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Summary
• Alcohol kills roughly 178,000 Americans per year, more than all illicit drugs combined, yet its producers spend $2 billion annually on advertising with almost no regulatory pushback.
• The “safe at moderate doses” doctrine, often cited as 1 to 3 drinks per day, has been systematically dismantled by the 2018 Global Burden of Disease study and subsequent research confirming that no safe level of consumption exists.
• Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States; it drives cancer at 7 distinct tissue sites, atrophies the brain with as few as 1 to 2 drinks per day in women, and triggers cardiovascular damage that the industry’s “French paradox” mythology long concealed.
• The global alcohol industry, dominated by a handful of conglomerates including AB InBev, Diageo, and Pernod Ricard, funds the research that downplays its harms, finances political lobbying at every level of government, and has embedded itself in public health organizations the way Pharma embedded itself in medical journals.
• Alcohol use disorder (AUD) affects 28.9 million Americans; fewer than 10% ever receive treatment, and the pharmacological tools that work, naltrexone and acamprosate, are prescribed at a fraction of the rate at which antidepressants are doled out for far less disabling conditions.
• Alcohol accounts for 30% of all fatal traffic crashes in the United States, contributes to at least 55% of domestic violence incidents, causes fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) in an estimated 1 to 5% of Americans, and fuels a ski resort injury economy where on-mountain medical clinics profit from the impairment the industry created.
The manufactured permission slip
During the 1970s, we physicians in training heard the lecture repeatedly: a drink or two a day protects the heart. The evidence was “solid.” Red wine, in particular, was said to possess almost magical properties; its resveratrol and polyphenols were supposed to offset the toxicity of the ethanol it contained. France drank heavily and lived long. QED.
That story was wrong, and the people who promoted it knew it was at best incomplete. Forty years of research have since demolished the moderate-drinking hypothesis with the thoroughness it deserved. The 2018 Global Burden of Disease study, published in The Lancet, analyzed data from 195 countries and reached a conclusion that left no room for negotiation: the safest level of alcohol consumption is zero. Not one drink per day. Not a glass of wine with dinner. Zero.
That finding did not end the debate. The industry funded counter-analyses. Compliant academics circulated op-eds. The New York Times health desk ran soothing pieces about Mediterranean diets. The “one to two drinks” permission slip survives in popular culture the way bloodletting survived for centuries after the evidence against it accumulated: because moneyed interests needed it to survive.
What ethanol is
Ethanol (C2H5OH) is a two-carbon alcohol and a central nervous system (CNS) depressant. It crosses the blood-brain barrier within minutes of ingestion. Its primary mechanism involves potentiating gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors, the brain’s main inhibitory system, while suppressing N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptors, the primary excitatory pathway. The result is the familiar loosening of inhibition, slowed reaction time, impaired judgment, and, at sufficient doses, unconsciousness and death.
The liver metabolizes ethanol primarily via alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) to acetaldehyde, a compound the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies as a Group 1 human carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is then converted by aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) into acetate, which is excreted harmlessly. The problem is that acetaldehyde accumulates faster than ALDH clears it, above all in people with genetic variants of ALDH2, roughly half of East Asian populations, who experience flushing, nausea, and tachycardia after even small amounts of alcohol. That reaction is not an allergy. It is the unmasked toxicity that ethanol metabolism produces in everyone, made visible because the clearance step is broken.
Ethanol’s half-life in blood is approximately 4 to 5 hours in a non-tolerant adult who has consumed one standard drink, but that figure is misleading. The liver processes roughly one standard drink per hour; binge drinking, defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as 4 drinks in 2 hours for women and 5 for men, overwhelms this capacity entirely. Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) climbs faster than the body metabolizes it, explaining why impairment persists hours after the last drink.
Chronic heavy drinkers develop tolerance through receptor downregulation, meaning the CNS compensates for persistent GABA enhancement by reducing receptor sensitivity. Withdrawal from alcohol then becomes a medical emergency: without the drug’s artificial GABA stimulation, the excitatory system runs unchecked, producing seizures, delirium tremens (DTs), and death at rates that far exceed opioid withdrawal. Alcohol withdrawal kills. Heroin withdrawal does not, as a rule.
The numbers the industry prefers not to discuss
Alcohol kills approximately 178,000 Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That figure encompasses alcohol-associated liver disease, cardiovascular events, cancers, motor vehicle crashes, falls, homicides, and suicides. It dwarfs the annual death toll from all illicit drug overdoses combined (about 107,000 in 2023, itself a record driven by fentanyl) and exceeds annual deaths from diabetes.
28.9 million Americans met the diagnostic criteria for AUD in 2023, per NIAAA data. That is roughly 1 in 9 adults. Among adults aged 18 to 25, the rate reaches 1 in 5. AUD is not a behavioral failing. It is a neurological disorder driven by the same receptor downregulation and dopaminergic sensitization that characterizes addiction to other CNS drugs. The brain of a person with AUD differs measurably from a non-dependent brain in imaging, in receptor density, and in the expression of genes governing stress response.
Fewer than 10% of people with AUD receive any treatment in a given year. Compare this to treatment rates for comparable conditions: roughly 60% of people with hypertension receive medication. The disparity reflects stigma, a treatment infrastructure still dominated by 12-step ideology rather than evidence-based pharmacology, and the fact that the disorder’s primary driver, the alcohol industry, has every incentive to leave it untreated.
Economic costs are conservatively estimated at $249 billion per year in the United States alone, covering lost workplace productivity, healthcare expenditures, and criminal justice costs. The global figure exceeds $1.6 trillion annually. For comparison, the entire global annual revenue of the alcohol industry is approximately $1.6 trillion. The industry’s externalized costs, paid by taxpayers, healthcare systems, and families, equal its entire gross revenue.
A brief history of alcohol in America
Alcohol predates recorded American history; fermentation technology arrived with the first European colonists and expanded aggressively. By the early 19th century, per-capita alcohol consumption reached levels that stagger the modern imagination: roughly 7 gallons of pure ethanol per person per year, compared to 2.5 gallons today. The temperance movement, driven largely by women experiencing domestic violence and economic ruin at the hands of drinking husbands, built for decades before achieving Prohibition in 1920 with the 18th Amendment.
Prohibition, routinely dismissed as a failure, produced a 50% reduction in liver cirrhosis deaths, a documented reduction in domestic violence, and measurable improvements in workplace productivity. Its repeal in 1933 reflected the industry’s political and financial power more than any coherent public health argument. The narrative of Prohibition’s failure, starring Al Capone and speakeasies, was written by the people who profited from repeal.
Post-Prohibition, the alcohol industry rebuilt itself as a normal consumer goods business, aligning with Hollywood, sports, and eventually with health researchers. The “J-curve” hypothesis, suggesting that light to moderate drinkers had better cardiovascular outcomes than abstainers, emerged in the 1980s and spread rapidly. Subsequent analysis found that many abstainers in the comparison groups were former heavy drinkers who had quit because of illness, a confounding factor so significant it invalidated most of the literature supporting moderate drinking’s benefits.
