“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage,” Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe explained.
I feel like we don’t hear this enough. Smoking is being targeted by policies a lot more than drinking, while drinking comes with a heavy burden on society too (alcoholism, violence etc.).
Alcoholism comes with great burdens on society and is definetely an issue. But in the communication we need to talk about how “risk” is used as a term in the scientific discourse and public discourse. Both scientifically and by common sense it is obvious, that there is a huge gap in the health effects of alcohol between someone who drinks a beer or two on the weekend and someone who drinks 10 bottles a day accompanied with a bottle of vodka.
In the same wake, someone who smokes at a party every few weeks has an entirely different risk than someone who smokes two packs a day.
I’m a bit worried, that by creating a misunderstood communication about the dangers of alcohol, we end up in a 1990/2000s style anti Drug propaganda, where risks were broadly exaggerated and people ended up taking the entire program for the joke it was.
Hard disagree on your take on cigarettes. Someone who smoke at a party every few weeks will get to smoke two packs a day in a few years. The addiction on cigarettes is extreme. I’ve never seen anyone smoking a little and staying that way.
Well i did. I know both people that stayed light smokers throughout their life or managed to go from heavy smoking to light smoking.
That is not to say that it isn’t difficult. It certainly is and smoking is highly addictive. There is a wide range of smoking habits and that needs to be considered too. In a transparent communication about risk the point you made, that most people become heavy smokers eventually, is equally important.
I was certain you would answer this.
Problem is that you smoke more than you think, and you’re not as much in controle as you think, and it does yourself more harm, both physically and mentally, than you think.
I don’t smoke tobacco. And in my life i’ve smoked maybe ten cigarettes in total.
Western society is in no way closer to that point. What you’re reading is the counterpoint to “a glass of wine a day is good for your health” when in fact it’s not. People ask “how much can I drink without it affecting my health” and the honest answer is nothing. You’re obviously right that any substance is more dangerous the higher the amount. You also can’t tell beforehand what the exact risk is because this is a statistical question. But just because the outcome is not perfectly predictable doesn’t mean there’s no risk.
Also people don’t drink alcohol because it’s safe and healthy but because it’s fun or because they are addicted.
Well, sometimes there’s also social pressure, to ‘just drink one beer’. My mum tells me that also used to be a thing for cigarettes. I feel like that died off, because people became aware of the health effects.
Cigarettes also used to be marketed as healthy. But in general - it’s a really good skill to learn to deal with social pressure. But I feel like it’s also better with the new generation - or at least inside the rather specific bubble I’m part of.
And drunk driving
That too.
I think it’s only possible to understand how weird drinking is when you don’t drink. I quit drinking about 10 years ago and it has just become bormal for me to not drink, think about drinking or miss drinking. But people are so weird about it. “You don’t drink? Like never?” “Just a glass?” “But it’s really good” “just try it.” “You can drink a glass and still drive, you know” “woah, i can’t even IMAGINE not to drink.”
Also you start to see how drinking is just the norm. On tinder for example: “beer or wine?” “Let’s meet on a glas of wine or two.” Women who basically brag that they drink wine every day. Women who tell you how important it is to meet on a drink, or drink and talk, ask you about your favourite wine and it goes on and on. I would go as far as the women i see on tinder who have a profile text, about 3/4 mention their alcohol habits or how they are probably drunk right now.I don’t understand why people have problems with other drinking or taking any drugs for that matter. I rarely drink, since I learned to get the effect I desire from alcohol on my own - but others have clearly fun drinking, so why bother?
“You don’t drink? Like never?” “Just a glass?” “But it’s really good” “just try it.” “You can drink a glass and still drive, you know” “woah, i can’t even IMAGINE not to drink.”
You need to change your social circle or so - I can’t really remember last time someone tried to pressure me into drinking.
Work events are always like that in my experience, I haven’t drank since I had a health issue a couple years ago where the doctor was clear that alcohol must not be taken or the tests will be unable to help me.
Since then all work social events have been hell from people either thinking I’m a recovering alcoholic or terminally ill.
In my opinion all work social events (or forced social event as a whole) are hell. To be fair I’m freelancer.
It’s a misery loves company thing, someone being able to refuse alcohol makes them uncomfortable and realize their habit
Not sure I got your point.
Those people who pressure others to drink just want to bring others down with them
Sure, I would just avoid those people in general, since they don’t respect me - and it’s has nothing to do with alcohol. But than again I don’t have any troubles saying no to alcohol.
I have a problem with alcohol but I would never force someone else to drink. I also don’t know anyone who pressures me to drink when I don’t want to because I don’t hang out with shitty people
That’s why social drinkers have such a hard time quitting, cuz they have a bunch of friends that are only their friends cuz of drinking. In a way I feel blessed that I prefer to drink alone
I think it’s only possible to understand how weird drinking is when you don’t drink.
This German satire video substituting heroin for alcohol might make it a bit easier to understand for those immersed in alcohol culture. Unfortunately it only has auto-translated subtitles for other languages.
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I’m a bit different. I absolutely love the taste of (most) beer and (many) cocktails, but I don’t like being intoxicated and I absolutely hate being drunk. I like my brain working the way it’s supposed to, and let’s not even mention hangovers.
This is even weirder than not drinking, because everyone “knows” I do drink alcohol.
