benefits of drinking alcohol essay

The Benefits and Disadvantages of Drinking Alcohol

If you don't normally drink alcohol, there's no good reason to start now.

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In fact, health experts say there isn't a safe level of drinking alcohol, as alcohol use is the seventh leading risk factor for deaths globally, according to a landmark August 2018 study in ​ The Lancet ​.

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But if you like to kick back with a glass of wine or a cold beer every now and then, there are safer ways to drink — and the first step is to curb your intake.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends people assigned female at birth (AFAB) limit their intake to one alcoholic drink per day and people assigned male at birth (AMAB) only have up to two drinks. What does that look like exactly? Here's a breakdown from the CDC:

• 12 ounces of beer (5 percent alcohol content)
• 8 ounces of malt liquor (7 percent alcohol content)
• 5 ounces of wine (12 percent alcohol content)
• 1.5 ounces or a shot of 80-proof distilled spirits or liquor, such as gin, rum, vodka and whiskey

One way to approach alcohol is to think about why you want to drink. Will it help you relax and feel good? Or will it make your anxiety worse? Are you using it to cope with personal issues going on in your life?

"Pace yourself and make sure you are mindful of your motivations for drinking. If you are drinking to avoid feelings or out of boredom, it can be helpful to engage in another healthier activity or call a friend," Alana Kessler, RD , functional and holistic nutrition and wellness expert, tells LIVESTRONG.com.

How alcohol affects someone depends on the person, so if you do drink, make sure to limit yourself to the appropriate amount of drinks per day and be mindful of how it affects you.

"Pace yourself and make sure you are mindful of your motivations for drinking. If you are drinking to avoid feelings or out of boredom, it can be helpful to engage in another healthier activity or call a friend."

Your liver metabolizes alcohol, but it can metabolize only a small amount at a time, so any excess alcohol continues to circulate throughout your body, per the CDC. Whether you're sipping on a martini or brandy, the effects of alcohol will largely depend on the amount you take in and not so much on the type of alcohol you drink.

In small amounts, alcohol can uplift your mood, but as you drink more, it can impair your vision, motor skills, memory and judgment.

All that said, here are some pros and cons of alcohol. Remember, the benefits don't outweigh the disadvantages of drinking alcohol — so, again, don't start drinking if you haven't been.

If you feel like you're drinking too much, are on prescription medications or are getting treated for any health conditions, it's important to talk to your doctor about safe alcohol use for you, per the CDC.

Benefits of Drinking Alcohol in Moderation

There are many reasons why people drink alcohol — in fact, there are potential benefits of alcohol if you drink in moderation. Here's how alcohol can help the body:

1. It's Linked to Better Heart Health

Some types of alcohol are better protectants than others — red wine , for instance, has a high concentration of polyphenols called resveratrol that are linked to helping prevent coronary heart disease, according to the Mayo Clinic .

"The flavonoids and antioxidants in wine can be beneficial for the heart and blood vessels, as well as for people with type 2 diabetes. People with diabetes can produce a lot of free radicals because of poor sugar metabolism," Kessler says.

However, these health-supporting properties have shown to be beneficial only when you drink less alcohol. For example, a February 2017 study in ​ The Lancet Public Health ​ found that drinking in moderation does not appear to worsen blood pressure. But for those who drink more than two drinks per day, reducing alcohol can improve blood pressure.

High cholesterol is also major risk factor for stroke and heart disease, particularly non-high-density lipoproteins, or LDL cholesterol , which can build up inside your arteries and affect cardiovascular health, per the CDC . High-density lipoproteins (HDL cholesterol), on the other hand, is known as the "good" cholesterol as it helps your body get rid of LDL.

And an April 2017 review in the ​​ American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ​​ found that moderate drinking led to slower decreases in HDL cholesterol levels, depending on the type of beverage.

2. It's Linked to Lower Diabetes Risk

This health benefit of alcohol may come as a surprise, but moderate drinking might help lower your risk for type 2 diabetes , according to a September 2016 review in the ​​ American Journal of Public Health ​ ​ . ​

Per the research, people AFAB who drink one to two drinks per day have 40 percent lower risk of developing this disease compared to people who don't drink alcohol. Drinking 15 grams of alcohol per day was also linked to potentially improving insulin sensitivity, which can help prevent diabetes.

A 12-year follow-up August 2017 study in ​​ Scientific Reports ​​ similarly found that light to moderate alcohol intake may have protective effects.

On the other hand, though, it's important to note that both studies showed an increased risk for diabetes with higher alcohol consumption. For instance, the ​ Scientific Reports ​ research found that drinking more than 30 grams of alcohol per day may up your risk for diabetes.

If you have diabetes, it's still best to talk to your doctor about what amount of alcohol is safest for you before drinking.

3. It's Linked to Helping Prevent Other Chronic Diseases

When coupled with a well-balanced diet like the Mediterranean Diet , for instance, low-to-moderate wine intake can help improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation.

A November 2019 review in ​ Nutrients ​ suggests that the polyphenols in red wine can help prevent chronic diseases associated with oxidative stress.

The review also highlights how low-to-moderate wine intake is tied to helping decrease total cholesterol in people with dyslipidemia, high cholesterol in postmenopausal people, blood pressure in people with type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance in those with metabolic syndrome.

Furthermore, a small May 2012 study in ​ The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ​ suggests that red wine may provide some prebiotic benefits and might help promote gut-friendly bacteria.

4. It's Tied to Better Cognitive Function

Another health benefit of moderate alcohol use is that it may be tied to better brain health in older adults.

A June 2020 study in ​ JAMA Network Open ​ of 19,887 people with a mean age of about 62 years old found that low to moderate drinking (which equated to 8 drinks per week for people AFAB and less than 15 drinks per week for people AMAB) was significantly associated with consistently high cognitive function and a lower rate of cognitive decline.

And here's where it gets even more interesting: Compared to people who never drink, those who drink low to moderate amounts of alcohol were less likely to have a low total cognitive function, mental status, word recall and vocabulary.

It's worth noting that the majority of the participants in this study were people AFAB. The study authors also acknowledge that people who are healthier at baseline may be more likely to participate in social activities where alcohol is present, which may affect the link between alcohol intake and health status (a bias that applies to a lot of research about alcohol's effects).

A September 2016 review in the ​​ American Journal of Public Health ​​ likewise found that people AFAB who have up to one drink per day are less likely to experience cognitive decline. They also face a lower risk of sudden cardiac death, hypertension, stroke and all-cause mortality compared to those drinking more than one serving of alcohol daily.

However, other evidence is conflicting.

For instance, a June 2017 study in the ​​ BMJ ​​ found that light drinking has no advantages over abstinence. Furthermore, the risk of right-sided hippocampal atrophy (which can contribute to Alzheimer's disease and impaired memory) is three times higher in adults who drink moderately.

And, per the Alzheimer's Society , some studies may not be accurate because they don't differentiate between former drinkers and lifetime non-drinkers.

People who formerly had alcohol use disorder, for example, may have already experienced brain damage to some degree compared to people who have never drank. That may in part be because drinking heavily can lead to thiamine deficiency, which can damage the memory-making centers of your brain, per the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

This lack of thiamine from heavy drinking can also lead to Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a degenerative brain disorder that damages cognitive function, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke .

5. Beer, Specifically, Might Help Your Gut

In terms of other alcohol, research shows that beer may also have some health benefits .

For instance, a November 2019 study of the health benefits of alcohol in ​ Metabolites ​ suggests that as a fermented drink, beer contains polyphenols, such as ferulic acid, xanthohumol, catechins, epicatechins and proanthocyanidins, that may help support the gut microbiome.

However, more research is needed to understand the health benefits of beer in regards to polyphenols and how they interact with the gut.

Is Beer a Diuretic?

A diuretic is any substance that increases your body's urine production.

Alcohol works as a diuretic in part by stimulating the bladder. Alcohol also suppresses a pituitary gland hormone that is responsible for inhibiting the diuretic effect. This makes your kidneys unable to reabsorb as much liquid as usual, according to Alcohol Health & Research World . So, yes, alcohol makes you pee more.

6. It Could Prevent Gallstones Naturally

Occasional alcohol use may also protect against gallstones by reducing stone formation and increasing gallbladder motility, per the ​​ American Journal of Public Health ​ review. Drinking 5 or more grams of alcohol per day was linked to a 40 percent lower risk of symptomatic gallstones.

But again, moderation is the key here — heavily drinking is not a preventative measure for gallstones.

The Disadvantages of Drinking Alcohol Heavily

On the other hand, there are disadvantages of drinking alcohol. Here are the reasons why you should not drink alcohol heavily:

1. It Can Cause Liver Damage

The disadvantages of alcohol use appear when you turn moderate drinking to heavy or binge drinking.

"Heavy alcohol consumption can tax the liver because the liver is the organ that filters alcohol. If the liver has to filter alcohol, it can produce metabolites that are harmful to your health and can cause diseases like fatty liver, hepatitis and cirrhosis," Kessler says.

2. It Can Harm Your Digestive Tract

Another disadvantage of alcohol in the human body is that it has been shown to damage the entire gastrointestinal tract. Ethanol can cause direct damage to the esophagus, intestine and stomach, in addition to the liver and pancreas, according to an October 2014 review in the ​ World Journal of Gastroenterology . ​

3. It's Tied to Cancer

Here's another reason why you shouldn't drink alcohol heavily: Research has linked it to a number of cancers, including breast, liver and colon cancers, according to the American Cancer Society .