Studies that use genetic variants in alcohol-metabolizing enzymes to separate drinking behavior from confounders have consistently found no cardiovascular benefit from moderate alcohol consumption. The J-curve was a statistical artifact, and the researchers who pointed this out for decades faced a wall of industry-funded opposition.
Cancer: the connection the industry buried
The IARC classifies ethanol as a Group 1 carcinogen, the highest classification, meaning causation is established beyond reasonable scientific doubt. Alcohol causes cancer at 7 anatomical sites: the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum, and the female breast. The mechanisms are multiple: acetaldehyde damages DNA directly; ethanol disrupts folate metabolism required for DNA repair; it increases estrogen levels, driving hormone-sensitive breast tumors; and it functions as a solvent, increasing mucosal permeability to other carcinogens in tobacco smoke and diet.
The dose-response relationship for breast cancer begins at one drink per day. Women who consume one alcoholic drink daily increase their breast cancer risk by roughly 7 to 10% compared to non-drinkers. At 2 to 3 drinks daily, that risk increase reaches 20%. There is no threshold below which risk disappears.
A 2023 analysis published in The Lancet Oncology estimated that alcohol causes approximately 740,000 new cancer cases per year globally. In the United States, alcohol-attributable cancers account for roughly 5.4% of all new cancer diagnoses, or about 100,000 cases per year. Despite this, surveys show that fewer than half of Americans are aware that alcohol causes cancer. This ignorance is not accidental. The alcohol industry has funded research, lobbying, and public messaging designed to suppress this awareness.
When the NIAAA attempted in 2023 to update its guidelines to warn that alcohol causes cancer, industry lobbyists intervened with Congress to limit the warning’s scope. The playbook was identical to the tobacco industry’s 40-year campaign to obscure the lung cancer connection.
What it does to the brain
Alcohol is neurotoxic. This is not a contested claim. At autopsy, the brains of chronic heavy drinkers show measurable volume loss in the prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum, and the white matter tracts connecting them. Neuroimaging studies document brain atrophy after as few as 5 years of heavy drinking, and the atrophy correlates with doses that many Americans would describe as “social drinking.”
A 2017 study in the British Medical Journal, following 550 participants over 30 years, found that even moderate drinking, defined as 14 to 21 units per week (roughly 1 to 1.5 bottles of wine), associated with a 3-fold higher odds of right hippocampal atrophy compared to abstainers. The hippocampus governs memory formation. Three drinks a day, sustained over years, shrinks the structure responsible for remembering.
Alcohol’s psychiatric consequences include depression (alcohol is a CNS depressant; chronic consumption reliably induces depressive episodes), anxiety disorders through rebound hyperexcitability between drinking episodes, and psychosis at heavy doses. The relationship between alcohol and suicide is causal and dose-dependent: acute intoxication impairs impulse control; chronic use drives the depressive states that make suicide feel rational. Approximately 25 to 30% of suicides in the United States involve alcohol intoxication at the time of death.
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) results from thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency in chronic heavy drinkers. Wernicke’s encephalopathy presents acutely with confusion, ataxia, and eye movement abnormalities. Untreated, it progresses to Korsakoff psychosis, a permanent amnestic disorder in which the patient confabulates freely, fills memory gaps with fabrications, and has no insight into the deficit. Most physicians trained after 2000 have never seen a florid case because they’re not looking.
Weight gain and metabolic damage
Alcohol is calorie-dense at 7 calories per gram, placing it below fat (9 calories per gram) and well above carbohydrates or protein (4 calories per gram). A standard drink adds 100 to 150 calories of zero nutritional value. But the weight problem runs deeper than calorie arithmetic. When alcohol is present in the bloodstream, the liver treats it as a metabolic priority and halts fat oxidation entirely; dietary fat consumed alongside alcohol goes into storage rather than being burned.
Alcohol also disrupts leptin and ghrelin, the hormones that govern satiety and hunger, driving overeating during and after drinking episodes. The result is preferential deposition of visceral fat, the abdominal fat that wraps internal organs and drives insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular risk far more aggressively than subcutaneous fat does.
Heavy drinkers develop the characteristic centrally obese body composition for biological reasons, not because they eat poorly. Alcohol also degrades sleep architecture, suppressing the slow-wave and REM stages that regulate cortisol and growth hormone, and sleep disruption is itself an independent driver of weight gain and impaired glucose metabolism. The industry’s marketing of alcohol as a calorie-free indulgence, or at worst a minor dietary consideration, obscures a metabolic mechanism that helps explain why AUD and metabolic syndrome so often travel together.
The heart: revisiting the French paradox
The French paradox, the observation that French people consumed substantial saturated fat yet had relatively low rates of coronary artery disease, was attributed in the 1990s to red wine consumption and to resveratrol. That hypothesis launched a billion-dollar resveratrol supplement industry and a decade of headlines about wine’s heart-protective properties.
The paradox was an artifact of data collection methodology: France systematically undercoded cardiac deaths on death certificates for years. The resveratrol hypothesis collapsed when clinical trials found no benefit from resveratrol supplementation, and when researchers noted that the amounts of resveratrol in a glass of wine are pharmacologically trivial compared to the doses required to produce any measurable biological effect in animal models.
The cardiovascular effects of alcohol are mixed and dose-dependent in ways that the “a drink a day is good for your heart” narrative oversimplified. Light drinking produces a modest increase in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and reduces platelet aggregation, effects that sounded promising in epidemiological studies. But alcohol also raises blood pressure, increases triglycerides, induces cardiac arrhythmias (holiday heart syndrome, characterized by atrial fibrillation after binge drinking, is a recognized clinical entity), and causes alcoholic cardiomyopathy, a dilated cardiomyopathy that is the leading non-ischemic cause of heart failure in the developed world.
Liver disease: the visible iceberg tip
Alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) is the most common cause of liver-related death in the Western world. It progresses through predictable stages: alcoholic fatty liver (steatosis), which is reversible with abstinence; alcoholic hepatitis, which has a 28-day mortality rate of 20 to 50% in severe cases; and alcoholic cirrhosis, which is irreversible, has a 5-year mortality of 50%, and requires transplantation in its end stage.
Women develop ALD at lower doses and after shorter durations of drinking than men, reflecting differences in body water content, ADH activity, and hormonal factors affecting gastric metabolism. A woman consuming 2 drinks per day over several years faces liver disease risk comparable to a man consuming 3 to 4 drinks per day.
Alcohol-associated hepatitis exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Hospitalizations for alcoholic hepatitis increased 30 to 50% at major centers between 2020 and 2022, driven by isolation, economic stress, and the removal of social constraints on drinking. The pandemic’s secondary damage toll included this surge, which received a fraction of the attention directed at the virus itself.
