[Normille]

I can't seem to find any info on whether or not the risk disappears if/when you give up drinking. Or is the DNA roulette wheel already spinning, like it is for people who have been heavy smokers in the past?

I think it's going to be harder for people to take on board the idea that any amount of alcohol is bad for you as, intuitively, I still believe that, in moderation, it can have some positive affects such as de-stressing and aiding sleep. Mind you, I suppose you could say some of the same about smoking and I can intuitively accept that any amount of that is bad for you.

Well, I've never smoked [tobacco] and [apart from a bit of a 'sociable relapse' over Christmas] haven't drunk for over a year now. So I should live forever!

[BaseballPhysics]

> Or is the DNA roulette wheel already spinning, like it is for people who have been heavy smokers in the past?

Just so this information is out there, particularly for prospective quitters, this is actually a bit nuanced:

https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002...

As you can see, after 15-20 years of smoking cessation, excess risk for various causes of mortality drops substantially.

You are correct that the risks never truly return to baseline, but for lung cancer, for example, the excess risk drops to between 5 and 13%.

[burke]

This is the thing that's so tricky about... well, I guess the way our world models in general work.

Is drinking bad for you? Yup. Is smoking bad for you? Yup.

Is moderate social drinking bad for you? Likely, but definitely less bad for you than slamming a 6-pack nightly.

Are there other (mainly socially-mediated) health benefits from moderate social drinking? Plausibly? Probably? Occasional social smoking? Probably in some contexts.

If these effects both exist, they can be compared. Do the risk curves intersect? Where? The crossover will land in different places for different people, different circumstances.

[tejtm]

I am not a biomedical unit, (but I have played one at work). The mechanism to my limited understating is alcohol was invented by yeast to slightly poison their food so the bacteria present could not out compete them.

It's fundamental creation in nature is a deliberate toxin.

At least one of the chemicals alcohol breaks down into in mammals is known to cause double strand DNA breaks.

Most often "no problem" we have builtin genetic resources to repair those breaks. (unless you have something like Fanconi Anemia).

The reason we have a builtin mechanism to repair this sort of damage is it happens anyway at a lower rate without alcohol.

If the rate of breakage is greater than the ability to repair then stuff stays broken.

Basically the more lottery tickets you buy the more likely you are to win but not buying them doesn't mean you wont be gifted some.

It is a strange thing to reconcile, intellectually I have first hand data there is no safe dosage, but genetically I'm from a line of alcoholics and socially (in the before times) it provides a very comfortable community building fabric.

I have become comfortable with a single drink on rare occasion.

[elil17]

There’s a dose dependent relationship, where heavy drinkers have the highest cancer burden. So we do expect (but aren’t sure) discontinuing use reduces risk.

I’d say we should treat alcohol very differently than tobacco. It’s got a much lower addiction liability (under 10% of people who try alcohol become addicted, while 32% of people who try nicotine become addicted). Heavy alcohol use is also way more destructive than heavy nicotine use.

Additionally, users seem to find alcohol somewhat more fun that nicotine. [1] That said, the literature supports the conclusion that alcohol decreases sleep quality and increases stress, despite what users think. Any objective benefits are likely social in nature.

Overall, I think there’s a better case to be made for socially accepting moderate alcohol use compared with the case for nicotine.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have warning labels though - most people currently underestimate the risks of alcohol.

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23438502/

[robocat]

> under 10% of people who try alcohol become addicted

Iffy number or definition? In my circles I am sure more than 10% of people abuse alcohol daily, and I would consider them addicts. Then again, New Zealand has a drinking problem.

[elil17]

According to the NIH, only 5.3% of Americans 12 and older are alcoholics (https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...). Factor out the fact that some of those people haven't tried alcohol and you get about 7% addiction liability.

[robocat]

In New Zealand, according to health.govt.nz:

  18.8% of adults had a hazardous drinking pattern in 2021/22.
  Hazardous drinkers are those who obtain an Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) score of 8 or more, representing an established pattern of drinking that carries a high risk of future damage to physical or mental health.

I agree that definition of addiction, and alcoholism, vary by country.

[elil17]

Makes sense. I don't currently know any active alcohol abusers (knew some in college), so the 18.8% seems incredibly high to me. That said we all have biased samples

[1kurac]

> Or is the DNA roulette wheel already spinning, like it is for people who have been heavy smokers in the past?

Heavy smokers ingest trace amounts of radioactive metals that continue to emit radiation for years to come. The mechanism is certainly not the same with alcohol.

[claudiawerner]

I'm a heavy drinker and what I've read about alcohol and sleep says that it's bad for your sleep, in particular the quality of REM sleep. Anecdotally I can back that up with my own experience, as I drink before I go to sleep.

However, it's much easier to fall asleep after you've been drinking, but that's just because alcohol is a nerve depressant anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_use_and_sleep

[harshreality]

Why would you do that? Just to get to sleep easier? There are other, better ways.

[claudiawerner]

I don't know why any particular person would do it, but I don't drink to sleep.

[barbazoo]

> So I should live forever!

No but you probably get to die from something else and hopefully much later.