Hacker News Reader

Comment by malcolmgreaves | Hacker News Reader

Curious that the author decided to ignore any attempt to articulate benefits of even moderate alcohol consumption, instead hand waving them all away with:

> Left unaddressed is the presumption that alcohol is necessary to any of those (good and often great) rituals. It’s not. You can get most (perhaps all) of those social benefits without alcohol. Drinks with friends don’t have to be alcoholic.

I suspect most folks' critique of this author's opinion will lie with this unsubstantiated assertion. And the ensuing inference that a prohibitionist stance strives to remove people's bodily autonomy to decide if they like using recreational drugs.

View on HN

My understanding is that the latest biological research is pretty clear: no amount of alcohol is better than none.

The latest research also does a lot of data shenanigans to avoid getting a statistical null for lower quantities. For instance, the famous lancet study that started this all corrected for the fact that some of the non-drinkers were former drinkers who quit drinking due to health reasons (increasing percieved risk), but didn't correct for the fact that heavy drinkers often lie to medical professionals about their drinking (which would decrease perceived risk). They also counted harms from drunk driving and synergistic harms from alcohol and tobacco use as harms from alcohol alone when both are 100% avoidable even if you drink.

And even after doing this consistently they still had p values very close to 0.05 for 1 and 2 drinks per day on average.

This was also my understanding - the WHO classified alcohol as a carcinogen[0], and the statement "No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health" appears to be true.

[0] - https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

OK, but no amount of crossing the street is safe for your health, either.

Low to moderate drinkers have better health outcomes than teetotalers. That's probably because unhealthy people are less likely to drink alcohol, but it also suggests that most people using alcohol are not exactly having their lives ruined. Futher, loneliness is epidemic in the modern west, and alcohol is a patently social drug. If drinking 4-5 beers a week gets you out of the house and talking to people twice, that might actually be a health win in the current environment.

And no amount of chili cheese fries is better than none either. Caffeine is bad for your heart, red meat is bad for your arteries, refined sugar is bad for your everything but especially pancreas, loud music is bad for your ears, ballet is horrible for your feet, high impact sports (like running not just football) are bad for your joints, sun is bad for your skin, reading and coding are bad for your eyes. I'm trying to only count things that are "cumulative" damage and not only bad for you in high doses.

You can't count only biological benefits when balancing the scales because then most things humans do is only bad for you.

He means social benefits.

At least for me they absolutely are real and we're valuable to bring me out of my shell in college. Don't need it as much anymore, but drinking a bit in college had a transformatively positive experience for me socially.

Why did you decide to respond to my post without addressing the point of my comment?

You state there are benefits to alcohol. I specifically state there aren't based on the biological research I've read. That is directly addressing your point.

EDIT: I don't see a 'reply' button beside those replying to me below. I am 100% open to being convinced of the benefits of alcohol -- especially psychological, social, etc. Please feel free to post papers that scientifically show that alcohol is beneficial. Would love to read them.

The increased dopamine and reduced anxiety resulting from occasional alcohol consumption in moderation is pretty useful in some situations, just like caffeine is useful in others. Relying on either every day however has dramatically diminishing returns that can quickly become a net negative.

Is there a single work that attempts to, for example, answer the emotional affects that come from recreational drug use?

You claim that "there aren't based on the biological research" you've read. I do believe you here.

However, have you ever stopped to think that that perhaps the benefits that one derives from consuming alcohol, or other recreational drugs, are outside the realm of what biological sciences can answer? Maybe another field is better positioned to provide you with an illuminating alternative perspective.

They means social benefits, not health ones. They even say so in their post.

Who said the benefits are biological?

There is no "benefit."

Just like there is no benefit to (table) sugar.

In moderation the harm is only moderate.

Anything else is pure cope from people who need to justify their wine at dinner.

And yet we all eat sugar, and it would be absolutely insanity to suggest prohibiting its sale and consumption. Vices are a key part of the human condition. Sure, the most productive life is one spent tirelessly laboring to make your boss rich, and the safest life is one spent locked in a padded cell, but what's the point of productivity, or prolonging one's life, if they never enjoy it?

It's fine to pick and choose your own vices, but dismissing others' as a frivolity is simply a failure to empathize.

I agree.

> Just like there is no benefit to (table) sugar.

You're joking right? There are plenty of benefits to consuming table sugar. Not the least of which is the cost per calorie and the quick availability of energy. But we can also add in low weight/calorie and good food preservation qualities.

Your body isn't fucking up when it tells you that sugar is tasty. It knows what it's doing.

That doesn't mean that table sugar is something you should be consuming all the time and in the quantities we do, but it's fairly outrageous to suggest that table sugar is not beneficial as a blanket statement.

---

You might have the opinion that calories are plenty enough that you can avoid table sugar. That opinion is just as much an outlier historically as is our current easy access to sugar.

Table sugar can be metabolized for energy.

Beer can be metabolized for energy.

If that's the benefit, then sure.....table sugar and beer are both "beneficial."

Gosh - guess we can rule out food as beneficial entirely. Glad you cleared that up for me...

What benefits?

Physical pleasure?

it'd be very strange to think that there are no benefits to drinking alcohol considering that humans have been going out of their way to drink it for the last 10,000 years. In all of that time, it's safe to assume that at least a few people found something worth the cost/trouble/risks.

You touch on something important here. Until recently, we as a species haven’t had easy access to clean water, and somehow evolved to be susceptible to all sorts of water-borne pathogens.

So our social structures evolved in the context of alcohol as a given.

No surprise, then, that now that we (largely) have access to fresh water, we still find a place for alcohol in our lives.

I doubt it would have remained as popular if it weren't so versatile, but people were quick to discover that it helps them to feel relaxed and warm. It elevates their mood. It promotes honesty and camaraderie. It has uses in the preparation of great tasting food and flavorful drinks. It works as an analgesic. Low doses help with sleep. Large doses help with trauma and grief. Long before people were doing research on cancer and steatosis people noticed that alcohol made them feel better and it was widely believed that it had a positive impact on their health. People also tended to see it as more of a moral failing when people's lives were ruined by addiction (plenty of people still fall for this trap today).

More recently we gained the ability to look into the long term harms and balance them against additional benefits we might get from alcohol like the antioxidants, the increases in HDL cholesterol, or the decreases in blood sugar, some of which may improve our health, but I suspect that as long as alcohol increases people's likelihood of having fun, dancing, singing, and screwing, it'll probably stay pretty popular.

Bud, if you arent an alcoholic, you are at high risk for becoming one.

Not an alcoholic yet, but I see no reason to pretend that all the reasons for alcohol's popularity don't exist.

The yeast out-competes other microbes that would make the water deadly? Not really relevant in 2023.

It can preserve calories of carbohydrates that would otherwise go bad?

Or the physical pleasure I previously mentioned?

Increased ease of social bonding and libido would be two very important ones

Reply on news.ycombinator.com