The industry: who profits and how they protect it
The global alcohol market is dominated by a small number of conglomerates. AB InBev, a Belgian-Brazilian company and the world’s largest brewer, controls roughly 25% of global beer volume. Diageo, headquartered in London, owns Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Smirnoff, and roughly 200 other brands. Pernod Ricard, a French company, controls Absolut, Jameson, and Chivas Regal among dozens more. These are not mom-and-pop operations. They are global multinationals with political access, legal teams larger than most law firms, and marketing budgets that dwarf the entire annual budget of the NIAAA.
The industry spends approximately $2 billion per year on alcohol advertising in the United States. That advertising is concentrated in sports broadcasts, where it reaches young male viewers, and in digital media, where algorithmic targeting allows messages to reach individuals identified as likely drinkers or people in early recovery. The industry has fought every proposed restriction on this advertising with the same “free speech” and “personal responsibility” framing the tobacco industry used for decades.
Industry funding of alcohol research follows the same pattern documented in Pharma. A 2017 analysis in PLOS Medicine found that industry-funded studies were 3.7 times more likely to report that moderate drinking had health benefits than studies without industry funding. The industry’s academic funding mechanism operates through entities such as the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP) and its successor, the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD), which present themselves as public health organizations while advancing industry positions in World Health Organization (WHO) policy discussions.
The WHO has attempted to implement stricter global alcohol policies, including advertising restrictions, minimum unit pricing, and warning label requirements. At each attempt, industry representatives have lobbied national delegations to weaken or block proposals, using the same playbook the tobacco industry used to delay the global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control for years.
Treating AUD: what works, what gets prescribed
Three medications have a strong evidence base for AUD. Naltrexone, an opioid receptor antagonist, reduces the reward associated with drinking and decreases relapse rates by approximately 36% compared to placebo. Acamprosate reduces the NMDA-mediated hyperexcitability that drives craving during early abstinence. Disulfiram (Antabuse) creates an aversive reaction to alcohol by blocking ALDH, producing the acetaldehyde accumulation that causes flushing, nausea, and palpitations. All three are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Prescribing rates for these medications are dismal. Surveys of primary care physicians consistently find that fewer than 10% routinely prescribe naltrexone or acamprosate to patients with AUD. Among the reasons: inadequate training during residency, time pressures in clinic, continued reliance on referral to 12-step programs as the default treatment, and the absence of any Pharma marketing for these off-patent drugs with the enthusiasm applied to every new antidepressant or antipsychotic.
The Sinclair Method, a harm-reduction approach using naltrexone taken before drinking rather than as a continuous abstinence aid, achieves long-term remission rates of 78% in trials and has been standard of care in Finland for decades. In the United States, it is discussed mainly in patient advocacy circles and on Reddit threads. Most addiction specialists do not mention it unprompted.
Gabapentin, despite an FDA advisory in 2023 about misuse potential, has developed an evidence base for AUD treatment and reduces withdrawal severity. Topiramate, an anticonvulsant, reduces heavy drinking days in controlled trials. Neither is FDA-approved for AUD, leaving physicians who prescribe them facing off-label liability concerns while their patients drink themselves to death.
Roads, slopes, and living rooms: the daily toll
The official death count understates how thoroughly alcohol saturates American emergency medicine. In 2022, alcohol contributed to more than 4.2 million emergency department (ED) visits, according to NIAAA data. That accounts for 3.5% of all ED visits measured directly, but estimates that account for undercoding push the true share higher. Between January 2021 and September 2023, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) identified roughly 8.6 million alcohol-related ED visits, more than twice the number linked to opioids or cannabis. Every hospital in the country runs a quiet parallel economy treating the injuries, arrhythmias, liver crises, and trauma that alcohol produces.
Roads
Alcohol accounts for 30% of all fatal traffic crashes in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recorded 12,429 deaths from alcohol-impaired driving in 2023 alone, one death every 42 minutes. That figure excludes crashes where drivers had sub-legal BAC levels of 0.01 to 0.07; adding those raises the 2023 toll to roughly 14,546. Among the drivers involved in fatal crashes who had detectable alcohol in their system, 67% had BAC levels of 0.15 or higher, nearly double the legal limit, meaning the problem is concentrated in severe intoxication, not borderline impairment.
The industry and its hospitality partners fought every policy that has moved those numbers. Ignition interlock requirements, mandatory sobriety checkpoints, higher alcohol taxes, and lower BAC thresholds all faced sustained industry lobbying. The progress made since the 1980s, largely through the advocacy of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the lowering of the legal BAC threshold from 0.15 to 0.08, came despite the industry, not because of it.
Ski slopes
The ski resort model illustrates the vertically integrated economics of alcohol harm. Resorts sell alcohol aggressively, from mid-mountain bars open at 10 a.m. to slope-side lodges where apres-ski drinking begins before the lifts close. Injured guests then flow to on-mountain medical clinics, which function as separate profit centers, charging emergency room rates for fracture stabilization, spinal precautions, and helicopter evacuations that the same guests’ insurance companies pay without question.
The research on alcohol and ski injury is consistent, if incomplete because resorts have no incentive to collect it systematically. A study of 4,550 injured skiers in the Italian Dolomites found high blood alcohol concentration in 43% of the 200 major-trauma patients tested, and researchers noted that unsystematic alcohol testing meant the true figure was an undercount. A UK study found that skiers are 43% more likely to be involved in a crash after drinking, with 3.8 million British skiers reporting alcohol-related slope injuries over a 5-year period. Austrian survey data showed that 30% of male recreational skiers consumed alcohol on the day of skiing, while more than half drank heavily the night before. Alcohol amplifies at altitude: lower oxygen tension accelerates intoxication, meaning a skier at 10,000 feet is impaired on fewer drinks than the same person at sea level.
The conflict of interest is structural. The resort sells the substance that causes the injury, staffs the clinic that treats it, and bills the insurer that pays for both. No regulator requires disclosure of this arrangement, and no liability attaches to the bar that served the skier who then fractured a stranger’s femur on the intermediate run below.
Living rooms
Alcohol is the leading chemical contributor to domestic violence in the United States. The National Institute of Justice estimates that alcohol is involved in 55% of domestic violence incidents. The mechanism is biological: acute ethanol intoxication disables the prefrontal cortex’s inhibitory control over the amygdala, the structure that processes threat and drives aggression. Chronic heavy drinking compounds this through sustained neurological remodeling that makes emotional regulation permanently less reliable.
Children in households with an alcoholic parent have a 4-fold increased risk of developing AUD themselves. The transmission runs through genetics and through trauma: children raised around violence learn that alcohol and danger are inseparable companions, and they often reproduce that pairing in adulthood. Roughly 40% of violent crimes in the United States involve an intoxicated offender, and the criminal justice system warehouses the alcohol industry’s externalized damage at public expense.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) affect an estimated 1 to 5% of Americans, making them more common than autism spectrum disorder. They range from fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), characterized by facial dysmorphia, growth restriction, and intellectual disability, to milder neurodevelopmental effects on attention and executive function. No safe level of prenatal alcohol exposure exists; the same “safe at low doses” myth that circulates among adults circulates among pregnant women, with consequences that last a lifetime.