Alcohol may stimulate cancerous tumor growths and promote the progression and aggressiveness of tumors, according to a January 2017 review in ​ Pharmacological Research ​.

Moreover, drinking more than moderate amounts of alcohol is associated with an elevated risk of colon cancer, especially those with a family history of the disease, per a January 2012 study in ​ The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ​.

4. It's Linked to Heart Problems

There are advantages and disadvantages of drinking wine — after all, sipping it in moderation may contribute to heart health. But chronic excessive drinking (wine or otherwise) can up your risk for heart conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, heart failure and stroke , according to the CDC.

That's because alcohol can increase blood pressure and heart rate and contribute to obesity, all of which and can damage the heart. This is especially the case if you drink frequently and in high amounts.

"Heavy drinking for [people AMAB] is equal to 15 or more drinks a week, and for [people AFAB], it's eight or more drinks per week," Kessler says.

5. It's Associated With Osteoporosis

Another reason not to drink heavily is that it's linked to an increased risk for osteoporosis, particularly in young people AFAB, according to a June 2018 study in the ​ Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs ​.

While osteoporosis — which is characterized by low bone mineral density — is usually more apparent in older adults, drinking too much alcohol in early adulthood can inhibit young adults from reaching their peak bone mass.

6. It's Tied to Weight Gain

Another con of alcohol is that drinking too much can lead to weight gain , given that it serves up seven calories per gram and offers little, if any, nutrients along with it, according to Harvard Health Publishing .

To put that into perspective, one shot of liquor has around 97 to 116 calories (before you pour in caloric mixers!) while a glass of wine can boast about 120 to 165 calories, per the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). Drinking too much can easily pack on the calories and lead to weight gain.

And the big disadvantage of alcohol when it comes to weight gain is that having overweight or obesity can put you at a high risk for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and other comorbid illnesses, according to the CDC.

Related Reading

Yes, You Can Enjoy Alcohol and Still Lose Weight — Here's How

7. It Lowers Your Inhibitions

Another disadvantage of drinking alcohol is that it can cloud your judgment, paving the way for potentially destructive decisions, according to the CDC. That's because drinking can lead to:

• Poor judgment
• Reduced reaction time
• Loss of balance
• Motor skills
• Slurred speech

Per the CDC, this impaired function can lead to immediate risks such as:

• Car accidents
• Violent behavior
• Risky sexual behavior

8. It Can Cause Alcohol Poisoning

Here's why not to drink alcohol in excess: It can cause alcohol poisoning, a medical emergency that can be fatal resulting from high blood alcohol levels, according to the CDC.

9. It Can Dehydrate You

Drinking alcohol actually promotes dehydration , according to the CDC . Because alcohol increases your urine production, your body begins to eliminate more liquid than you're taking in through drinking. That's why this is one of the reasons not to drink alcohol: The more you drink, the greater your risk of becoming dehydrated.

Not only does alcohol make you pee more frequently, but you can lose additional fluids due to diarrhea, vomiting and increased sweating associated with excessive alcohol.

Prevent dehydration by drinking at least one 8-ounce glass of water in between each alcoholic beverage, per the NLM .

10. It Can Cause a Hangover

If you've ever woken up with a pounding headache after a night at the bars, you've likely experienced this disadvantage of drinking alcohol. Per the Mayo Clinic , a hangover can lead to symptoms like:

• Muscle aches
• Nausea, vomiting or stomach pain
• Poor or decreased sleep
• Sensitivity to light and sound
• Difficulty concentrating
• Mood disturbances like depression, anxiety and irritability
• Rapid heartbeat

Hangovers should resolve on their own, but for some, the aftereffects of drinking are among the top reasons not to drink alcohol.

What Causes Dizziness After Drinking Alcohol?

Your blood sugar levels drop after drinking alcoholic beverages and that can lead to physical symptoms, including dizziness, stomach discomfort, nausea, headache and anxiety, per the Mayo Clinic.

What's more, alcohol is dehydrating, and having multiple drinks can lead to a loss of electrolytes. If you don't replace the fluids by drinking water or electrolyte-enriched drinks, you'll likely feel light-headed after drinking.

11. It Can Lead to Nutrient Deficiencies

Chronic, excessive alcohol intake can cause malnutrition, especially if your nutrient intake is already low. Here's a breakdown of what minerals and vitamins are depleted by alcohol. If you have any of these deficiencies, then it may be a sign you shouldn't drink alcohol, so talk to your doctor about the best treatment for you.

​ Thiamine: ​ Excessive drinking is notorious for causing deficiency in thiamine, or vitamin B1, which is found mainly in whole or enriched grains, beans and seeds. Alcohol appears to reduce its absorption, per the NIAAA.

Adequate thiamine is crucial for carbohydrate metabolism and the formation of ATP, the body's energy. Chronic alcoholism can result in a severe form of beriberi (thiamine deficiency disease) called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a form of psychosis accompanied by memory loss and brain shrinkage. Very high doses of thiamine might treat this condition, at least to some degree, in the early stages.

​ Folate: ​ This B vitamin is required for normal DNA synthesis in all cells, and the maturation of red blood cells and good sources include fruits, vegetables and legumes.

Folate deficiency causes a disorder called megaloblastic anemia. In early pregnancy, a deficiency can interfere with the formation of the embryo's spinal cord. Per the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health , excessive alcohol intake blocks its absorption and interferes with its activation in the body. Alcohol-induced folate deficiency may also be related to certain cancers, especially of the breast and colon, and to liver damage.

​ Magnesium: ​ Excessive alcohol intake depletes magnesium , an extremely important mineral that has hundreds of roles in the cells, including those of the neuromuscular and cardiac systems.

Leafy green vegetables, avocados, beans, seeds and nuts are good sources. High alcohol intake is a major cause of magnesium depletion from the body's tissues, according to a March 2020 study in ​ Alcohol and Alcoholism . ​

12. It Can Lead to Pregnancy and Birth Problems

Drinking even in the short-term increases the risk for miscarriage or stillbirth for people who are pregnant, according to the CDC. It also puts fetuses at higher risk for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, which can lead to developmental delays, learning disabilities and vision or hearing problems, per the CDC .

13. It Can Contribute to Alcohol Dependence

Chronic heavy drinking can contribute to alcohol use disorder and alcohol dependence, according to the CDC.

Per the Mayo Clinic , symptoms can include:

• Not being able to limit the amount of alcohol you drink, despite possibly wanting to
• Spending a lot of time drinking, seeking out or recovering from alcohol use
• Craving alcohol
• Alcohol gets in the way of successfully performing at work, school or home
• Continuing to drink even though it's causing problems
• Using alcohol in unsafe situations, like while driving
• Developing a tolerance to alcohol
• Having withdrawal symptoms like nausea, sweating and shaking when you don't drink

14. It Can Affect Mental Health

Yet another reason why you shouldn't drink heavily is because it can contribute to mental health issues like depression and anxiety, per the CDC.

While alcohol may temporarily relieve feelings of depression, it can actually make things worse in the long run. In fact, there is a mutual relationship between depression and alcohol misuse, according to the University at Buffalo . This can lead to a cycle where people use alcohol to ease their symptoms, but the alcohol fuels the negative emotions that contribute to depression.

Effects of Binge Drinking

When it comes to drinking, the law of averages doesn't apply.

As mentioned above, there are pros and cons of drinking alcohol, so long as you don't exceed one drink a day for people AFAB and up to two for people AMAB. However, the same benefit doesn't apply to saving up all those weekday drinks and drinking six to seven drinks on one weekend night.

This habit is known as binge drinking, per the CDC, and it's the riskiest pattern of consumption. When you binge drink, the health effects are much like those of a heavy drinker.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans define binge drinking as downing more than five drinks in two hours if you're a person AMAB and four drinks in two hours if you're a person AFAB.

Excessive drinking and binge drinking can lead to stroke, per the American Heart Association . Binging can also lead to fetal alcohol syndrome for people who are pregnant, cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. The rates of high blood pressure increase and you're more likely to have a stroke.

Binge drinking is also associated with up to a 50 percent increase in breast cancer risk compared to low-average drinking, per a September 2017 study in the ​ American Journal of Epidemiology ​.

What Happens to Your Body When You Stop Drinking Alcohol

How to Enjoy Alcohol the Healthy Way

First off (and we cannot stress this enough) avoid binge drinking and try to sip a glass of water in between each alcoholic drink.

To help you choose healthier alcoholic drinks , Kessler shares some of her favorite cocktail and drink ideas below.

When choosing prosecco or champagne, go for extra-brut, ultra brut or brut nature, which indicate that it's lower in sugar. Use fresh ingredients like raspberries, cucumber slices and fresh herbs to enhance the flavor of your drink without adding sugar.

For a healthier mixer, go for club soda, seltzer or flavored waters with no added sugar instead of fruit juices and sodas. If you're a beer fan, opt for light beer to cut down on calories and carbs.

