
aaronax
I believe that wine tastings are primarily for the social value, with the
socializing eased by the alcohol. Having a guise of learning about the wine
(or whatever) is useful.

And my second belief (again generalizing, how I see it, etc.) is that alcohol-
free beers are so that you can fit in when at the bar (where again,
socializing is the main value) and choosing not to drink alcohol.

~~~
authoritarian
>I believe that wine tastings are primarily for the social value

You have apparently never tasted wine with a sommelier or wine enthusiast,
because I can assure you it is 100% about the wine. Socializing is minimal

>with the socializing eased by the alcohol

...the alcohol in the spit bucket?

~~~
aaronax
I have never been to a wine tasting where people are spitting out the wine.
But I have read of them so acknowledge that they exist and that you have a
fair point.

------
rs23296008n1
Safe is and was a relative term. Historically alcoholic drinks such as beer
were often safer than just water in days gone by.

Also true: Water purification is still a challenge even today. Plenty of
cities don't even have drinkable water in people's residences.

~~~
minikites
It wasn't full strength beer in the past, people weren't wasted 24/7:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer)

~~~
rs23296008n1
I've made that and its why I know beer was safer in times past. Probably still
is in a lot of places.

------
minikites
Based on what we now know about the health effects of alcohol, I think if
alcohol was "invented" today there's no way it would be legal, we just have a
10,000 year long status quo bias.

~~~
umvi
It would be impossible to have any degree of control over the black market
though. Unlike other drugs where you need difficult-to-obtain seeds or
extremely convoluted chemical synthesis processes, alcohol can be made by
accident with stuff you normally buy at the grocery store.

Are they going to make grape juice illegal, too?

~~~
blaser-waffle
Plus bread yeast and any sort of food that has easily accessible carbs:
fruits, grains, refined sugar, etc.

Prohibition tried to ban booze, and it failed for those reasons.

------
archagon
This brings Australia's drinking recommendations up to par with pretty much
the rest of the world, so this is a good change. (Last I checked, I think
100–120 grams a week for men was most common.)

If anyone's into fancy alcohols and wants to ensure they're sticking to safe
drinking limits, I made a free iOS app called Good Spirits just for that
purpose: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/good-
spirits/id1434237439](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/good-spirits/id1434237439)

You set a weekly drink amount (with suggestions based on government
recommendations) and check in every time you drink, and the app tracks your
progress and lets you know how you've been doing over the course of the
week/month/year. For convenience, you can automatically pull your recent beer
check-ins from Untappd.

The source code is available under the GPL here:
[https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits](https://github.com/archagon/good-
spirits)

(I think I'm pretty much the only user at the moment, but it's been invaluable
in tempering my craft beer obsession!)

------
rriepe
When did reporting tacitly turn into reality? It was either always safe or
never safe. What we considered it to be is what changed.

It's this really insidious subtext of "What we tell you _is_ reality."

~~~
rozab
I think it's a subtle anti-science attitude that pervades throughout society.
"Next thing they'll be telling us apricots give us cancer! Those stupid
scientists, eh?"

When of course it's really the media itself to blame.

~~~
rs23296008n1
Eating apricots does cause cancer if there is enough remaining pesticide
residue that hasn't been washed off.

I also agree that most of the scare is media neglecting their public interest
responsibilities in the name of sensationalism.

------
outside1234
My favorite part:

'But Anne Kelso, the NHMRC chief executive, said the guidelines were “not
telling Australians how much to drink”.'

Isn't that exactly what you are doing? (And should be doing?)

~~~
Beltiras
It's a sensitive issue for some. Especially those that should cut back or
quit.

~~~
rvense
I haven't had any alcohol since 2011. Most people don't really care, but ever
so often you run into someone who is offended that you don't even want a
single beer... and it is always, without failure, the kind of person who
themselves drink too much, too often, and/or just handle it poorly.

------
DanBC
One Australian standard drink is 10gm of alcohol.

A (UK) pint (568ml) of beer at 5% ABV will have 2.24 standard drinks.

A 175ml glass of wine at 12.5% ABV will have 1.8 standard drinks.

Important advice is to have at least one day a week with no alcohol at all.

------
JoeAltmaier
Always lots of pushback when anyone suggests limiting alcohol. Defensiveness,
projection, anger are common. Has to be a reason for that.

~~~
blhack
Probably for the same reason you get that response when you tell a vegan to
eat meat, or a meat eater to stop eating meat.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Really? Alcohol is a moral choice, like vegetarianism? That's a new one.

{Defensiveness}

~~~
mnm1
Alcohol has always been a moral choice. For over a billion people that choice
is central to their religion, but the moral choice is certainly not limited to
them. I can't think of an instance where consuming alcohol doesn't have moral
implications due to its massive effects on consciousness and indirectly on
society.

------
mbostleman
"It is no longer safe to have two standard drinks a day". Dear Australian
health officials. Nothing has changed. It has never been safe to have two
standard drinks a day.

It's inconceivable to me how anyone but the most uninformed could have ever
thought that something that melts your liver would be safe in any
concentration. For decades I've rolled my eyes at the "one glass of wine a
day" or whatever phrase was used in the current era.

~~~
airbreather
High consumers of peanuts and pistachio products are at greater risk of
intermittent exposure to aflatoxin. ... Longer term exposure to dietary
aflatoxins in combination with chronic infection with hepatitis viruses,
particularly HBV, significantly increases the risk of liver cancer.

Best watch your peanut consumption as well.

Point is, there are likely many things in a day that are consumed that are not
tha great for people, but they don't even know. Some are even thought to be
good for them.

------
draklor40
Dosage and frequency are 2 different things. Smoking a pack of cigarettes
every year wont kill you, but smoking one cigaratte a day for a year might.

~~~
adrianN
I'd be interested in a good study that compared smoking one cigarette a day
with smoking 365 cigarettes "at once". (or more likely a less immediately
lethal dose both for daily as well as "at once" consumption)

My intuition would be the opposite of yours. I think our body is reasonably
well equipped to handle low dose exposure, but large doses at once are more
likely to cause irreversible damage.

~~~
jcutrell
There are studies that show not this level of extreme, but that there is what
is called “wasted harm” - the harm done by 3 packs a day is not 3x the harm
done by 1 pack a day, and 1 pack a day for 5 years is thus worse than 5 packs
a day for 1 year.

~~~
MadWombat
5 packs is a 100 cigarettes. About one cigarette every 10 minutes if you
account for 8 hours of sleep. I have seen some obsessive smokers, people who
smoke 2-3 packs a day, but I have never seen a 5 pack a day person or anywhere
even close.

------
swiley
I’m pretty sure no amount of alcohol is safe. I remember before college (in
other words: before all the binge drinking.) I felt bad weeks after I had just
a glass of wine.

~~~
chrisseaton
> I felt bad

This isn't the same as being _unsafe_ though, is it?

~~~
swiley
I guess we have different meanings for safety?

For me: safety means not causing permanent damage.

~~~
authoritarian
You said you feel bad, in what way did that cause permanent damage? I stubbed
my toe this morning and it felt bad but no permanent damage was caused

