It's influenced me - I was drinking probably 2-3 drinks every night for decades, and lately I've cut down by 60-80 percent weekly. That's still poisonous though, if you ask the GenZ social media world.
We also have strong data on how its bad for your sleep.
Much of the talk of alcohol being poison in the past was from drunk driving, spousal abuse, spending all the families money. This largely applied to drunks. But now the data has come in a way that doesn't involve any of these traditional ills is still bad for you.
However, you have to weigh that cancer risk against the benefits of alcohol. Plenty of people wouldn't exist if their parents had never drunk.
With all the objectively purely beneficial aspects of alcohol to choose from, you had to pick the one that's a double-edged sword
Why We Sleep really impacted my view on drinking. It really does mess with your sleep, so I keep my drinking to occasional and on the light side.
Wearables also play a role in this. I had two beers between like 5:30-7:00 on Saturday and my sleep data was messed up. We are talking two 5.5% beers at dinner on a 220 lb man.
It's much harder to ignore the fact that alcohol has all these negative effects.
Still, I think drinking occasionally while socializing is a good thing, and that people becoming hermits is a huge negative.
I think there's optimization culture and then there's excess. Drinking 2-3 drinks every night for 15 years probably was excessive for me. But one or two nights where sleep is affected per week is tolerable. Life is short, and deprivation might make it a little longer but life's not supposed to feel long (as in living life means doing a little bit of harm here and there).