I’d say we are well aligned…I enjoy the feeling of say, 2 drinks but any more than that and I actively shun the feeling… Drinking water and eating food to make it go away. Hangovers are such a waste of a very short life
Look at middle-aged discussion groups on meetup. The ones which involve drinking have the most women (sometimes even a majority) while the others are about 4:1 men.
I was alcoholic and was drunk 4 days a week. I quit 8 years ago and it’s my best decision. My health improved a lot and my cognitive capacities too.
I can’t remember why I drunk and I now think it was stupid. I just can understand. I’m at the point I can’t even eat a chocolate with alcohol. It’s like vomiting.
The sensation when you’re drunk isn’t plaisant. It’s seriously bad when I think about it.
The drinking culture is here. People are still surprised when you don’t drink. The sometimes don’t understand why. I guess it’s too deep in the cultural conformism.
I quit drinking alcohol as well and looking back on parties and major celebrations I started asking myself if some of the guests were unable to control their alcohol consuption/ were addicted. A few candidates come to mind.
So wouldn’t it be sensible to rule out alcohol at all* to protect those who can’t protect themselves, without confronting them with the very uncomfortable and intimate questions?
*not legally, but I wouldn’t want it on my parties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine_by_country
This is about the officially sold alcohol, but depending on the country the amount of illegally or legally made alcohol at home might be way higher.
So Germans consume way too much official alcohol, but the production of moonshine is very low, while a country like Czechia has a high official consumption and on top many citizen produce slivovice in their garage or cellar. Worse: The amount of pure alcohol in these selfmade moonshine variants isn’t regulated and often way higher than in official drinks.
The general store drinks (whiskey, vodka) usually go around 30-40% alcohol. The homemade stuff is usually around 40-45% (both grandpas make their own). Anything above that is usually undrinkable (my GF’s dad also makes his own, 60-65%). But it varies based on region - Bohemia part has it milder than Moravia).
Humans have used alcohol for literally thousands of years. It was called the water of life.
That said I can imagine some nosy teetotalers existing even in ancient Babylon or Atlantis for that matter.
They’ve found clay tablets from ancient Sumeria with odes to beer, which they drank out of tall pottery with a spherical bottom and a narrow neck, like a huge bottle. The beer was unfiltered with a LOT of barley sediment, they drank it out of long hollow plant stems, like straws.
Europe‘s heaviest drinkers
I finally made it! I‘m in the news!
Drinking is good for the economy!
It probably isn’t with all the entailing health problems.
Can somebody do the math? There must be a perfect spot for drinking.
The beach?
Not alone in the cellar?
I strongly suspect that spot is around 0ml of alcohol since it is not as if people do not consume liquids if those liquids do not contain alcohols.
Alcohol is a fun drug, that’s why people are consuming it (besides addiction) - it allows for easier social interactions and a general more lose atmosphere, some people use it to unwind. So it has just completely different use cases than liquids not containing alcohol.
My point was that people would still buy drinks so you can’t count every sale of some alcoholic beverage as an economic benefit and overall alcohol has a lot of economic downsides for society to the point where it would surprise me very much if the tiny little bit of extra people spend on alcohol compared to other drinks would make up for that.
That’s why I was curious if someone would care to actually do some calculations, since I can speculate on that question just as good as you do.
Yes but those health problems build business for the healthcare sector which is part of the economy. Excess drinking leads to medical bills, potentially increased insurance rates after DUIs, increased money to morticians for funerals of dead alcoholics and the people killed by drunk driving
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It is the share of adults aged 18 years and over who reported having had 60 grammes or more of pure ethanol on a single occasion in the past 30 days.
In 2019, nearly one in five adults (19 per cent) reported heavy episodic drinking at least once a month in the EU countries, a proportion that has remained stable since 2014.
Women in Denmark, Luxembourg, Germany and Ireland displayed the highest rates of heavy episodic drinking, which was above 20 per cent.
People with lower education levels do not have a higher rate of heavy episodic drinking in EU countries, except in Latvia.
However, when looking at alcohol-related harm, the burden is greater on people with lower socio-economic status," the OECD’s ‘Health at State of Health in the EU Cycle-2022’ report found.
It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage," Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe explained.
The original article contains 1,276 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Some of that data could be skewed by change in tourism.
Wow
TurkeyTürkiye surely has the worst drinking, only 1.2L/person per annum, we call that “Saturday evening” here in Germany, especially during Carnival /sEdit: this is meant as a joke, of course
The L/annum means “pure” alcohol. Nobody is drinking 1,2L of pure alcohol an evening. That’s the equivalent of 3L 40% Schnaps, or
12L24L 5% beer.That technicality aside, alcohol is incredibly expensive in Türkiye. It’s basically west European prices by now (for beer), and even more expensive than western Europe for everything else. Also the numbers are probably higher than the 1,2L because a lot of people started making their own alcohol - because of the cost of buying it from the markets.
Okay that makes sense, thank you for the clarification
24L of 5% beer *
Ha, correct. Originally I wanted to write how many beer cans/bottles, which are mostly 0,5L here. Then I decided against it, and mind abscently made the multiplication into the other direction.
I was pretty freaked out when I walked through Friedrichshafen on a holiday trip and people sat there on the shore of Bodensee and drank beer at like 8am.
Why would you freak out over people enjoying themselves?
As someone who has had close friends die due to alcoholism, I’m not so relaxed about that.