"If you're at a party, commit to having two drinks and never drink on an empty stomach. It can be helpful to eat a little snack before drinking as well," Kessler says. Check out these low-sugar cocktail recipes for more ideas:

• Tequila, club soda and lime
• Mezcal with a slice of orange
• Mix seltzer with your wines and add ice for a longer-lasting drink
• Mayo Clinic: "Red Wine and Resveratrol: Good for Your Heart?"
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Fact Sheets — Alcohol Use and Your Health"
• American Heart Association: "Alcohol and Heart Health"
• The Lancet: "Alcohol Use and Burden for 195 Countries and Territories, 1990–2016: A Systematic Analysis For The Global Burden of Disease Study 2016"
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Alcohol and Public Health Frequently Asked Questions"
• The Lancet Public Health: "The Effect of a Reduction in Alcohol Consumption on Blood Pressure: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis"
• Nutrients: "The Fluid Aspect of the Mediterranean Diet in the Prevention and Management of Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: The Role of Polyphenol Content in Moderate Consumption of Wine and Olive Oil"
• The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "Influence of Red Wine Polyphenols and Ethanol on the Gut Microbiota Ecology and Biochemical Biomarkers"
• Metabolites: "A New Perspective on the Health Benefits of Moderate Beer Consumption: Involvement of the Gut Microbiota"
• Pharmacological Research: "Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Alcohol-Induced Aggressiveness of Breast Cancer"
• The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Colon Cancer by Family History of Colorectal Cancer"
• American Journal of Epidemiology: "Lifetime Alcohol Intake, Binge Drinking Behaviors, and Breast Cancer Risk"
• World Journal of Gastroenterology: "Alcoholic Disease: Liver and Beyond"
• Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs: "Heavy Episodic Drinking Is Associated With Poorer Bone Health in Adolescent and Young Adult Women"
• JAMA Network Open: "Association of Low to Moderate Alcohol Drinking With Cognitive Functions From Middle to Older Age Among US Adults"
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "LDL and HDL Cholesterol: "Bad" and "Good" Cholesterol"
• American Journal of Public Health: "Key Findings on Alcohol Consumption and a Variety of Health Outcomes From the Nurses’ Health Study"
• American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "Longitudinal study of alcohol consumption and HDL concentrations: a community-based study"
• Scientific Reports: "Association between alcohol consumption pattern and the incidence risk of type 2 diabetes in Korean men: A 12-years follow-up study"
• BMJ: "Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study"
• Alzheimer's Society: "Alcohol and dementia"
• Harvard Health Publishing: "Should alcoholic drinks come with calorie labels?"
• U.S. National Library of Medicine: "Calorie count - Alcoholic beverages"
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Adult Obesity Causes & Consequences"
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Heat Stress: Hydration"
• Mayo Clinic: "Hangovers"
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Basics about FASDs"
• Mayo Clinic: "Alcohol use disorder"
• University at Buffalo: "Alcohol and Depression"
• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: "Alcohol: Balancing Risks and Benefits"
• NIAAA: "Alcohol Hangover"
• U.S. National Library of Medicine: "Hangover treatment"
• NIAAA: "The Role of Thiamine Deficiency in Alcoholic Brain Disease"
• Alcohol and Alcoholism: "Lower Serum Magnesium Concentrations are associated With Specific Heavy Drinking Markers, Pro-Inflammatory Response and Early-Stage Alcohol-associated Liver Injury"
• U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: "2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans"
• American Cancer Society: "Alcohol Use and Cancer"
• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: "Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome Information Page"
• National Institutes of Health: Health Risks and Benefits of Alcohol Consumption

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Alcohol: Balancing Risks and Benefits

Moderate drinking can be healthy—but not for everyone. You must weigh the risks and benefits.

– Introduction – What’s Moderate Alcohol Intake? What’s a Drink? – The Downside of Alcohol – Possible Health Benefits of Alcohol – Genes Play a Role – Shifting Benefits and Risks – The Bottom Line: Balancing Risks and Benefits

Introduction

Throughout the 10,000 or so years that humans have been drinking fermented beverages, they’ve also been arguing about their merits and demerits. The debate still simmers today, with a lively back-and-forth over whether alcohol is good for you or bad for you.

It’s safe to say that alcohol is both a tonic and a poison. The difference lies mostly in the dose. Moderate drinking seems to be good for the heart and circulatory system, and probably protects against type 2 diabetes and gallstones. Heavy drinking is a major cause of preventable death in most countries. In the U.S., alcohol is implicated in about half of fatal traffic accidents. [1] Heavy drinking can damage the liver and heart, harm an unborn child, increase the chances of developing breast and some other cancers, contribute to depression and violence, and interfere with relationships.

Alcohol’s two-faced nature shouldn’t come as a surprise. The active ingredient in alcoholic beverages, a simple molecule called ethanol, affects the body in many different ways. It directly influences the stomach, brain, heart, gallbladder, and liver. It affects levels of lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and insulin in the blood, as well as inflammation and coagulation. It also alters mood, concentration, and coordination.

What’s Moderate Alcohol Intake? What’s a Drink?

Loose use of the terms “moderate” and “a drink” has fueled some of the ongoing debate about alcohol’s impact on health.

In some studies, the term “moderate drinking” refers to less than 1 drink per day, while in others it means 3-4 drinks per day. Exactly what constitutes “a drink” is also fairly fluid. In fact, even among alcohol researchers, there’s no universally accepted standard drink definition. [2]

In the U.S., 1 drink is usually considered to be 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1½ ounces of spirits (hard liquor such as gin or whiskey). [3] Each delivers about 12 to 14 grams of alcohol on average, but there is a wider range now that microbrews and wine are being produced with higher alcohol content.

Is Red Wine Better?

The definition of moderate drinking is something of a balancing act. Moderate drinking sits at the point at which the health benefits of alcohol clearly outweigh the risks.

The latest consensus places this point at no more than 1-2 drinks a day for men, and no more than 1 drink a day for women. This is the definition used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025, [3] and is widely used in the United States.

The Dark Side of Alcohol

Not everyone who likes to drink alcohol stops at just one. While many people drink in moderation, some don’t.

Problem drinking also touches drinkers’ families, friends, and communities. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and others:

• In 2014, about 61 million Americans were classified as binge alcohol users (5 or more drinks on the same occasion at least once a month) and 16 million as heavy alcohol users (5 or more drinks on the same occasion on 5 or more days in one month). [6]
• Alcohol plays a role in one in three cases of violent crime. [7]
• In 2015, more than 10,000 people died in automobile accidents in which alcohol was involved. [8]
• Alcohol abuse costs about $249 billion a year. [9]

Even moderate drinking carries some risks. Alcohol can disrupt sleep and one’s better judgment. Alcohol interacts in potentially dangerous ways with a variety of medications, including acetaminophen, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, painkillers, and sedatives. It is also addictive, especially for people with a family history of alcoholism.

Alcohol Increases Risk of Developing Breast Cancer

There is convincing evidence that alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast cancer, and the more alcohol consumed, the greater the risk. [10-14]

• A large prospective study following 88,084 women and 47,881 men for 30 years found that even 1 drink a day increased the risk of alcohol-related cancers (colorectum, female breast, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, liver, esophagus) in women, but mainly breast cancer, among both smokers and nonsmokers. 1 to 2 drinks a day in men who did not smoke was not associated with an increased risk of alcohol-related cancers. [15]  
• In a combined analysis of six large prospective studies involving more than 320,000 women, researchers found that having 2-5 drinks a day compared with no drinks increased the chances of developing breast cancer as high as 41%. It did not matter whether the form of alcohol was wine, beer, or hard liquor. [10] This doesn’t mean that 40% or so of women who have 2-5 drinks a day will get breast cancer. Instead, it is the difference between about 13 of every 100 women developing breast cancer during their lifetime—the current average risk in the U.S.—and 17 to 18 of every 100 women developing the disease. This modest increase would translate to significantly more women with breast cancer each year.

A lack of folate in the diet or folic acid, its supplement form, further increases the risk of breast cancer in women. [14] Folate is needed to produce new cells and to prevent changes in DNA. Folate deficiency, as can occur with heavy alcohol use, can cause changes in genes that may lead to cancer. Alcohol also increases estrogen levels, which fuel the growth of certain breast cancer cells. An adequate intake of folate, at least 400 micrograms a day, when taking at least 1 drink of alcohol daily appears to lessen this increased risk. [16, 17]

• Researchers found a strong association among three factors—genetics, folate intake, and alcohol—in a cohort from the Nurses’ Health Study II of 2866 young women with an average age of 36 who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Those with a family history of breast cancer who drank 10 grams or more of alcoholic beverages daily (equivalent to 1 or more drinks) and ate less than 400 micrograms of folate daily almost doubled their risk (1.8 times) of developing the cancer. Women who drank this amount of alcohol but did not have a family history of breast cancer and ate at least 400 micrograms of folate daily did not have an increased breast cancer risk. [14]

Folate , the B vitamin that helps guide the development of an embryo’s spinal cord, has equally important jobs later in life. One of the biggest is helping to build DNA, the molecule that carries the code of life. In this way, folate is essential for accurate cell division.

Alcohol blocks the absorption of folate and inactivates folate in the blood and tissues. It’s possible that this interaction may be how alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast, colon, and other cancers.

Getting extra folate may cancel out this alcohol-related increase. In the Nurses’ Health Study, for example, among women who consumed 1 or more alcoholic drinks a day, those who had the highest levels of this B vitamin in their blood were 90% less likely to develop breast cancer than those who had the lowest levels of the B vitamin. [18] An earlier study suggested that getting 600 micrograms a day of folate could counteract the effect of moderate alcohol consumption on breast cancer risk. [17] There was no association with folate and increased breast cancer risk among women who drank low or no alcohol daily.

Alcohol and Weight Gain

However, a prospective study following almost 15,000 men at four-year periods found only an increased risk of minor weight gain with higher intakes of alcohol. [19] Compared to those who did not change their alcohol intake, those who increased their intake by 2 or more drinks a day gained a little more than a half-pound. It was noted that calorie intake (not from alcohol) tended to increase along with alcohol intake.

