Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge to Nearly 500 a Day, CDC Says | Hacker News Reader

Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge to Nearly 500 a Day, CDC Says

nytimes.com

40 pointslxm76 comments

Original source:

Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use — United States, 2016–2021 from CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 73, No. 8, Feb 29, 2024

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/pdfs/mm7308a1-H.pdf

Anyone else give up drinking? I only do it for work events to fit in with the bosses but that's about it. Might have a glass of really good red wine once or twice a year.

Ages the hell out of you.

Yes. Was never a heavy drinker, but now that I track calories, there’s rarely room left for many alcoholic beverages

I also just sort of stopped drinking. I don't consider myself a non-drinker, it's just, well, whenever the opportunity arises I consider it and decide I prefer not to mess up my sleep and feel lousy the next day for an experience that, frankly, is less enjoyable than reading a book or playing a game or something else that I enjoy.

As for the dietary calories, well, you can hack that one. I don't recommend it for obvious reasons, but a diet of nothing but extremely lean protein, fiber (not strictly necessary, but it's nice to have some flavors other than meat, fish, or egg white), and ethanol (with virtually no dietary fat or carbohydrates) cannot, and I mean it is a proven metabolic impossibility, cause the gain of bodyfat. There is no storage form of ethanol, and the storage form of protein is various lean tissues.

Now you might ask, but what about glycogenesis? Won't the body metabolize that protein into glucose and then store that glucose as body fat? That's a perfectly reasonable thing to suppose, but it's proven, in strictly controlled metabolic ward studies, that it does not happen. Instead the kidneys just eliminate the excess protein. Glycogenesis is only used for immediate energy needs, and of course the body will preferentially use ethanol for immediate energy before protein.

Yep! About 15 years ago I decided I didn't like what alcohol did to people around me and I haven't had a drink since.

I like a buzz occasionally and would definitely not want it to be illegal but for me it affects my sleep and kind of messes up my day the next day.

I’ve never had more than a sip.

It’s sometimes tough, socially. But I’ve never (well, rarely) felt pressured, just “left out” sort of. But most people in my family are non-drinkers, so there’s that.

I’ll probably die never having been drunk. No real desire, other than fitting in socially, but that’s not really enough of a motivation for me.

But I do feel like it’s overall better for my health and mortality. Not that something like cancer or dementia won’t still get me, though.

I've never been a drinker. The unpalatable taste meant I never experimented enough to get to the buzz.

I used to have one or two pints most nights. During a yearly checkup, my doctor grabbed my belly and said, “You need to make this smaller” (as he jiggled it in demonstration)

I decided the easiest 3-400 Calories I could cut were those beers, and stopped right then.

I still drink on occasion, but it’s like twice a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Those were the easiest calories to cut.

Keep on cracking hard on other drugs and promoting this one.

Died of alcohol or with alcohol?

I’m also wondering what is considered “dying of alcohol”. Is it only when you drink so much that you die directly from the drinking? Or is it including drunk driving and the like?

Sibling comment provided a pretty good breakdown of the numbers and split

Well you can also die from withdrawals when your BAC is zero.

Which is why hospitals are stocked with "medical vodka" (actually just regular vodka) to administer to patients suffering from severe withdrawals. It can take a few days to get down to surviving on 0 BAC, though of course unpleasant (but not fatal) withdrawal symptoms will persist for awhile longer.

- Two thirds of the deaths (about 117,000 deaths) are due to chronic conditions that develop from long-term alcohol use, including various types of cancer, heart disease, liver disease, and alcohol use disorder.

- One third of these deaths (about 61,000 deaths) happen from drinking too much on one occasion, such as from motor vehicle crashes, poisonings involving substances in addition to alcohol, and suicides.

I think people are missing your reference to the cases of people who had covid as the cause of death on their birth certificate and things like "headshot wound " as a contributing factor...

Do you really believe that happened? Or rather, putting aside the small number of coroners who might be criminally fraudulent, do you really think that was a thing?

I think it is probably straightforward for a trained professional to document the circumstances of a person's death. I suspect it is a lot harder to conclusively say "but for X, they would have survived". widespread fraud by coroners does not seem likely, but apathy and prioritization of resources is believable.

I believe that some people will do things surprising to me when it means money for them or their organization.

A recent case in point are the people in charge of the Harvard medical School cadavers who sold the organs on the sly, but you could probably find other examples of cases where monetary incentives distort what we were consider commonplace values

I stopped all alcohol intake 86 days ago for several reasons including several friends from college dying from cirrhosis complications. Covid/lockdowns definitely accelerated the alcohol related deaths that I have seen in my job as a gastroenterologist.

"About 178,000 people died in 2021 from excessive drinking, compared with 138,000 in 2016. During that period, the deaths rose by 27 percent among men and 35 percent among women."

Cheers to pandemic hobbies?

Too many people working... I mean drinking from home.

Probably some mental health damage from Covid lockdowns as well.

To the downvotes - I’m not saying lockdowns were a bad thing, but they did take a toll on many mentally. I’m personally still struggling to recover to my pre-Covid levels of mental health. It was very tough personally on me, and I took the lockdowns very seriously.

Lockdown was the first time I'd ever drunk heavily in my life. Still have some weird hangups from being treated like a criminal for wanting to do normal human things.

They're not weird.

More unusual all the time, though.

I moved to a state where lockdown never happened, and people here just don't understand how bad it actually was. What am I gonna do, talk to a therapist?

I saw "weird" and just wanted to double-down on your idea that you're just a normal human =]

I am not a normal human. I have a disturbing combination of high aggression, low empathy, high intelligence, and high agreeableness. I don't make sense to me.