None of this appears on the industry’s balance sheet. The $2 billion in annual US advertising that normalizes drinking as pleasure, sports, and social connection does not include a line item for the fractured orbital bones, the children’s protective services cases, or the ski patrol helicopters. Those costs transfer cleanly to families, insurers, taxpayers, and emergency physicians who treat, night after night, the consequences of a substance the culture still officially classifies as a beverage.
Globalist fingerprints
The hypothesis that alcohol normalization is a deliberate tool of social control is not new. Aldous Huxley wrote about it in 1932 in Brave New World, where soma, the state-sanctioned euphoric drug, kept the population docile. The mechanism does not require conspiracy in the traditional sense; it requires only that moneyed interests recognize that a sedated, addicted, cognitively impaired population is easier to govern and more profitable to sell to than a clear-headed one.
The evidence of coordination is structural. The alcohol industry participates in WHO policy discussions through industry-funded “health” organizations in ways that would be recognized as a conflict of interest if practiced by any other sector. It funds academic research that produces favorable findings. It markets aggressively to populations whose drinking is already problematic, above all, young adults and minority communities. It lobbies against every evidence-based policy intervention, from minimum unit pricing to advertising restrictions to warning labels.
The same Rockefeller-adjacent network that built Pharma and the food processing industries in the 20th century had substantial interests in the alcohol industry’s political normalization. John D. Rockefeller Jr., ironically a lifelong teetotaler, contributed heavily to Anti-Saloon League efforts during Prohibition, but his family’s broader industrial interests included the chemical and pharmaceutical companies that supplied the alcohol industry and later profited from treating its bad outcomes.
The alcohol industry’s marketing budget flows heavily into professional sports, a sector that also receives substantial government subsidies through stadium construction and tax arrangements. The interlock between sports broadcasting, alcohol advertising, and political access creates an ecosystem where challenging alcohol’s cultural status becomes career-limiting for any politician, regulator, or public health official who tries it.
Consider what a blunted population looks like from the perspective of those managing it: less likely to organize, more susceptible to simple emotional appeals, more prone to family disintegration that increases dependence on state services, more easily monetized through healthcare for the disorders that alcohol causes. The industry does not need to be malevolent in its intent; it needs only to be indifferent to consequences while maximizing shareholder returns. The effect is the same.
What other countries show us
Scotland introduced minimum unit pricing (MUP) for alcohol in 2018, setting a floor of 50 pence per unit of alcohol. A 5-year evaluation published in The Lancet in 2023 found that alcohol-specific deaths fell by 13.4% in Scotland compared to what would have been expected without MUP, and that hospital admissions for ALD fell significantly. The effect was concentrated among the heaviest drinkers, the population that most needed intervention and that educational approaches alone fail to reach.
Canada followed with its own minimum pricing policies in several provinces, with similar results. England and Wales declined to implement MUP for over a decade despite Scottish evidence, reflecting the political weight of the alcohol and hospitality industries in Westminster lobbying.
Nordic countries with state alcohol monopolies (Finland’s Alko, Sweden’s Systembolaget, Norway’s Vinmonopolet) show substantially lower rates of AUD and alcohol-related mortality than comparable European countries with liberalized markets, even controlling for cultural factors. The mechanism is straightforward: restricting availability and maintaining price floors reduces consumption across the population, with the largest effects in the most vulnerable drinkers.
Russia’s alcohol mortality crisis of the 1990s, in which male life expectancy fell by 7 years following the market liberalization and privatization that made alcohol cheap and ubiquitous, is the sharpest natural experiment in recent history. When Vladimir Putin’s government imposed steep alcohol taxes and restricted sales hours beginning around 2006, male life expectancy began recovering. The lesson, that price and availability drive population-level alcohol harm, is unambiguous and universally ignored by industry-aligned policymakers.
The human capacity to survive what we do to ourselves
Humans are, the clinical record makes clear, nearly indestructible in ways that should not work. Patients with liver cirrhosis who achieve abstinence show extensive hepatic regeneration. Brain atrophy from chronic alcohol use reverses with sustained sobriety, with white matter recovery detectable on MRI within months. The hippocampus, that structure so vulnerable to moderate chronic drinking, demonstrates neurogenesis in abstinence.
The same capacity for biological repair is visible across every domain of iatrogenic and environmental assault I have examined: bodies recovering from decades of unnecessary medications, immune systems reconstituting after chemotherapy, microbiomes rebuilding after years of antibiotics. The body wants to live. It needs us to stop poisoning it.
This resilience is not permission to continue drinking. It is an argument for stopping, because the capacity for repair is documented and waiting. The people who quit drinking at 45 do not recover as fully as those who quit at 30, and those who quit at 30 do not recover as fully as those who never started. But most people who quit find the recovery extraordinary, and most who are told it is too late to matter are wrong.
Synthesis
Alcohol is the oldest and most successfully normalized poison in human history. Its cultural integration is so complete that questioning it feels, to many people, like questioning something as fundamental as food. That feeling is the product of centuries of deliberate cultivation by commercial interests that understood, long before modern neuroscience confirmed it, that a substance capable of producing physical dependence in 10% of users and psychological habituation in many more was an extraordinary business opportunity.
The “safe at moderate doses” doctrine was never as well-supported as its promoters claimed, and the research demolishing it has been available for long enough that its continued circulation in medical education and popular media cannot be attributed to innocent lag. Something maintains it. The same economic and political forces that maintained the tobacco-heart disease disconnect for decades, that maintained the opioid-for-chronic-pain narrative until the overdose deaths became impossible to ignore, have an interest in maintaining the fiction that 1 to 2 drinks per day is a health-neutral choice.
The parallels to other Pharma and healthcare frauds are not coincidental. The pattern of industry funding skewing research, regulatory capture limiting effective policy, clinician education lagging behind evidence, and stigma-based treatment barriers keeping effective pharmacology from reaching patients appears in alcohol’s story as it appears in opioids, antidepressants, or statins. The institutions built to protect public health have been the vehicles of its subversion.
The roads, the slopes, and the living rooms are where the accounting happens. 12,429 dead on US highways in 2023 from drunk driving alone. An estimated 43% of major trauma patients tested at ski resorts showing detectable blood alcohol. More than half of all domestic violence incidents preceded by drinking. These are not statistics about a legal recreational substance operating within normal risk tolerances. They are the footprint of a product that externalizes its true cost onto the bodies of people who never asked to absorb it.
What comes after recognizing this? At the individual level, the practical answer is simple: less alcohol, or none, produces better health outcomes at every dose, and the pharmacological tools to support people who struggle with cessation exist and are underused. At the population level, minimum unit pricing, restricted advertising, mandatory health labeling, and treatment parity for AUD with other chronic diseases would save hundreds of thousands of lives per year in the United States alone.
Whether those measures arrive depends on whether the people who understand the evidence become louder than the people who profit from confusion. The track record is not encouraging. But the track record on tobacco eventually changed, and lung cancer rates fell. The tools are known. The will is the variable.