Possible Health Benefits of Alcohol

What are some of the possible health benefits associated with moderate alcohol consumption?

Cardiovascular Disease

More than 100 prospective studies show an inverse association between light to moderate drinking and risk of heart attack, ischemic (clot-caused) stroke, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death, and death from all cardiovascular causes. [20] The effect is fairly consistent, corresponding to a 25-40% reduction in risk. However, increasing alcohol intake to more than 4 drinks a day can increase the risk of hypertension, abnormal heart rhythms, stroke, heart attack, and death. [5, 21-23]

Learn more about the results of some large prospective cohort studies of alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease.

* compared with non-drinkers

The connection between moderate drinking and lower risk of cardiovascular disease has been observed in men and women. It applies to people who do not have heart disease, and also to those at high risk for having a heart attack or stroke or dying of cardiovascular disease, including those with type 2 diabetes, [32, 33] high blood pressure, [34, 35] and existing cardiovascular disease. [34, 35] The benefits also extend to older individuals. [36]

The idea that moderate drinking protects against cardiovascular disease makes sense biologically and scientifically. Moderate amounts of alcohol raise levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or “good” cholesterol), [37] and higher HDL levels are associated with greater protection against heart disease. Moderate alcohol consumption has also been linked with beneficial changes ranging from better sensitivity to insulin to improvements in factors that influence blood clotting, such as tissue type plasminogen activator, fibrinogen, clotting factor VII, and von Willebrand factor. [37] Such changes would tend to prevent the formation of small blood clots that can block arteries in the heart, neck, and brain, the ultimate cause of many heart attacks and the most common kind of stroke.

Drinking Patterns Matter

A review of alcohol consumption in women from the Nurses’ Health Study I and II found that smaller amounts of alcohol (about 1 drink per day) spread out over four or more days per week had the lowest death rates from any cause, compared with women who drank the same amount of alcohol but in one or two days. [39]

The most definitive way to investigate the effect of alcohol on cardiovascular disease would be with a large trial in which some volunteers were randomly assigned to have 1 or more alcoholic drinks a day and others had drinks that looked, tasted, and smelled like alcohol but were actually alcohol free. Many of these trials have been conducted for weeks, and in a few cases months and even up to 2 years, to look at changes in the blood, but a long-term trial to test experimentally the effects of alcohol on cardiovascular disease has not been done.  A recent successful effort in the U.S. to launch an international study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.  Although the proposal was peer-reviewed and initial participants had been randomized to drink in moderation or to abstain, post hoc the NIH decided to stop the trial due to internal policy concerns .  Unfortunately, a future long trial of alcohol and clinical outcomes may never be attempted again, but nevertheless, the connection between moderate drinking and cardiovascular disease almost certainly represents a cause-and-effect relationship based on all of the available evidence to date.

Beyond the Heart

The benefits of moderate drinking aren’t limited to the heart. In the Nurses’ Health Study, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and other studies, gallstones [40, 41] and type 2 diabetes [32, 42, 43] were less likely to occur in moderate drinkers than in non-drinkers. The emphasis here, as elsewhere, is on moderate drinking.

In a meta-analysis of 15 original prospective cohort studies that followed 369,862 participants for an average of 12 years, a 30% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes was found with moderate drinking (0.5-4 drinks a day), but no protective effect was found in those drinking either less or more than that amount. [32]

The social and psychological benefits of alcohol can’t be ignored. A drink before a meal can improve digestion or offer a soothing respite at the end of a stressful day; the occasional drink with friends can be a social tonic. These physical and social effects may also contribute to health and well-being.

Genes Play a Role

Twin, family, and adoption studies have firmly established that genetics plays an important role in determining an individual’s preferences for alcohol and his or her likelihood for developing alcoholism. Alcoholism doesn’t follow the simple rules of inheritance set out by Gregor Mendel. Instead, it is influenced by several genes that interact with each other and with environmental factors. [1]

There is also some evidence that genes influence how alcohol affects the cardiovascular system. An enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase helps metabolize alcohol. One variant of this enzyme, called alcohol dehydrogenase type 1C (ADH1C), comes in two “flavors.” One quickly breaks down alcohol, the other does it more slowly. Moderate drinkers who have two copies of the gene for the slow-acting enzyme are at much lower risk for cardiovascular disease than moderate drinkers who have two genes for the fast-acting enzyme. [44] Those with one gene for the slow-acting enzyme and one for the faster enzyme fall in between.

It’s possible that the fast-acting enzyme breaks down alcohol before it can have a beneficial effect on HDL and clotting factors. Interestingly, these differences in the ADH1C gene do not influence the risk of heart disease among people who don’t drink alcohol. This adds strong indirect evidence that alcohol itself reduces heart disease risk.

Shifting Benefits and Risks

• For a pregnant woman and her unborn child, a recovering alcoholic, a person with liver disease, and people taking one or more medications that interact with alcohol, moderate drinking offers little benefit and substantial risks.
• For a 30-year-old man, the increased risk of alcohol-related accidents outweighs the possible heart-related benefits of moderate alcohol consumption.
• For a 60-year-old man, a drink a day may offer protection against heart disease that is likely to outweigh potential harm (assuming he isn’t prone to alcoholism).
• For a 60-year-old woman, the benefit/risk calculations are trickier. Ten times more women die each year from heart disease (460,000) than from breast cancer (41,000). However, studies show that women are far more afraid of developing breast cancer than heart disease, something that must be factored into the equation.

The Bottom Line: Balancing Risks and Benefits

Given the complexity of alcohol’s effects on the body and the complexity of the people who drink it, blanket recommendations about alcohol are out of the question. Because each of us has unique personal and family histories, alcohol offers each person a different spectrum of benefits and risks. Whether or not to drink alcohol, especially for “medicinal purposes,” requires careful balancing of these benefits and risks.

• Your healthcare provider should be able to help you do this. Your overall health and risks for alcohol-associated conditions should factor into the equation.
• If you are thin, physically active, don’t smoke, eat a healthy diet, and have no family history of heart disease, drinking alcohol won’t add much to decreasing your risk of cardiovascular disease.
• If you don’t drink, there’s no need to start. You can get similar benefits with exercise (beginning to exercise if you don’t already or boosting the intensity and duration of your activity) or healthier eating.
• If you are a man with no history of alcoholism who is at moderate to high risk for heart disease, a daily alcoholic drink could reduce that risk. Moderate drinking might be especially beneficial if you have low HDL that just won’t budge upward with diet and exercise.
• If you are a woman with no history of alcoholism who is at moderate to high risk for heart disease, the possible benefits of a daily drink must be balanced against the small increase in risk of breast cancer.
• If you already drink alcohol or plan to begin, keep it moderate—no more than 2 drinks a day for men or 1 drink a day for women. And make sure you get adequate amounts of folate, at least 400 micrograms a day.
• However, the study’s results contradict these headlines, as its findings mirrored those from previous cohort studies showing the lowest CVD risk among light/moderate drinkers (1-15 drinks a week), and risk sharply increasing in heavy/abusive drinkers (averaging >20 drinks a week). Yet the authors concluded that it wasn’t light/moderate drinking that protected the heart; rather, it was lifestyle factors associated with light/moderate drinking like exercising more and not smoking (as predicted by people possessing certain gene variants). Interestingly the study found that light/moderate drinkers had healthier habits than even the abstainers. When adjusting for these healthy habits, the protective effect from alcohol lessened slightly. Regardless, their overall conclusion still showed that light/moderate drinkers had the lowest risk of CVD and supported the additional benefit of healthy lifestyle behaviors. It may also be worth noting that the genetic variants studied were associated with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and not specific to general alcohol intake.
• A 2018 analysis in The Lancet of the global impact of alcohol on injury and disease made headlines when it concluded that even moderate drinking is unsafe for health—and the risks outweigh any potential benefits. However, according to Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, it can be “misleading” to lump the entire world together when assessing alcohol’s risk. (For example, while tuberculosis is very rare in the U.S., it was the leading alcohol-related disease identified in the study.) In an interview with TIME , Willett said that while there is “no question” that heavy drinking is harmful, there are plenty of data supporting the benefits of moderate drinking, and it remains a decision that should be determined at the individual level: “There are risks and benefits, and I think it’s important to have the best information about all of those and come to some personal decisions, and engage one’s health care provider in that process as well.
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• Mostofsky E, Mukamal KJ, Giovannucci EL, Stampfer MJ, Rimm EB. Key findings on alcohol consumption and a variety of health outcomes from the Nurses’ Health Study. American journal of public health . 2016 Sep;106(9):1586-91.
• Grodstein F, Colditz GA, Hunter DJ, Manson JE, Willett WC, Stampfer MJ. A prospective study of symptomatic gallstones in women: relation with oral contraceptives and other risk factors. Obstetrics and Gynecology . 1994 Aug;84(2):207-14.
• Leitzmann MF, Giovannucci EL, Stampfer MJ, Spiegelman D, Colditz GA, Willett WC, Rimm EB. Prospective study of alcohol consumption patterns in relation to symptomatic gallstone disease in men. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research . 1999 May;23(5):835-41.
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• Biddinger KJ, Emdin CA, Haas ME, Wang M, Hindy G, Ellinor PT, Kathiresan S, Khera AV, Aragam KG. Association of Habitual Alcohol Intake With Risk of Cardiovascular Disease. JAMA Network Open . 2022 Mar 1;5(3):e223849-.  Author disclosures: Dr. Haas reported receiving personal fees and stock and stock options from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals outside the submitted work. Dr. Ellinor reported receiving grants from Bayer AG and IBM Health and personal fees from Bayer AG, MyoKardia, Quest Diagnostics, and Novartis during the conduct of the study. Dr. Kathiresan reported being an employee of Verve Therapeutics; owning equity in Verve Therapeutics, Maze Therapeutics, Color Health, and Medgenome; receiving personal fees from Medgenome and Color Health; serving on the advisory boards for Regeneron Genetics Center and Corvidia Therapeutics; and consulting for Acceleron, Eli Lilly and Co, Novartis, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Novo Ventures, Ionis, Alnylam, Aegerion, Haug Partners, Noble Insights, Leerink Partners, Bayer Healthcare, Illumina, Color Genomics, MedGenome, Quest Diagnostics, and Medscape outside the submitted work. Dr. Khera reported receiving personal fees from Merck, Amarin Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Maze Therapeutics, Navitor Pharmaceuticals, Sarepta Therapeutics, Verve Therapeutics, Silence Therapeutics, Veritas International, Color Health, and Third Rock Ventures and receiving grants from IBM Research outside the submitted work. Dr. Aragam reported receiving speaking fees from the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research.

