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3 Drinks a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Nzimmer911 writes "Heavy drinkers outlive non-drinkers according to a 20 years study following 1,824 people. From the article: 'But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.'"
Three drinks a day is moderate. If you regularly have a few drinks with friends after work, you're not drinking heavily. This is the same kind of nonsense as the claim that five or six drinks in two hours constitutes a binge. I don't know why the hell we let people who hate the idea of a good time dictate what's socially acceptable, to the point where anyone who doesn't conform is labeled an alcoholic and stuck in a treatment / proselytizing program.
That's mortality probability. A mortality rate (like many rates) is per unit time.
Was good for you. Then bad for you. Now has good cholestorol.
That's what happens when you listen to some sensationalist muckraker. Fact is, studies will disagree or find different things, and media looking for a thrill will oversimplify in to the crap you just repeated. It's not the scientists' fault, though - blame the 24 hour news cycle.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
This study measures a fact (death certificates vs reported drink rates).
A fact is not something that you measure. You can collect statistical data, and you can try to infer a conclusion from the data. There are all sorts of ways to make the wrong conclusion though, depending on how the data was collected, if it involved subjectivity somewhere, if there are some underlying mechanisms you are not modelling, whether you are incorrectly assuming that correlation implies causation etc. etc. (see for instance Wikipedia.)
The study might measure a number of death certificates (where? when?) and reported drinking rates (reported how?) as you say, but whether that means that "Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers" (if that is even what they study says, I'm quoting the Time article) is a rather far-reaching conclusion someone has made, possibly incorrectly. Maybe they forgot to compensate for some important factor; Perhaps people with predisposition for some deceases (are told to) avoid alcohol? Perhaps those who avoid alcohol have some personality trait that make them more stressed, working longer hours, or sleeping less, which in turn could be detrimental to life expectancy? And if there in fact is a positive connection between drinking and life expectancy, does it apply to everyone or just a small part of the population? Maybe alcohol works as a light medication for depression, helping some but harming most?
Facts can vary with each collections but don't tend to reverse.
Scientific conclusions change all the time.
Everything is best in moderation - including moderation.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Maybe one day if you try drinking you will find that unless you reach a serious blackout level of alcohol (something you can avoid if you are smart and not an alcoholic), most of the "loss of control" is really just a combination of lowered inhibitions and the social acceptance of having lowered inhibitions when you and the people around you are also drinking. I honestly think the lowered inhibitions, while definitely present from alcohol alone, is compounded by the fact that its a convenient little excuse where it's like "we're all drinking we can all have fun and do things we wouldn't otherwise do". Society sees alcohol as a social lubricant so it only makes it more of one.
I used to not drink either. I didn't drink freshman year of college and the beginning of sophomore year. To each their own. But it really doesn't have to be scary or ridiculous. You don't lose control unless you have a problem, have no experience (and dont try to gain it before diving in) or want to. Furthrmore, most people who say "I am so drunk" are probably just enjoying the fact that everyone else is saying the same thing and everyone feels much more at ease because of the social bonding aspect of the whole thing.