Editing credit: Jim Arnold of Liar’s World Substack.
Selected references
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“No safe level of alcohol use”: Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. The Lancet, 2018
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“Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2016”: GBD 2016 Alcohol Collaborators. The Lancet, 2018
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“Impact of minimum unit pricing on alcohol-related deaths in Scotland”: Mackay et al.. The Lancet, 2023
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“Alcohol, cancer, and public health”: Praud et al.. International Journal of Cancer, 2016
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“Industry funding and selective reporting of industry-funded alcohol studies”: McCambridge et al.. PLOS Medicine, 2014
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“Alcohol Use Disorder treatment: pharmacological approaches”: Jonas et al.. JAMA, 2014
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NIAAA: Alcohol facts and statistics (2023 data)
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NHTSA: Alcohol-Impaired Driving 2023 Data. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2025
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“Impact of alcohol consumption on winter sports-related injuries”: Gaudio et al.. Medicine, Sport, Law, 2010
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NIAAA: Alcohol-related emergencies and deaths in the United States (2022 data)
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So… should we believe the Good Christ didn’t know this, given He drank wine and asked us to do the same in remembrance of Him? I know some Baptists staunchly believe it was grape juice (a ridiculous supposition).
I was gonna write that. Father God gave it to the Chosen People as well. And Timothy was instructed to have some to help his stomach.
There are many Scriptures that speak to alcohol. Some warnings and others positive…
Psalm 104:15 “and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man ‘s heart.”
Yes, that gladden the heart of men must refer to the effect of alcohol on your mood.
I think it’s a more complicated matter, than just alcohol=bad, for something that has been around for so many thousand years and be part of a culture, to then be banned as all bad. And indeed, why would Jesus turn water into wine, if alcohol at any dose is bad.
I have heard though that in those days they would dilute the wine with water, but I am not entirely sure of that.
I always assumed that the amount/proof was at a lower amount than today. That slightly fermented was better than unclean water.
Also, not heavily sprayed and hybridized to contain way more sugar…. people drank it in small amounts and they got plenty of sunlight, sleep, and the air was cleaner….. no GMO’s…or glyphosate…or chemtrails….no vaccines or pharma drugs in them or in their water supply…. small communities…much more love and support from circle of friends and family.
iu2018m pretty sure breathing nowadays causes cancer. iu2019m gonna stick with my occasional single small glass of cabernet in the evening when the mood strikes me
Yes, I am not saying never drink but that alcohol is more risky nowadays…. it’s not just the alcohol content we need to worry about….. just like our food, it’s all been poisoned…..
The wine they drank in those days was designed only to kill microbes, the fermentation process did not go that far. Grapes will ferment naturally; the white coating on them is yeast. All the wine had to do was sit for a day or two and it became something like a fizzy grape juice. Straight water was never safe.
If you read The Odyssey, Homer talks a lot about food in general, but also about wine. He used the term “mellow wine” probably to describe this weak concoction. But there were stronger versions, and Homer describes these with distaste and disdain, as it caused the Greeks to do crazy, violent things.
Point being, Biblical wine was just weak fermented grape juice. All cultures learned that to preserve food, it had to be dried or fermented (which includes all milk-derived products.) Better to have a weak alcohol than cholera or dysentery.
I wonder how strong the u201CBiblicalu201D wine was that Noah and Lot drank. I always wondered how and where Lotu2019s daughters got hold of the wine. The consequences in both cases were disastrous. That said, I will still drink my glass or two at festive occasions. One has to live slightly dangerous at times.
Noah planted a Vinyard.
Vineyard = grapes. Plain ordinary grapes.
Noah’s stupor was very likely his unfamiliarity with the fermentation process, not deliberate drunkeness.
20After the flood, Noah began to cultivate the ground, and he planted a vineyard. 21One day he drank some wine he had made, and he became drunk and lay naked inside his tent. Gen 9. The point is my friend, it wasn’t grape juice and neither of us know if it was deliberate or not. State of mind is unknown and therefore doesn’t matter.
The verse does not say “wine he had made” as though that’s what he set out to do, make alcohol.
The original Hebrew only says “he drank from the wine.”
Wine was made. Of course it was wine.
Noah’s state of mind does indeed matter when discussing whether inebriation was what he intended to do.
The wine we drink today is fermented to 12 up to 15 percent alcohol, then the process is stopped by adding sulfites — hence some allergies to wine. The content depends upon how long it has been sitting there. It can keep fermenting. But it is a natural process, as I said. Go pick some grapes then step on them then scarf them up in to a vat and see what happens. This process can happen with anything, say, cabbage, which will turn to sour kraut due to the natural yeast from the air. (They add salt just to kill any non-yeast bacteria from joining the process.)
Iu2019ve seen tipsy raccoons after eating fermented fruit on the ground (with a low body weight it probably doesnu2019t take much)
also cockroaches are said to like beer, with the nice result that after that indulgence they drown in it…
Not true, even the disciples were accused of being drunk when filled with the Holy Spirit.
Of course there were gradations.s The longer the wine sat around, the more alcoholic it became. Not sure about your “drunk … with the Holy Spirit.” Sounds a little disrespectful to me, but whatever.
Christ was a threat to the industry of sacrificial animal cabal.
Using bread and wine as a replacement.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Lord Jesus drank wine. If you dispute this please cite chapter and verse.
Second, He never asked us to drink wine in remembrance of Him. He said,
“Take this cup…” but it doesn’t say *what* was in the cup! There is no mention of alcohol of any kind at the Last Supper, nor is there any mention that He Himself drank what He created out of water at the wedding in Cana.
I haven’t listened yet, but plan to. It’s good that physicians are finally admitting what I think they already knew for years. My dad was an alcoholic, but he said that because it was wine, it didn’t count. I was his caregiver. People don’t believe me when I say alcohol destroyed him and our family. There didn’t seem to be any part of his body that wasn’t affected. Heart, esophagus, liver, brain. The mafia manufactured the myth.
My dad, also.. I cared for him when he got squamous cell carcinoma on his throat and couldn’t eat or drink after too much chemo and radiation…. lost his voice, too….. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy….. u2764uFE0F
Very complicated. I had a love/hate relationship with my father. Even when he cussed me out in the Emergency Room where I took him after he fell down concrete stairs in a drunken stupor.
Very complicated indeed…. I took care of him so I could get closure for myself…..it has helped me tremendously and I have no regrets or guilt. You are a good person for doing this, as well. u2764uFE0F
Yes. The time left me with much different values. There were so many other experiences that felt fated. The day before my father died he thanked me for the sacrifice of my life to take care of him. He said that even though he had dementia.
u2764uFE0Fu2764uFE0FThat is the best gift of all…. it doesn’t take away the lost childhood but it brings closure to that part of your life…. and now you can verify that those experiences, as unfortunate as they were, just made you stronger and a better human.
I did not drink alcohol for over 20 years. On Valentineu2019s Day 2024, I had a glass of red wine. I have been having an occasional glass of red wine ever since. One, sometimes two, glasses a week. Can this small amount be harmful?