Last reviewed April 2022

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Essay on Drinking Alcohol

Students are often asked to write an essay on Drinking Alcohol in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Drinking Alcohol

What is alcohol.

Alcohol is a drink made from fermented fruits, grains, or other sources of sugar. It’s found in beer, wine, and spirits. When people drink alcohol, it can change the way they feel and act. Many adults enjoy it in small amounts.

Effects of Alcohol

Drinking alcohol can make a person feel happy or relaxed at first. But if they drink too much, it can lead to trouble walking, slurred speech, and even sickness. Over time, too much drinking can harm the body and brain.

Alcohol and the Law

In many places, it’s against the law for people under a certain age, often 18 or 21, to drink alcohol. This rule helps protect young people from the risks of drinking too early.

Being Responsible

If adults choose to drink, it’s important to do so responsibly. This means not drinking too much and never driving after drinking. It’s always best to follow the rules and know your limits.

250 Words Essay on Drinking Alcohol

Alcohol is a liquid that can change how we feel and act. Many adults drink it in things like beer, wine, and mixed drinks. When people drink alcohol, it can make them feel happy, relaxed, or sometimes sad. It is important to know that only grown-ups are allowed to drink alcohol because it can be harmful, especially to kids and teenagers.

When someone drinks alcohol, it goes into their blood and travels to different parts of the body. It can slow down the brain, making it harder to think, move, and speak properly. This is why people who drink too much might stumble or have trouble talking. Drinking a lot of alcohol can also make someone feel sick or even pass out.

Alcohol Can Be Dangerous

Drinking too much alcohol is very dangerous. It can hurt the liver, which is a part of your body that helps clean your blood. It can also lead to accidents because it’s hard to make good choices or move safely when you’ve had too much to drink. This is why driving after drinking alcohol is against the law.

Alcohol is Not for Kids

In many places, there are rules that say people must be a certain age, usually 18 or 21, to drink alcohol. This is because alcohol can be even more harmful to young people whose bodies are still growing. It’s best for kids and teenagers to avoid alcohol to stay healthy and safe.

Remember, drinking alcohol is a serious choice that adults make, and it’s okay to say no to alcohol to take care of your health and well-being.

500 Words Essay on Drinking Alcohol

Alcohol is a liquid that can change the way our body and mind work. It is found in drinks like beer, wine, and whiskey. People drink it at parties, dinners, and sometimes to relax. It is very common around the world, but it is not for everyone. You must be a certain age to drink alcohol in most places, usually when you are an adult.

Why Do People Drink Alcohol?

Many people enjoy alcohol for different reasons. Some like the taste, while others may feel it helps them to be more cheerful at social events. Often, adults may have a glass of wine with their meal or a beer while watching a game. These are normal ways that some adults use alcohol.

The Good Side of Drinking Alcohol

In small amounts, alcohol can make people feel happy and relaxed. Some studies say that a little bit of alcohol, like a small glass of wine each day, might be good for your heart. But this does not mean it is good for everyone. It is still important to be very careful with alcohol.

The Bad Side of Drinking Alcohol

Drinking too much alcohol is not good. It can make you sick, cause headaches, and lead to bad decisions. When people drink a lot, they can become addicted, which means their body feels like it needs alcohol to feel normal. This is very dangerous and can harm their health, jobs, and families.

Drinking too much can also lead to accidents. This is why you should never drive after drinking alcohol. It slows down how fast you think and react, making it hard to drive safely.

Alcohol and Health

Alcohol can affect your body in many ways. If someone drinks too much over a long time, it can hurt their liver, a part of the body that helps clean your blood. It can also increase the chance of getting some types of sickness, like cancer.

For young people, alcohol is even more risky. Their bodies are still growing, and alcohol can cause problems with this growth. This is why there are laws about how old you must be to drink.

Alcohol and Society

Alcohol is a big part of many cultures and celebrations. Yet, it can also cause problems in society. When people drink too much, they can disturb others, get into fights, or break the law. Communities spend a lot of money on health care and police because of problems caused by alcohol.

Making Choices About Alcohol

As you grow up, you may have to make choices about drinking alcohol. It is important to know the facts. If you choose to drink when you are older, doing so safely and in moderation is key. This means not drinking too much and not drinking too often. It also means knowing when not to drink, like when you have to drive.

Remember, drinking alcohol is not necessary to have fun or to be part of a group. There are many ways to enjoy yourself without it. Being informed and making smart choices is the best way to take care of yourself and the people around you.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Risks and Benefits of Alcohol Use Over the Life Span

Especially at low and moderate drinking levels, alcohol consumption can be associated with benefits (e.g., protection against coronary heart disease) as well as risks (e.g., increased risk of accidents). These benefits and risks may change across a person’s life span. To determine the likely net outcome of alcohol consumption, one must weigh the probable risks and benefits for each drinker. These assessments are based on the individual drinker’s consumption levels, his or her personal characteristics (e.g., age or preexisting risk factors for coronary heart disease), and subjective values as well as on social considerations. The validity of such assessments also depends on the accuracy with which alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences can be measured.

The consumption of alcoholic beverages has been a part of many cultures since at least the beginning of recorded history. Ancient texts from Persia, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and China, as well as Biblical writers, have documented that people have been aware of alcohol’s beneficial and harmful effects for nearly as long as people have been drinking ( Rubin and Thomas 1992 ). Alcohol consumption also is clearly a part of contemporary American life. As a result, although most people drink moderately and without ill effect, alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence are major health problems in the United States. In 1992 almost 14 million Americans age 18 and older met the criteria of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM–IV) for alcohol abuse and dependence ( Grant et al. 1994 ). The alcohol-related costs to the Nation have been estimated to include 100,000 deaths and nearly $100 billion each year ( Rice 1993 ).

Although moderate alcohol use has been sanctioned in the United States for a long time, its objective benefits have begun to be quantified only recently. For example, a substantial body of literature now exists describing the protective effects of low-level alcohol consumption against coronary heart disease, as evidenced primarily by the reduced risk of death from acute heart attacks ( Klatsky et al. 1992 ).

The public also has become aware of alcohol’s general risks and benefits: News of grisly, alcohol-related, post-prom car crashes shares the media spotlight with reports on the cardioprotective effects of low-level alcohol consumption. Traffic statistics and news reports, however, do not answer the question, What are the health risks and benefits of alcohol consumption for a given person? This article defines alcohol-related risk, reviews several beneficial and detrimental consequences of alcohol consumption, and describes approaches to determining a person’s net risk or benefit from alcohol consumption.

Defining Alcohol Consumption and Alcohol-Related Risk

Any discussion of the risks and benefits of alcohol consumption must address the issue of defining relevant terms. For example, few people would disagree that “excessive” drinking is harmful. Attempts to define “excessive” precisely, however, are likely to generate considerable discussion. Similarly, the terms “abstainer,” “light,” “moderate,” “heavy,” and “heavier” are commonly used to describe types of drinkers, although no standard definitions exist for these drinking levels. Many studies refer to respondents in the drinking category with the lowest mortality as “moderate drinkers” ( Ferrence and Bondy 1994 ). Consequently, the definition of moderate drinking varies substantially across studies, ranging from less than one drink per day to three or more drinks per day ( Ferrence and Bondy 1994 ). The definitions of what constitutes a “drink” are equally variable.

This definitional vagueness can lead to considerable confusion in interpreting epidemiological studies investigating the relationship between alcohol consumption and various risks and benefits. For example, people who intend to drink for cardioprotection need to know at what level of alcohol consumption such benefits accrue (i.e., how many and what size drinks constitute “moderate” drinking) and which additional risks are associated with that drinking level.

To be useful concepts, the risks and benefits associated with alcohol consumption also must be specified. For example, risks or benefits may be short term (i.e., acute), affecting the drinker within hours or days, or long term (i.e., chronic), exerting their effects over many years. Acute risks often arise from consumption of a large volume of alcohol in a short period of time. These risks include car crashes, violence, and alcohol poisoning as well as alcohol-medication interactions. Long-term risks include chronic diseases, such as alcohol dependence, alcoholic cirrhosis, and alcoholic heart muscle disease (i.e., cardiomyopathy). Among the acute benefits of alcohol consumption, improved mood (i.e., happiness and euphoria) probably is the most common ( Dufour 1994 ). Alcohol’s cardioprotective effects appear to be both acute (e.g., decreased platelet adhesiveness in the blood, which reduces the danger of developing blood clots that may lead to heart attacks and strokes) and chronic (e.g., increased levels of high density lipoproteins, or “good” cholesterol) ( Jackson et al. 1992 ). These examples illustrate the importance of specifying exactly which risks and benefits are associated with each alcohol-consumption level.

