Just two drinks a week — is that possible?
Wait a second, how many drinks am I supposed to have in a week?
Two. In a week. Two. One, two and we’re done. Not just two on a Friday evening or on a Monday that is behaving like a normal Monday. Two for all of Tipsy Tuesdays and White Wine Wednesdays and Thirsty Thursdays — never mind, you know, the whole goddamn weekend. Two in the entirety of all those seven days combined. Yeah, right.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) released new guidelines recently that recommended that we Canucks — lovers of craft beer, strong whisky and our improbable wineries — reduce our consumption to two drinks a week, total. It was based, according to the 89-page report that requires several drinks to get through, on an academic review of 6,000 studies and ... some charts and stuff.
On one hand, I think this is great news. There has been a great reckoning for smoking, an acknowledgment that it is fully terrible for individual health and society as a whole. My father had lung cancer and still smokes — I know exactly how harmful and addictive it can be.
Alcohol is on a similar trajectory, something we do by rote while only vaguely acknowledging the damage it does. I watch movies from the ’70s and ’80s and even ’90s where people smoke in restaurants and
cars and on airplanes and I am weirded out: we actually let people do that?
I think we’ll eventually see booze the same way. Of the 10 dumbest things I’ve done in my life, I was smashed for eight of them. A few of those were neardeath experiences but the cumulative effect is even more nefarious: alcohol is a contributing factor in several cancers, heart disease and generally acting like a jerk (any of which might eventually kill you.)
That said, a closer look at the numbers reveals that there’s some spin (the bottle) going on here. Dan Malleck, a researcher at Brock University tore apart the new guidelines, including the cancer fear-mongering. From his Twitter thread: “If your risk of dying from a disease is 0.0002 per cent and drinking three drinks a day increases that by 100 per cent you now have a 0.0004 per cent chance of dying from that disease. Life is about making choices, but it requires being fully informed.”
Here’s the thing: I know already that I drink more than I should. And while I could run out any number of justifications — it helps me relax, quiets my mind, I enjoy it — these new guidelines just add reinforcement to a lifestyle change I’ve been trying to make for awhile.
So two drinks a week! The danger is that it’s so unrealistic it’s not worth even trying, like aiming for a massive weight loss when it’s easier to start with just a few pounds. But I’ve made big lifestyle changes before, primarily with health in mind: this seems like the best place to make the next change to happen.