I think it’s more harmful to fret about doing everything right, than to have the occassional glass of wine.
I buy strong organic wine and add a little water to taste.
Drinking before dinner is problematic.
When I had terrible insomnia, I would sometimes drink a bit of liqueur before bed. It helps, they say it boosts GABA.
Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but it diminishes or destroys the quality of your sleep. That’s what the experts say anyway.
“That figure encompasses alcohol-associated liver disease, cardiovascular events, cancers, motor vehicle crashes, falls, homicides, and suicides. It dwarfs the annual death toll from all illicit drug overdoses combined (about 107,000 in 2023, itself a record driven by fentanyl) and exceeds annual deaths from diabetes.”
Questions: Diabetes is not a factor and independent?
All of that violent data shows cause and effect to alcohol per se?
Are there other factors that cause it?
Who has amassed the data? Than vaccines?
Also it it more dangerous than drug use because it is more accepted?
What about herbal tinctures that use alcohol to optimize the extraction process?
You aren’t drinking a whole bottle of tinctures uD83DuDE02. Just a drop or two in water or whatever other carrier (juice, etc )
Where are the double blind controlled STUDIES??? NTT REPORTS!
Everything in “moderation”.
plus LANCET! The garbage can of publishers. several studies had to be recinded by at least 2 editors, money behind studies, faked data. look it up.
Whose money? Who profits from everyone quitting wine?
The world of pharmaceutical companies most likely.
by what mechanism?
Yes growing up with alcoholism in the family along with many relatives including my dad and MD, mom was a nurse, other relatives also along with engineers, and other professions, it absolutely destroys families. 4 friends in high-school in the 70’s died in alcohol related car accidents. What an eye opener at 15 16, 17, 18 years old to see your friends die.What a joke its OK to have a few a week. I see sick people all around me now because of alcoholism and chain smoking vaping addictions. Thanks doc for this information.
Well, I understand where you are coming from, and based on that experience I would probably think the same. But if experience is the decisive factor, I have no reason to be against it, because I have no such experience.
Thank you for this. Very graphic explanation. Sent it to a good friend of mine, and have taken it to heart myself. My little aperitif of Jaegermeister is no longer on the table. Am expecting a slimmer waistline in the near future…
It’s worse than I suspected when I started writing it.
My friend, to whom I forwarded your article, wrote back, “Good grief! I’m stopping my nightly glass of wine!”
So you see, you turned two ladies into teetotalers.
Thanks for the article Dr Yoho
love
I hope you didn’t consume any cake or cookies or sodas. All seriously bad because of sugar. Point is, sometimes you just take the risk of an occasional drink same as you would eating a piece of cake full of hydrogenated oils and sugar.
Sobering news. What are your thoughts on centenarians consuming wine aka Greeks etc…lifestyle and overall happiness must play a role (aka the reason why someone drinks)?
People will shift to marijuana which isnu2019t much better
Not the stuff smoked at Woodstock, much worse.
Cant be worse than anti depressants.
Drug trust wont support that data.
This could be an excellent paid message
from the Drug Trust.
Ask your doctor if red wine is right for you.
In terms of mortality numbers, it probably is worse than antidepressants.
Itu2019s almost impossible to find a show/movie that doesnu2019t have alcohol in it. They are programming you to reach for it when you are happy, sad, stressed, had a long day, want to celebrate something, need courage, need to relax, need to escape, etc.
Thank you, powerful truth spoken bluntly!
Great article, but i did lol at this:
“The u201Cone to two drinksu201D permission slip survives in popular culture the way bloodletting survived for centuries after the evidence against it accumulated: because moneyed interests needed it to survive.”
What monied interests? The LeechFarmers Guild? uD83EuDD23
Also struck me as a lightning strike in left field. Although bleeding 40% of President George Washington’s blood to cure a cold is now seen as the proximate cause of his demise.
In 10 years, current sickcare standards will be seen as barbaric.
“Flexner medicine” is a cul-de-sac, and we are near the end.
One can hope you are right
Cute! 🙂 But the doc is right on that score. The “regular” docs kept propping up bloodletting because it gave them prestige as being able to do something powerful. Just like with the toxic calomel. They had little else.
https://vitamindwiki.com/pages/addictions-to-smoking-alcohol-opiates-etc-may-be-reduced-by-vitamin-d-dopamine-etc-28-studies/
Love, you, Henry
Norman James wrote a great article on alcohol & it’s consumption here on Substack. He also pointed out that our alcoholic beverages have changed a lot as has our bodies in the past 100 years due to very detrimental changes in our farming practices and consequently in our foods. Modern wines or beers are no longer the wines or beers our ancestors drank, whether Jesus or Plato. uD83EuDEE9uD83EuDD37
I’ve been around a while and have known many people well into their 80’s and early 90’s who were not only daily drinkers, but even as severe as functional alcoholics. The one size fits all study doesn’t work with drinking, smoking, eating, or exercising. Processed foods, pharmaceutical products, or just time is going to kill you in the end. Live a balanced life and give thanks for every day you have been given.
Humans have been using alcohol since the beginning of time. I know many who use it well into old age. So whatu2019s this fuss?
Then water supplies were not safe. Drinking a low alcohol wine or beer was safer. But read the alcohol content then was far lower than today’s.
Have alcohol contents long been recorded? Some water supplies were pristine and the germ theory is a recent discovery. This particular warning shouts that at any dose alcohol causes cancer and a many other afflictions. I donu2019t believe that.
Very Timely for me. A friend died Sunday from liver failure. I needed to hear this and am now committed to stop my nightly wine habit.
Nothing in your article surprises me, as I’ve experienced many of the negative effects you describe. I inherited a remarkable tolerance for alcohol (most likely from my mother, if her tales were true). It stood me in “good” (?) stead during the hard drinking phase of my late teens and early 20’s. I stopped without assistance or withdrawal, and for many years drank “responsibly.” The the decline and death of my parents, along with the loss of my business, and I began dismantling my life with alcohol in earnest. It nearly destroyed my marriage, and a car accident while drunk nearly cost me my life. It also prompted me to get serious and get help. As I recall, the only drug I was ever offered was Antabuse. I declined, as I was quit sick enough as it was. I spent a year in a program sponsored by my county’s Alcohol and Drug Council. It will be 16 years this coming July since I last took a drink, and it has been remarkably easy one I made a commitment to be sober. I’ll never drink again, because bitter experience has taught me I have a progressive disease**. That means you don’t resume drinking from a baseline of zero; you resume from a deep hole you can’t even imagine. I don’t think it should be banned, but we need to do a much better job educating people. Your article should be required reading! (**Spare me any debate about whether it’s a “real” disease, a genetic or psychological problem. When your life is swirling down the drain you don’t care about any of that. You just want out. You have to be convinced at an almost molecular level in order to summon the will to quit. Will, and a sense of moral responsibility to get yourself under control again are necessary ingredients.)
I think it is amusing how people argue for drinking wine, based on scripture. When we should actually be arguing for the merits of stoning.