The Concept of Net Outcome

The dichotomous view that alcohol is either only beneficial or only harmful is too simplistic; a more reasonable approach is the assessment of net outcome. This approach totals the positive and negative consequences of a person’s alcohol consumption to arrive at a net benefit or net risk for that person at his or her specific consumption level. For example, the determination of a net benefit implies that for a particular drinker, the benefits of drinking outweigh the risks.

A disadvantage of the concept of net outcome is that it assumes that one can separate the effects of alcohol from those of other confounding factors. Alcohol’s effects, however, cannot be considered in isolation. Some research suggests that moderate drinkers differ from abstainers and other drinkers not only in alcohol consumption but also in other health-related characteristics. For example, according to the Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Supplement to the 1985 U.S. National Health Interview Survey, moderate drinkers were more likely than either abstainers or other drinkers to sleep 7 to 8 hours each night, be at their ideal body weight, and exercise regularly ( Dufour 1994 ). Each of these factors can contribute to good health, and their effects are difficult to disentangle from the effects of alcohol consumption per se.

The concept of net outcome requires a multidimensional frame of reference. For example, the relationships among the multiple factors that contribute to alcohol’s net effects (e.g., the drinker’s physical and psychological condition or social environment) may change over time. In addition, the assessment of correlations between current drinking levels and potential future consequences may be complicated by the fact that alcohol consumption is a dynamic process and can fluctuate over the short term (i.e., weeks) as well as over the long term (i.e., years). The implications of this variability can be illustrated best by using another medical parameter as an example: Blood pressure is extremely variable over the short term (i.e., the course of the day); nevertheless, a single blood pressure measurement fairly accurately reflects overall blood pressure at that point in time. Moreover, current hypertension could predict a worse outcome (e.g., an increased risk of a heart attack) in the future compared with normal blood pressure. Long-term changes in blood pressure (e.g., through treatment for hypertension), however, also would affect future outcome, making the risk and, therefore, the net outcome intermediate between normal blood pressure and untreated hypertension. By the same token, changes in alcohol consumption over the life span can influence certain associated risks and benefits and thus alter net outcome.

Assessing Risks and Benefits of Alcohol Consumption

Because death is the easiest health indicator to assess, mortality—either from all causes combined or from specific causes—frequently is used to evaluate the health risks associated with certain drinking levels (see figure ). (For information on assessing risk based on per capita alcohol consumption, see sidebar , pp. 148–149.) The findings of these analyses, however, are not always unequivocal. For example, Jackson and Beaglehole (1995) found that the risks associated with heavier drinking 1 clearly outweighed the benefits associated with this level of alcohol consumption. In contrast, the risk-to-benefit balance for lower levels of alcohol consumption was not as obvious. On the one hand, light-to-moderate drinking appeared to reduce the relative risk of dying from coronary heart disease by as much as 50 percent, and light drinking also lowered the risk of death from ischemic stroke. 2 On the other hand, light-to-moderate drinking increased mortality from cirrhosis, injury (e.g., suicides and car crashes), hemorrhagic stroke, breast cancer, and, possibly, bowel cancer.

Assessing Alcohol-Associated Risks Based on Alcohol Consumption

One indirect measure of alcohol-associated risks is per capita alcohol consumption. This approach is based on the observation that a person’s likelihood of experiencing negative consequences of drinking increases with the amount of alcohol consumed. Researchers are therefore closely monitoring trends in alcohol consumption.

Recent Trends in Alcohol Consumption

Following Prohibition, per capita alcohol consumption in the United States generally increased, reaching its peak in 1980 and 1981. Since then, alcohol consumption primarily has been declining. In 1993, the latest year for which complete data are available, per capita consumption of all alcoholic beverages combined reached its lowest level since 1964 ( Williams et al. 1995 ). For the consumption of any kind of beverage, beer ranked fourth (behind soft drinks, coffee, and milk) in per capita consumption, a position it has held for many years. Beer also accounted for 57 percent of the absolute alcohol each person consumed; wine represented 13 percent; and spirits made up the remaining 30 percent, the lowest level for the consumption of spirits in 50 years ( Williams et al. 1995 ).

To estimate total and per capita alcohol consumption, researchers rely on data such as alcoholic beverage sales, production, and tax revenues. Based on these data, the total apparent alcohol consumption for the United States in 1993 included approximately 5.8 billion gallons of beer, 454 million gallons of wine, and 341 million gallons of spirits ( Williams et al. 1995 ). These amounts translate into 303 12-ounce cans of beer, 58 5-ounce glasses of wine, and 142 mixed drinks containing 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits for every man and woman age 14 and older in the country ( Williams et al. 1995 ).

Although per capita alcohol consumption is a robust and useful measure of alcohol-consumption trends, it is only a relatively crude indicator of alcohol-related risk, because it assumes that every person in the population of interest drinks and that all people consume equal amounts of alcohol. In general, however, drinking patterns vary significantly among the members of a population.

Drinking Patterns and Associated Outcomes

Slightly more than one-half of American men and one-third of American women age 18 and older were current drinkers in 1992 ( Dawson et al. 1995 ). Moreover, despite the fact that the legal drinking age is 21, alcohol use is common among young people. Approximately 56 percent of 8th graders, 71 percent of 10th graders, and 80 percent of 12th graders report having used alcohol at some time in their lives ( Johnston et al. 1995 ). (For more information on the drinking patterns of adolescents and young adults, see the articles by Chassin and DeLucia, pp. 175–180, and Quigley and Marlatt, pp. 185–191.)

When evaluating individual risk based on these data, one must remember that actual alcohol consumption is unevenly distributed (see table ) and that the 10 percent of drinkers who drink most heavily account for 50 percent of all alcohol consumed ( Malin et al. 1982 ). The chances of experiencing negative consequences of drinking (e.g., accidents or medical problems) grow with increasing alcohol consumption. Accordingly, the remaining 90 percent of drinkers who drink only lightly or moderately should be at a small risk for a negative outcome (assuming, that is, that they do not consume their entire weekly alcohol allowance within a couple of hours on a Saturday night just before driving).

The assessment of individual risk is further complicated by the significant variability that exists in individual vulnerability to alcohol’s negative consequences. For example, not every heavy drinker will develop alcoholic cirrhosis. In fact, only 15 to 30 percent of the heaviest drinkers (i.e., alcoholics in treatment) are ever diagnosed with cirrhosis ( Dufour et al. 1993 ). (For more information on potential problems associated with ascertaining the actual prevalence of cirrhosis, see the main article.) At the same time, a nonalcoholic woman consuming two drinks per day may develop cirrhosis ( Dufour et al. 1993 ). These observations indicate that in addition to alcohol consumption, genetic and environmental factors play a critical role in determining individual outcome and risk.

—Mary C. Dufour

Distribution of Drinking Levels Among Americans Age 18 and Older: National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey, 1992

SOURCE: Adapted from Dawson et al. 1995 .

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The net outcome of all-cause mortality associated with a certain alcohol-consumption level therefore also depends on the drinker’s absolute risk of dying from these various causes. Accordingly, older people—who are at high absolute risk of coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke and at low risk for injury, cirrhosis, and other alcohol-related diseases—are most likely to benefit from low levels of alcohol consumption. In contrast, for men and women under age 40, who have relatively low absolute risk of dying from strokes, heart disease, and alcohol-related diseases but a high absolute risk of dying from injury, all-cause mortality will increase even at relatively low alcohol-consumption levels. For example, in a 15-year followup of 18- to 19-year-old Swedish male military conscripts, alcohol consumption lowered the risk of cardiovascular disease, but this disease only accounted for 4 percent of all deaths. Conversely, injury deaths, which accounted for 75 percent of all deaths, increased among drinkers, even among those drinking seven or fewer drinks per week ( Andreasson et al. 1988 ). Finally, the absolute risk of death from injury or coronary heart disease is lower in young women than in young men, leading to an increase in all-cause mortality even in young women who are light drinkers (less than two drinks every 3 days) compared with abstainers ( Fuchs et al. 1995 ). When interpreting these findings, however, one also must keep in mind that when researchers express alcohol consumption in terms of average drinks per day or per week, they often do not ascertain people’s actual drinking patterns. Thus, both a person having one drink each evening and a person having seven drinks on a Saturday night (i.e., a binge drinker) average seven drinks per week. Yet their risks of alcohol-related injuries will differ significantly, with a much higher risk for the binge drinker.

Relative risk of dying from various causes for middle-aged men consuming different alcohol amounts. More than 270,000 Caucasian men ages 40 to 59 were followed for 12 years; their death rates and causes of death were analyzed according to their alcohol-consumption levels. The relative risk is the ratio of the death rate from a specific cause among a certain group of drinkers to the death rate from the same cause among abstainers. A relative risk of less than 1.0 indicates a protective effect of alcohol consumption; a relative risk of greater than 1.0 indicates a detrimental alcohol effect.

SOURCE: Bofetta and Garfinkel 1990 .

