This is essentially correct as far as I understand things. There is epidemiological evidence that <=2 drinks per day for men and <=1 drink per day for women is associated with a reduced risk of mortality. However, keep in mind that it is pretty difficult to isolate someone's drinking habits from the rest of their lifestyle. Although controlling for various features of lifestyle is attempted, this is a fundamental limitation of an observational study.

As a physician I tell my patients that there may be a benefit from such very carefully controlled, modest drinking, but there is almost certainly a benefit from abstaining rather than over-drinking.

Alcohol overuse makes you look old (yes I will appeal to vanity); it suppresses your bone marrow and makes you anemic; it causes dilated cardiomyopathy; it destroys the liver in time and will make you gut dump fluid into your belly, causing you pain until you develop liver cancer or bleed into your throat and die; it causes its own form of brain wasting; etc. It is an extraordinarily dirty drug.

Most of these effects come from sustained heavy drinking, but many people can sustain this level of drinking and still be productive, so that is not a useful gauge of how heavy your drinking is.