The verse does not say “wine he had made” as though that’s what he set out to do. The original Hebrew only says “he drank from the wine.” Of course it was wine.
State of mind does indeed matter when discussing whether inebriation was what he intended to do.
My favorite line in this article is the line that equates alcohol, tobacco and big pharma on par with the same fraud operating modality. Greed goes a long way. Amazing.
My biggest gripe against alcohol is Nips . Why in the world are they available ? The roads and parking lots are littered with them as they make it easy for people to drink and drive then throw the evidence out the window . Alcohol is highly addictive , easy to obtain , widely tolerated and destructive to families , careers and health , yet we allow it to be sold in small disposable containers .
You write something to the effect of pharmaceuticals being evidenced based & imply that 12 step progs are not. You failed to note that The Cochrane Review & Stanford Univ both found AA to be highly effective, with more research behind it & almost 100 yrs of success vs fly-by-night meds cooked up by the cursed pharmaceutical industry (& research studies supposedly showing their efficacy are no longer trusted by anybody). . .Your story here on the dangers of etoh, while providing some valuable scientifically backed info re the true dangers of alc, fails mightily by steering people away from 12 step, which is free, widely avail, & effective.
https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD012880_alcoholics-anonymous-aa-and-other-12-step-programs-alcohol-use-disorder
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/alcoholics-anonymous-most-effective-path-to-alcohol-abstinence.html
Per the Nat’l Library of Med (re Cochrane Review): ‘Cochrane systematic reviews and metau2010analyses are regarded as the u2018gold standardu2019 for highu2010quality information and are widely used to inform healthcare policy and practice’
Oi. There goes teetotaler Yoho again. Yish. So reasonable in so many other ways, but… sigh.
Just looking at the one small paragraph where Robert downplays all the various massive evils caused by the Prohibition, some of them still extant to this day, such as the massive growth of organized crime. To list them all would require its own article. Humans began to make alcohol at least 13000 years ago. Not because the globalists had sinister designs. 🙂
I am betting that if as many people climbed rocks as they drink today, there would be a lot of people dead from that activity too. Maybe more. SO WHAT? Is life about being safe?
As for heath effects, I have read that the veins of alcoholics are as clear of plaque at death as a newborn babe. Never mentioned here.
Etc. This is a dishonest screed. Limits on advertising, better info to young people etc, that I support. Gads. After reading this, I went and made me a drink. And I almost never drink…
You’ve been propagandized by those who profit from alcohol sales and the attendant misery.
And you’ve been propagandized by the schoolmarm puritans who staged the Prohibition with its massive corruption. See how it works? LOL
Falsely accused.
Your usual very important information!
Thank you, Bliss.
The Spiritual Solution
Aggressive British Admiral Lord Nelson famously advised, u201CNever mind maneuvers, go right at themu201D.
Similarly, the memorable Spiritual teachers have the same counsel: the medicine for the wound is in the wound.
AAu2019s 12-Step Program – now in some 70 languages and 150 countries – is a miraculously successful remedy for recovering from many ailments as the Spiritual Solution is titrated into the areas of Body-Mind-Spirit in the order each are ready to receive it.
The program of Prayers, Practices and Promises contains this 4th Step gem: u201CWhen the Spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out physically and mentally [and emotionally]u201D. A promise – with no hedges or weasel-wording about. (Cf a therapistu2019s or Doctoru2019s promise – u201CSomebodyu2019s gonna pay meu201D). Pssst: The Spiritual Solution is FREE.
We gradually integrate the emotional charge that occasioned the distress, first with external support until internal support and finally God-support is developed.
Along the way Iu2019ve learned that depression, terror and anxiety are distressing but not dangerous and will taper off in time – even if the time scale is day-long over months. We feel better because we get better at feeling. Medications occlude our relationship with our bodyu2019s wisdom – which was designed to heal itself.
Working the Steps – a set of Spiritual Directions which guarantees the psychic change sufficient to overcome alcohol is simple but not easy. It is a Life Truth that we get the experience of the directions we follow.
One of the wisdom statements of early sobriety is, u201CIu2019m powerless over people, places, and thingsu201D. This transmogrifies into the 11th Step wisdom statement of u201CI no longer hurt people, despoil places, and break things, but help people, beautify places, and build thingsu201D. Not a bad side-effect that.
Psssst: Itu2019s all FREE. (10-18-85).
These comments are a shocking revelation of the problem of people supporting toxic behaviors.
uD83EuDD23
I still think this is to cover up for vaccines. that’s are 1000 times more dangerous than alcohol .. alcohol takes 50 years to cause problems vaccines are instantly
with in 6 years if not the same week get the death jab
By “the vaccines”, it’s not clear whether you are referring to traditional vaccines or synthetic modified mRNA injections designed to hijack cellular machinery – and possibly to alter cellular DNA. Either way, yes they are dangerous.
Whether vaccines are “more dangerous than alcohol” seems irrelevant.
Both are promoted by large powerful corporations that generate massive profits selling products they know are harmful. Corporations that spend huge amounts of money hiding the harms, lobbying Congress, supporting flawed research tht hide the harm, and marketing their products, based upon those flawed studies.
We all have the right to accurate information regarding the possible benefits, the known harms- all the known risks, and the extent to which the risks are still unknown – so we can each make a fully informed decision about what we choose to put into our bodies.
People who choose to inject or intoxicate themselves- which literally means ‘to take in a toxin’- also must take responsibility for their choices, and for others they harm. Through vaccine “shedding”, for example – or by their actions while under the influence of a toxic substance, that may make them feel better in the moment, but is proven to impair brain function.
All vaccines are bioweapons and hazardous.
I gave up drinking a few years back. it didn’t suit me as I drank to get drunk and you can only imagine the trouble that caused. some people can have a drink or two everyday and live a long fruitful life while others just can’t. I don’t miss drinking but I see the appeal and miss the social aspect of it.
Alcohol at any dose causes violence? Let’s run the stats on that.
Haha. Sure. Any day now.
The vast majority of severe auto accidents are related to alcohol.
As an independent World traveler I learned that some peoples drank more wine and beer every day than anything else. Some never touched water or milk. I ask one person in one such country about wine: “It gives my father strength,” into his 90’s. I asked about beer: “We think of it as liquid bread.” Those people were healthier and happier than most anyone today.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=munchen+oktoberfet&atb=v516-1&ia=images&iax=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tacdn.com%2Fmedia%2Fattractions-content–1x-1%2F0b%2F0f%2F0c%2F87.jpg
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=munchen+oktoberfet&atb=v516-1&ia=images&iax=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Flp-cms-production.imgix.net%2F2024-10%2FGettyImages-1078390306.jpg%3Fauto%3Dformat%2Ccompress%26q%3D72%26w%3D1440%26h%3D810%26fit%3Dcrop
No pot, no shots, itu2019s too much to take. Thanks for your work, as usual.
Best and thank you.