These observations allow the following conclusions: First, for men in their forties and postmenopausal women, the mortality-related benefits of light-to-moderate drinking begin to outweigh the risks. Among women ages 50 to 70, however, all-cause mortality appears to be reduced only among those with at least one major risk factor for coronary heart disease ( Fuchs et al. 1995 ). Second, the mortality-related benefits of low-level alcohol consumption continue to outweigh the risks for people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties ( Jackson and Beaglehole 1995 ).

Limitations to Risk and Benefit Assessment

Although it is clear that increasing levels of alcohol consumption are associated with greater physical and psychosocial hazards, the level at which the risks outweigh the benefits cannot be determined precisely. In assessing benefits and risks, the level of precision primarily depends on the supporting evidence that is available. To determine a specific risk or benefit associated with a given level of alcohol consumption, one must be able to measure accurately both the drinking level and the condition in question. Thus, significant underreporting of drinking levels could lead to an apparent increase in risk at low consumption levels.

Likewise, it may be difficult to ascertain the prevalence of particular alcohol-related conditions (e.g., cirrhosis). For example, autopsy studies suggest that as many as one-half of all cirrhosis patients remain asymptomatic throughout their lives. At present, a needle biopsy 3 is the only definitive way to diagnose cirrhosis in a person without symptoms of liver disease. Thus, to ascertain the true incidence and prevalence of cirrhosis among drinkers with different consumption levels, one would need to perform liver biopsies on a large sample of “healthy” subjects. For ethical and technical reasons, such a study is not feasible. Accordingly, although it is clear that a correlation exists between alcohol consumption and cirrhosis, the exact amounts of alcohol—especially at lower consumption levels—that lead to cirrhosis cannot be determined accurately.

Other variables influencing the assessment of net outcome include the following:

• Time: What may be a health benefit at one point in time may be a health risk at another.
• Subjective values: What one person may perceive as a benefit, another person may perceive as neutral or harmful.
• Social components: The benefit to one person may be a risk to another person or to society as a whole.

Examples of Risk-Benefit Assessments

A few examples can best illustrate how one can evaluate the specific benefits and risks associated with certain alcohol-consumption levels across different stages of the life span. Assessments such as these can help individuals and their health care providers estimate a person’s net outcome based on his or her combination of absolute risk factors. These estimates can then be used to develop individualized behavioral recommendations.

Risk Now Versus Benefit Later

For a 16-year-old boy, alcohol consumption may confer long-term cardioprotection; however, the boy’s chances of dying of a heart attack as a teenager are exceptionally small. On the other hand, alcohol-related traffic accidents are among the leading causes of death for teenagers ( Dufour 1994 ). Drinking therefore produces a net risk for this boy.

Risk Now Versus Benefit and Risk Later

One of the hallmarks of alcohol dependence is loss of control over drinking; recovering alcoholics often cannot maintain moderate drinking patterns. Consequently, moderate drinking likely will escalate in this high-risk group to heavier drinking, with all its attendant risks for injury and chronic disease. Therefore, moderate alcohol consumption poses a net health risk for recovering alcoholics, even though it also may have cardioprotective effects.

Benefit Now and Later

A 55-year-old postmenopausal woman who has risk factors for heart disease may benefit from alcohol’s cardioprotective effects. If she takes no contraindicated medications, low-level alcohol consumption may confer a net benefit to her.

Benefit Now Versus Risk Now

For a 55-year-old postmenopausal women with risk factors for heart disease and a strong family history of breast cancer, assessment is more difficult. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for American women in that age group, and breast cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths among women ( National Center for Health Statistics 1993 ). Currently, it is unknown whether moderate drinking would confer a net risk or a net benefit for the woman in question, because the same low consumption levels have been associated with both alcohol’s cardioprotective effects and increased risk of breast cancer. Once researchers have elucidated the exact mechanisms by which alcohol contributes to cardioprotection and breast cancer, a more accurate assessment of this woman’s net outcome will be possible.

Benefit to One Person Versus Harm to Another

For a woman early in the first trimester of pregnancy, a few drinks most likely will have no net harmful effects for the woman herself. This level of alcohol consumption, however, may have serious negative consequences for the developing fetus. Thus, maternal drinking during pregnancy constitutes a net risk for the fetus. Currently, one cannot predict whether a given fetus will be injured by a specific alcohol amount or whether a safe threshold of alcohol consumption during pregnancy exists below which no fetal damage occurs. Until researchers can answer these two questions, the safest course is for women to avoid all alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Conclusions

The ultimate goal of assessing the risks and benefits associated with alcohol consumption is to provide recommendations that promote a healthy lifestyle and thus extend people’s lives. Yet despite all the advances in medical and genetic research, the effects of these recommendations on the individual cannot be determined. Another medical example illustrates this point. Tsevat and colleagues (1991) have calculated that if people changed their behavior to eliminate all heart disease, the average life expectancy would increase by 3.1 years for a 35-year-old man and by 3.3 years for a 35-year-old woman. However, these 3 added years of life are just a statistical average. The actual benefits of a healthy lifestyle to a given person may be far greater or far less and cannot be predicted in advance.

With these qualifications in mind, assessment of alcohol-associated health risks and benefits leads to the following alcohol-consumption recommendations:

• For certain groups of people, alcohol consumption is associated with a net health risk, and thus abstinence is the safest course. These groups include women who are pregnant or trying to conceive, recovering alcoholics, people about to operate a motor vehicle or other dangerous machinery, and people having medical contraindications or taking medications that interact with alcohol.
• Middle-aged and older adults who do not fall into any of the abovementioned exclusionary categories and who enjoy consuming alcohol in moderation are likely to experience net health benefits.
• Heavier drinkers likely will benefit from moderating their consumption.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans ( U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services 1995 ) recommends drinking levels of no more than one drink 4 per day for women and two drinks per day for men. Because each person’s circumstances vary, however, people should discuss these recommendations with their physicians or other health care providers.

Finally, although the prospect of net health benefits from moderate drinking may appeal to people, it generally is not the only or primary reason for drinking. Instead, most people drink because they like alcohol’s taste, effects, or both. The remaining articles in this journal issue discuss in more detail the reasons for and consequences of drinking across the life span.

1 In their study, Jackson and Beaglehole (1995) defined “heavier” drinking as four or more drinks per day. Accordingly, “light-to moderate” drinking was defined as up to three drinks per day.

2 An ischemic stroke is caused by a blocked blood vessel in the brain. A hemorrhagic stroke is caused by bleeding from a blood vessel in the brain.

3 A needle biopsy is a procedure in which a hollow needle is inserted through the patient’s skin into the organ under investigation (e.g., the liver) to retrieve a small tissue sample for further examination.

4 A drink is defined here as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.

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Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption

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• Published: 28 December 2016
• Volume 3 , pages 118–133, ( 2017 )

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• R. I. M. Dunbar 1 ,
• Jacques Launay 1 ,
• Rafael Wlodarski 1 ,
• Cole Robertson 1 ,
• Eiluned Pearce 1 ,
• James Carney 1 &
• Pádraig MacCarron 1  

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Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. Despite considerable research on the misuse of alcohol, no one has ever asked why it might have become universally adopted, although the conventional view assumes that its only benefit is hedonic. In contrast, we suggest that alcohol consumption was adopted because it has social benefits that relate both to health and social bonding. We combine data from a national survey with data from more detailed behavioural and observational studies to show that social drinkers have more friends on whom they can depend for emotional and other support, and feel more engaged with, and trusting of, their local community. Alcohol is known to trigger the endorphin system, and the social consumption of alcohol may thus have the same effect as the many other social activities such as laughter, singing and dancing that we use as a means of servicing and reinforcing social bonds.

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Introduction

The use of alcohol has deep historical roots, with archaeological evidence for the consumption of fermented beverages dating back at least 7000 years (Guasch-Jané et al. 2006 ; Sicard and Legras 2011 ; Dietrich et al. 2012 ). Although the reasons behind the prevalence of alcohol use are rarely investigated, there is an implicit assumption that its hedonic (physiological reward) and anxiolytic (reduction of anxiety or stress) properties are the main reasons for its universal use. However, alcohol also plays an important role in social contexts by reducing our social inhibitions, as well as being a potent trigger of the endorphin system (Froehlich 1997 ; Gianoulakis 2004 ; Herz 1997 ).

The link between alcohol and endorphin release is especially relevant, given the fact that the endorphin system lies at the heart of social bonding in human and nonhuman primates (Keverne et al. 1989 ; Panksepp 1999 ; Depue and Morrone-Strupinsky 2005 ; Dunbar 2010 ; Machin and Dunbar 2011 ; Nummenmaa et al. 2016 ). Not only does endorphin activation make us feel more relaxed (a natural property of opiates), but it also seems to ‘tune’ the immune system (Sarkar et al. 2012 ). Alcohol may also have indirect fitness benefits through the positive effect network size/composition has on health and survival that has been widely documented in both humans (House 2001 ; Kana’iaupuni et al. 2005 ; Kikusui et al. 2006 ; Charuvastra and Cloitre 2008 ; Reblin and Uchino 2008 ; Smith and Christakis 2008 ; Dominguez and Arford 2010 ; Holt-Lunstad et al. 2010 ; Pinquart and Duberstein 2010 ; Liu and Newschaffer 2011 ; Tilvis et al. 2012 ; Kim et al. 2016 ) and primates (Silk et al. 2003 , 2009 , 2010 ; Crockford et al. 2008 ; Wittig et al. 2008 ).

