If you want to find balance when it comes to alcohol consumption and health, start by asking yourself these 3 questions.
- Why: Are you drinking to forget your problems or just a way to celebrate with friends occasionally?
- How Much: how much do you drink per hour?
- How Often: how many days per week do you drink?
When my mom was in her 60s, the doctor advised her to try to drink a glass of wine a week, which he said was good for her heart. My mom doesn’t drink at all. She tried to drink a sip a week, eventually leveled up to a teaspoon a week (this is not a joke). But she eventually gave up—alcohol just wasn’t for her. Fast forward and wine has fallen out of favor as medicinal when it comes to heart health. But we still can’t figure out how much of it we should be drinking. But there’s an answer.
Drink for Joy
Our relationship with wine is not that simple. In the blue zones, places in the world we consider as one of the healthiest such as Ikaria, Greece, residents drink wine regularly. But their story reminds us that they drink wine, not chugging whiskey. Also, people drink socially. They don’t drink to drown out sorrows or wash away a bad day. They don’t drink alone while watching TV and eating takeout. People drink as part of a culture that gathers, not a culture of loneliness and depression. One thing I learned from Ikaria is that alcohol, when consumed with friends and as a means to gather occasionally, is good for your soul. But to rely on alcohol as a means to forget is not such a good idea. Alcohol shouldn’t be your medicine for sadness.
How Much Alcohol Consumption Is OK? How Often and How Much
In a study of habitual alcohol intake in the UK and heart health, authors find that the more you drink the higher your risk of heart disease. But they also emphasize that lifestyle factors play a role. People who abstain from alcohol have an overall higher risk for heart disease than those who drink in low and moderate levels. Why? In the study, people who drank moderately benefitted from their healthier overall lifestyle. They had lower BMI, higher levels of physical activity, and just lived a healthier life.
What we learn is that people who drink more than 7 drinks a week (between 7-14) increase their risk of heart problems significantly compared to those that drink less than that. So it seems that anything below 7 drinks a week, coupled with a healthy lifestyle can temper your risk of heat disease as a result of alcohol consumption.
Alcohol shouldn’t be your medicine for sadness.
Binge and High-intensity Drinking
Aside from frequency, there’s also the amount of drinks at a given time. Binge drinking is defined as having 4 or more drinks for women, and 5 or more drinks for men over the course of 2 hours. A newer phenomenon, high-intensity drinking, increases that to 8 and 10 respectively. We’re finding that binge and high-intensity drinking, a pattern most common among the youth previously, has declined among young adults, but has increased for older men and women.
Knowing When You Have a Problem
Tom Holland and his journey to giving up alcohol shows how to do a self-test when it comes to alcohol and addiction. After a boozy Christmas, he decided to give up alcohol for a month in January of 2022. He realized that “all he could think about was having a drink”, which scared him. To prove to himself that he wasn’t an alcoholic, he extended his Dry January to February, and then to 6 months. He realized how much better he felt without alcohol and gave it up.
I guess my point in sharing his story is that while researchers are still figuring out a magic number for drinks, sometimes, you have an internal gauge. You know when you’ve crossed the line, what is too much, and just enough.
Circling back to the 3 questions that will help navigate your relationship with alcohol, I would say this:
- Drink to celebrate, but know that you don’t always need alcohol to find joy or to socialize.
- Slow Down: Set a timer on your phone or watch and aim for 1 drink every 2 hours.
- Limit: Don’t drink everyday and keep a calendar of your drinking habits. And if you’re like Tom Holland, try a month-long challenge and stay away from alcohol. If you find that you can’t function or the thought of drinking consumes you, then you know there’s a problem that needs fixing.
Don’t Overthink It
The truth for me is that I can’t drink. I’ve tried when I was younger but I just get drunk and feel lousy with even just a tiny bit of alcohol. It can sometimes feel like you’re such as party pooper when everyone else is drinking and you’re not, but it’s OK. They key for me is to know what to order. This means I don’t ask the bartender if they have non-alcoholic drinks unless I’m looking at a menu and know exactly what they have. I just get a ginger ale or lemonade—simple. And I try not to talk about how I can’t drink or use the phrase sober curious. I know this sounds silly, but I understand how much fun it is to drink and be merry and I don’t have to announce that I’m not drinking to have a great time. I try not to make it an issue or even something to be proud of. It’s just who I am.
And if you’re someone who drinks, there’s no need to overthink why others aren’t consuming alcohol. There are some people that just can’t drink and can have fun without it.
There’s a funny dialogue in Emily in Paris about sober curios. When Emily tells them about the sober curious movement, Luc feeling confused, clarifies if it’s a movement where people drink and they don’t tell anyone about it. Sylvie intervenes and explains that it’s the opposite. They’re not drinking and they can’t shut up about it. No need to label anything. Be yourself and allow others to be themselves. But if someone, you sense, has a problem with alcohol, maybe talk to them about it.
