What is moderate drinking?

The headline of a recent New York Times article asked the question, “What, Exactly, Is ‘Moderate Drinking’?”

Great question, especially amid the current neo-Prohibitionist push coming from faux-health-focused folks who rarely seem well-intentioned or without a personal agenda. The article’s subhead supplied a good, though not definitive, answer: “That depends on whom you ask and what country you live in.”

The whole subject is confusing because individual health is often confounding. Some who could care less about their physical well-being seem to live a long time, while some others who prefer steamed spinach to fatty steak wind up with truly troubling diseases.

For example, a physician friend has always been the picture of health from his days as a high school football quarterback to his regular long bike rides and weight-lifting regime in his 50s. If he drank more than a couple of Michelob Ultras a week, it meant he was on vacation.

Yet three years after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, this poor guy is still battling long Covid. No one who knows him saw that coming, and all see it is a cruel twist of fate for a guy who took such great care of himself. (Of course, most of his friends kid him now, saying, “We told you to drink more and look what happened!”)

Another friend’s father was a high-functioning alcoholic who drank at least a fifth of whiskey every day. Dude drank it while at work, at dinner as he ignored his family and watched TV alone, and as way to wind down after a long day of drinking, working and withdrawing. He died in his mid-90s.

Of course, this small and unscientific study group is used here only for brevity. But the fact is we’ve all heard stories of people like this: health and exercise devotees who get breast cancer twice before they’re 40 and while having three kids; excessive drinkers who can outwork and outsmart most any of us—while they’re clearly sauced; and grandparents who tippled secretly but seriously while thriving well beyond their peers who abstained.

So, in the interest of putting wise guardrails around our lives, researchers have advised us to drink moderately: men having no more than two alcoholic beverages daily, and women stopping at one. Some have followed that advice while others … not so much. Some abstain during the work week before cranking up consumption over the weekend.

Personally, I aim to keep it at one drink Monday through Thursday, enjoy two on Friday and, if at a long party over which moderation is easy, three on Saturday. Sunday’s always a mixed result that falls between zero to two. If there’s a spirits-centric event during the week, two drinks for sure.

FWIW, as a reviewer, I do a lot of spitting. For me, alcohol consumption and accurate typing form an horrific partnership.

Back to the evolving data on what defines moderate drinking. It seems researchers are wisely reconsidering the long-held rule of two for guys and one for gals each day. Viewed through a new lens, it appears some of past researchers’ methods look a bit unreliable because they didn’t account for other life activities—beneficial and/or harmful—or family genetics. What’s clear in all this re-analysis of generations of opinions on alcohol is that none of the studies were truly specific enough or lasted long enough to determine what’s moderate drinking.

I like the way the article ended: “While the specifics remain unsettled, there is one thing most experts have come to agree on. ‘Less is more; less is better,” Dr. Tim Stockwell said. “Drink less; live longer.”