Alcohol has a hormetic J-shaped response curve and can be protective at low doses similarly to exercise, sauna, resveratrol — other things that could be technically poisonous or harmful at high doses but are beneficial in a certain range.
The occasional small serving of alcohol, particularly vodka or tequila which don’t have the pesticides that wine has, especially if with food or just as like a tonic with a meal, probably beneficial. also there are many low-alcohol drinks like kefir. using it in a traditional manner where it’s like a gentle, slightly stimulating, hormetic addition along with food is probably healthy.
Chiva-Blanch G, Badimon L. Benefits and Risks of Moderate Alcohol Consumption on Cardiovascular Disease: Current Findings and Controversies. Nutrients. 2019 Dec 30;12(1):108. doi: 10.3390/nu12010108. PMID: 31906033; PMCID: PMC7020057.
this is different from how most Americans “drink” but a more traditional way to use it. traditionally alcohol was lower-concentration and used more as a part of a meal or like a type of food.
alcohol at low doses particularly if low-pesticide and used along with food is likely protective through hormesis, with a J-shaped response curve
traditional use of alcohol was often with low ABV drinks used along with food, which might have a beneficial health effect due to mild hormesis. there are studies on small alcohol doses improving blood profiles to show lower oxidative stress. the idea that none is best is too linear. best level is within the range that stimulates your protective responses in body but doesn’t overwhelm them.
Chiva-Blanch G, Badimon L. Benefits and Risks of Moderate Alcohol Consumption on Cardiovascular Disease: Current Findings and Controversies. Nutrients. 2019 Dec 30;12(1):108. doi: 10.3390/nu12010108. PMID: 31906033; PMCID: PMC7020057.
I do not possess any distillery, so please treat my comments just as an op-in-I-on;)
Very ironical to call alcohol, ‘spirits’, when it does the totally opposite to the human body…
BUT, when IARC classifies glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), quote ‘ based on limited evidence of cancer in humans and sufficient evidence in experimental animals. This classification was made after reviewing about 1,000 studies related to glyphosate’s effects.’
then my question is: how truthful are they in terms of C2H5OH??? OK, MAYBE they are, BUT, what about all the herbal tinctures in health food stores??? And what about all the truffles with the sharp taste as that little desert? And what about all the disinfectants, or skin products used in emergency, all with alc-oho-l?
I think like everything else the DOSE for internal use is ESSENTIAL.
My 95 years OLD aunt who died this year, had almost every day a beer with her home made food, for MANY, MANY years, and completely fine, until covid times, when she got exposed to many multiple jabbed (>4x) , then started to fall, got stroke, then broke her hip and after getting blood transfusion in KP facility in 2023, got immediately stroke and HEART attack in the same time. In that time, she was ‘put’ on FIVE different drugs for diseases she never had before, and that all of course without beer, because of the drugs… 2 years of lifetime AFTER getting injected with toxic blood..
So all what I want to say is, there are WAY, WAY more toxic substances out there, all of them which can kill us, and some of them do it for sure.
Nothing positive can be said about alcohol.
Alcoholism runs in my family, both sides. My father was one who died from liver failure that he thought was pain from a fall. He fought with the medics who wanted to take him to the hospital. He died the next day.
My motheru2019s brother Bill stayed in London after WW2 because his wife back in NY harassed him about drinking. When he eventually returned, he opened a paint store where he would close for a short time to run to the liquor store after a good sale was made.
The difference is that Bill realized he had a problem and quit with the help of others in AA.
Iu2019m also alcoholic as well as 4 of my brothers and sisters. Out of 12 of us who lived to adulthood, thatu2019s 5 alcoholics.
I was the first to quit, with the help of others in AA. I was only 20 at the time, I had escaped death many times and had already spent over 3 years in jails and reformatories. Before long 2 brothers and a sister followed my lead and also used AA to change their lives. One brother quit much later and decided to go it alone. He is in very bad physical condition, probably from the years of drinking.
It would be fantastic if medical science could help alleviate this with medical solutions and Iu2019m glad to see that some are working on it. The brotherhood of AA is my personal solution and I have been happily using for 54 years now. My wife, who lost 2 brothers and her father to this dread disease is happily sober in AA for over 47 years. She has a brother who also followed her in many years ago.
It’s crazy how common this alcoholism problem is. I have many alcoholics in my family as well.
Thank you for compiling all of this information. The data and your arguments are quite compelling.
Love.
I drank a huge amount from the age of 14-33 yet I never put on weight and I don’t have any subcutaneous layer of fat. It was Drs that told me I had no subcutaneous layer of fat. I never put on weight because calorie intake is not responsible for weight, metabolic dysfunction is.
We all have a set point for our weight that our metabolism keeps us at. If we eat too much, we just empty our bowels more to maintain our weight.
I know many women who have gone on weight watchers because they were overweight. The latest wasn’t a drinker of alcohol at all. 2 years of a weight watchers diet saw her lose no weight at all, even though she more than halved her calorie intake. It’s because weight gain or loss is caused by metabolic dysfunction and that’s what her problem was.
So it’s a fallacy that alcohol causes weight gain and a fallacy that calories are responsible for our weight. It’s not, metabolic dysfunction is.
Again, if you drink alcohol instead of eating nutritious food, it’s bad for you, and you sacrifice your nutrition.
One interesting thing is that while I was a heavy drinker when younger, mainly on years I got vaccinations, when I got my amalgam fillings removed, I no longer enjoyed drinking alcohol at all and stopped.
I agree it’s not good for people, but it does not affect weight gain, metabolic dysfunction does. Why would I not put on any weight at all after drinking for over 15 years and have no subcutaneous layer of fat. It’s because calories are not responsible for weight gain or loss, metabolic dysfunction is.
I’ve never been involved in any domestic violence when I drank, so I can’t see how it causes domestic violence, it’s the personality of the drinker that causes domestic violence when they drink and likely when they aren’t drinking as well.
The cause of chronic disease is antigen overload and as we take on more antigenic substances, it eventually leads to death. Metabolic dysfunction is also a major cause of early death.
Things have changed a lot, in my job as a real estate agent, most of the staff didn’t drink alcohol at all.
After Roberts podcast, without a break, it went onto Sasha’s podcast and I thought it was part of Roberts podcast.
My God, Sasha sounds nothing like how I imagined she sounded like. That’s not an insult, it’s a compliment.
You sacrifice your nutrition.
I like cold uD83CuDF7A after a HOT days work. If it kills me who cares.
The sugar in your coffee is bad for you. The margarine on your toast will kill you. The pesticides on your green salad aee killing you.
When you # is up it’s up. Enjoy life NOW
Eat bacon. Drink beer. Smoke weed if you want. Your all going to die at some point. Have fun well you can.
Greetings Dr. Yoho: Thank you for opening my eyes. Although I donu2019t drink at all, I didnu2019t realize even the ski industry is complicit in this. There are no sacred cows anywhere left.
Compelling systematic summary of on ignored or at least downplayed public health risk.
You are quite an extraordinary human Dr Yoho. Much respect and gratitude.