I'm not talking about social anxiety hangups, either. I'm talking about hyper-specific weird interactions that I just can't do now.

Similar to vaping, is there a safer way to consume alcohol or get drunk in a similar way?

No. Alcohol can't work independently of its downsides. The next-best but also-bad thing is probably GHB or ketamine or something like that. Basically any CNS depressant is going to have some significant dangers, short or long term.

Maybe meditation can get you there safely?

Wherever "there" may be, meditation is a much healthier path, for sure.

You can actually make ethanol into a vapor you can inhale, but unfortunately I assume that only makes it even more dangerous.

Perfectly safe. Just make sure there's no ignition source

I'm only speculating, but I assume it's a lot easier to consume in excess with this method before you'd feel sick. I feel nausea if I drink too much too quickly, not sure if I'd get that with inhaling it.

I do want to give it a try some time though.

Alcohol enemas would be another ingestion alternative - though my understanding is that there's a lot of risk there. Apparently when you drink to much there's a chance you'll throw up - on the other end that won't happen so over consumption is pretty risky.

Yes. Crossfade. You will feel both much more strongly without experiencing the excess downside the next day.

What does that mean, crossfade?

Have some marijuana and alcohol. Good results for me were two beers and a few puffs.

This has me cracking up. Problems with alcohol? Have you tried smoking pot at the same time?

If you want the effects of alcohol without the downside, this is a much healthier way to get stronger effects. That's pretty reasonable, no? I'm not suggesting this as treatment for an alcoholic.

Yeah, it's called being "California sober" (marijuana and/or psychedelics).

this is quite an anti-drug article.

Raise prices? Limit access? Research shows that even a little bit can mutate DNA..?

Drinking 100 years ago was way worse and that's how we got prohibition. Hope we don't go back in that direction.

Could you share any evidence-based arguments against the evidence-based statements and recommendations summarized in the article? What fatal flaws undermine the research in the linked CDC page[1] establishing a causal link between alcohol consumption and DNA damage and increased risk of cancers of the mouth and throat, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum, and breast in women?

[1] https://blogs.cdc.gov/cancer/2018/04/02/3-weird-things-about...

All sorts of things elevate all kind of risks of cancer, but this is one of the few we moralize this way.

because those other things, on the whole, do not destroy people and their families in as acute a manner as alcohol and alcoholism do.

On the other hand, what exactly is freedom?

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Then make that argument, and leave the cancer argument, which is easily knocked down, aside.

What are you asserting?

That the "cancer" argument about alcohol is special pleading.

What would motivate false claims that alcohol correlates with cancer incidence?

I didn't say the science is wrong, I said the argument is special pleading.

What is special pleading? I’m a native speaker and think you are too but have no idea what you’re saying.

You can just Google the term.

No moralizing required. The pandemic measures in some states made liquor and drink delivery easier or legal and frankly glorified alcohol consumption. My friends in New York who own a liquor store 5x their sales and moved into an old big box storefront.

Returning to 2019 regulatory framework is not prohibition nor blue laws. It would likely reduce alot of human suffering without impacting moderate drinkers.

What in the regulatory framework substantively changed?

The only thing I can recall was to-go liquor sales with takeout - which I strongly suspect is not a big mover of change here.

In New York, bars are able to sell booze for off premises consumption. Delivery of packaged liquor also became more available.

It facilitates alot of work day drinking and bad outcomes for people with problems.

I think its worth studying - but I suspect that's nipping around the edges again - if you're dying of alcohol related illnesses, its from buying sizable quantities of booze at the place that sells booze - not a beer with lunch.

? Really? Neuroticism about health is one of the most common vectors for modern secular americans to moralize at all. Just look how worked up people get about obesity and smoking, both of which are very high risk factors for (among many other health risks) cancer. Alcohol is actually uniquely celebrated by people who are otherwise very concerned about health from my perspective.

This isn't the place for an academic forum. Your audience isn't here.

Also, he's not your monkey.

OP was the one to mention scientific research, not me. They effectively wrote "science? Policy? Ha! Prohibition was bad." Am I wrong to want to continue the discussion?

talking past each other...

I don't think anyone here seriously doubts whether alcohol consumption carries health risks or whether increasing excise tax decreases consumption (although they might quibble on the degree for each). the question is more around how much the government should intervene to limit poor personal choices. there aren't enough peer reviewed studies in the world to answer that.

Or whether it's right to see it as just a "personal choice". How we should view alcohol (and alcohol profits) is a choice we take together as a society, whether through institutions or not.

Prohibition cut alcoholism rates nearly in half in the states and also greatly reduced domestic violence rates, especially among poorer people. I'm not advocating for a return to this particular approach to societal management but the idea that it was some kind of obvious catastrophe is nothing short of ridiculous.

It also literally created the mafia. Single-factor analysis is really not smart.

No, that's just not true. And besides, that seems like a small concern compared to the enormously destructive effects alcohol has far from any organized crime. A wildly entertaining effect to be sure, but not one that touches the lives of every day people like alcohol does.

Here's an article about how it did:

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/how-prohibit...

And another from the literal mafia museum:

https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-rise-of...

Don't move the goalposts.

> the idea that it was some kind of obvious catastrophe is nothing short of ridiculous

It was literally an unmitigated catastrophe, which is why it was the only constitutional amendment to be overturned.

It also led to government agents spiking ethanol with methanol, leading to blindness. Pure evil.

This is simply untrue. The mafia started outside the US long before prohibition came along. It may have given the mafia an opportunity to accelerate and expand but it certainly did not “literally create” the mafia.

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