Perhaps because alcohol addiction has serious medical and social consequences, most research on alcohol use has focussed on the effects of over-consumption (Taylor et al. 2005 ; Easdon et al. 2005 ; Roerecke and Rehm 2010 ). Nonetheless, the fact that alcohol continues to be used, especially in social contexts, raises the question of why humans began to use it, and continue to use it so widely. We can identify two potential social benefits. One is that alcohol consumption enhances psychological wellbeing and, directly or indirectly, promotes the building of the close personal bonds that underpin social networks. In other words, it functions much like the many other behavioural mechanisms (including laughter, singing, dancing and storytelling: Dunbar et al. 2012 ; Tarr et al. 2015 , 2016 ; Pearce et al. 2015 ; Dunbar et al. 2016 ) that are used to trigger the endorphin system so as to facilitate large-scale (i.e. communal as opposed to dyadic) social bonding. The other possibility is that alcohol in some way affects our social or cognitive skills in ways that allow us to function more effectively in social situations. While not all studies have shown such effects (see, for example, Dent et al. 1997 ), there is some evidence to suggest that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and at least some forms of cognition (Christian et al. 1995 ; Hendrie et al. 1996 ; Launer et al. 1996 ; Elias et al. 1999 ; Galanis et al. 2000 ; Krahn et al. 2003 ; Britton et al. 2004 ; Lang et al. 2007 ; Sinforiani et al. 2011 ). This suggests that low-moderate levels of alcohol consumption might have beneficial effects on cognition, and that could include social cognition. For example, because alcohol consumption makes us more willing to take risks (Abrams et al. 2006 ; Sayette et al. 2012 ) and behave more competitively (Hopthrow et al. 2007 ), it might make us more willing to risk trying our luck with a prospective mate.

To explore this question, we combine data from a large national survey with data sampled in pubs and bars. Because our primary interest lies in the social aspects of alcohol consumption, we focus on the differences between individuals who have a regular drinking venue (a ‘local’), more casual drinkers who do not and non-drinkers. Because they provide very different social experiences, we also distinguish between smaller ‘community’-style pubs and city centre bars. At least in the UK, a community pub tends to be close to where its clientele live or work, such that regulars visit with sufficient frequency to know the staff and clientele on a personal basis; these pubs typically have a distinctly social ambience, with a smaller, quieter venue, are typically more beer-oriented than wine-oriented, and generally have lower per capita consumption (Jennings 2007 ). In contrast, city centre bars tend to be larger, have a clientele drawn from a much wider, more heterogeneous population, and commonly lack the community ambience of ‘locals’; their business plans typically focus on maximising alcohol sales. Since conversation is the principal means for creating and servicing friendships, we also undertook a study of the dynamics of conversation in these venues.

Methodology

We combine data from three separate studies: a structured national survey, a questionnaire-based study of the clientele in a number of pubs and an observational study of conversational behaviour in pubs.

Survey Sample

An online survey was commissioned from the polling agency YouGov by CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale). It asked about respondents’ drinking behaviour, their social networks and their wellbeing, using multiple-choice Likert-type responses. The survey was conducted over one week in November 2015 using a UK national randomly stratified sample of 2254 adults (aged 18+), representative of geographic region, gender and age. As well as background demographic information, the survey asked how often the respondent visited a pub, where they tended to drink and socialise, and whether they had a ‘local’. Respondents were then asked how socially connected they felt to their local community, using the Inclusion-of-Other-in-Self [IOS] rating scale (a 1–7 visual analogue scale, in which 1 indicates low connectedness and 7 indicates high connectedness) (adapted from Aron et al. 1992 ), how much they trusted people in general (on a 0–10 scale), and how many people they felt they could turn to for help if they needed to (an index of the size of their support network: Dunbar and Spoors 1995 ; Roberts et al. 2014 ). The survey also included measures of the respondents’ current sense of wellbeing using the following questions from the UK Office of National Statistics’ surveys, rated on a 0 (“not at all”) to 10 (“very”) scale:

Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?

Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?

Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

When aggregating poll data, YouGov follows standard practice and applies a standard weighting (based on the Random Iterative Method, RIM: Deming and Stephan 1940 ) to account for variability in sampling across UK regions. RIM can result in a reduction of sample size, hence sample sizes cited in this paper are sometimes less than the full 2254 sample.

Location-Based Studies

To study behaviour in pubs at first hand, we carried out two separate studies in pubs. The first focussed on social behaviour and cognition. We sampled 95 adults (31 women; mean age 34.1 ± 11.7 years, range 18–63; all native English speakers) in six pubs. Four were community pubs and two were large city-centre bars. Participants were invited to take part in a set of short tasks on handheld devices. They were reimbursed £5 for their time. After they had completed the tasks, they were given a breathalyser test to determine their alcohol consumption. To make sure that accurate readings were taken, they were asked not to drink while carrying out the questionnaire tasks. Only 13% of the individuals sampled exceeded the UK legal blood alcohol limit for drink-driving, and only three (3.1%) had an alcohol level that was more than twice the drink-drive limit.

The first part of the questionnaire asked about their drinking habits: how frequently they visited pubs, their weekly alcohol consumption, what they typically drank, whether they had a ‘local’, and whether they had consumed any alcohol before coming to the pub. Next, participants were asked to rate how well-integrated into their local community they felt themselves to be (using the same IOS task as used in the national survey); a note was made of the size of the social group they were in. Finally, they were given two picture-based tasks designed to assess their social appraisal of strangers.

In the first of these tasks, participants were shown 20 photos (10 male and 10 female) of standardised faces from the Chicago Face Database (Ma, Correll & Wittenbrink 2015 ) and asked to rate them for trustworthiness, approachability and attractiveness on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = ‘Not at all’, 7 = ‘Extremely’). The faces were sampled randomly from the database since we were not interested in actual attractiveness, but how individuals perceived faces. This task assessed people’s propensity to make socially relevant appraisals of strangers in ways that might influence their willingness to initiate interaction, thus indicating whether their social judgments of others are influenced by alcohol. Participants were also presented with a validated measure of social cognition (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes task, RMET: Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2001 ). For the RMET, subjects view a series of photos showing just the eye region of faces, and a choice of four words describing different emotions. They were asked to choose which word best described the emotion displayed in the photo. This task measures the ability to identify emotions from other people’s faces, a capacity that underlies empathy (putting yourself in someone else’s shoes) and hence mindreading (or mentalising) – the ability to understand someone else’s thoughts (a key social skill) (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright 2001 ). Mentalising is a core process central to human sociality.

Since conversation is at the heart of sociality, we undertook a second observational study focussed on conversational behaviour in seven different pubs (five large city-centre bars, and two local community pubs). The Animal Behaviour Pro app was used on iPhones and iPads to record the conversational behaviour of 65 focal individuals for 20 min each (total sample time was 21.6 h). Subjects were not approached and were unaware that they were being observed. A subject from an obviously interacting group was randomly selected, their gender recorded as well as that of anyone they were sitting with at the time. For the next 20 min, the researcher recorded who the focal individual was speaking or listening to, as well as whether anyone arrived or left their group. The researchers used eye contact and speaking as criteria for who was engaged with their focal individual. The observer also noted when individuals were not paying attention to the conversation (defined by behaviours such as not talking, sitting in silence, staring off elsewhere round the room, waiting to be served at bar, or on their phone). At the end of each sample period, the researcher randomly selected a new focal individual from another group. At any single venue, researchers conducted roughly 6 samples (representing two hours of data collection), or as many as there were separate groups in the pub. Two people were never sampled from the same conversation group. A total of 283 people (135 males), including the 65 focal individuals, were recorded as being involved in the sample conversations.

Survey Data

Of the 2254 respondents, 708 declared that they were non-drinkers or rare drinkers, 946 said they regularly drank alcohol but had no ‘local’ they visited regularly, and 447 that they had a ‘local’ (153 respondents did not answer the question). Figure 1 plots the responses to the main questions as a function of these three groupings. The differences across the three categories in personal happiness, perceived worthwhileness of life and satisfaction with life were all significant (Fig. 1 a: Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, χ 2  = 25.88, df  = 2, p  < 0.0001; Fig. 1 b: χ 2  = 12.63, df  = 2, p  = 0.002; Fig. 1 c: χ 2  = 36.20, df  = 2, p  < 0.0001): in each case, pairwise comparisons reveal a significant difference between non-drinkers and drinkers ( p  < 0.05), but no differences between regular drinkers with and without a ‘local’. Scores for trust in others and engagement with the local community (IOS) also differed significantly between categories (Fig. 1 d: χ 2  = 39.18, df  = 2, p  < 0.0001; Fig. 1 e: χ 2  = 30.50, df  = 2, p  < 0.0001), with all pairwise differences significant ( p  < 0.01). The number of intimate friends (support clique) averaged 6.29 ± 7.69SD, which is on the high side but within the range of variation observed in other samples (Dunbar et al. 1995 ; Sutcliffe et al. 2012 ; Burton-Chellew and Dunbar 2015 ). The differences between the three categories in support clique size are significant (Fig. 1 f: χ 2 = 33.40, df  = 2, p  < 0.0001): the difference between non-drinkers and drinkers was highly significant, but regular drinkers were only marginally significantly different from those who had a ‘local’. In contrast, the differences between categories in the rated level of personal anxiety were not significant (data not shown: χ 2  = 1.27, df  = 2, p  = 0.531).

Mean (±2 se) ratings of a happiness on the previous day, b feelings of worthwhileness, c satisfaction with life, d trust in other people, e feeling connected to the local community (indexed as the Inclusion-of-Other-in-Self, IOS, scale: 1 = not at all connected, 7 = very connected) and (f) number of intimate friends (on whom one can rely for social, emotional and financial support), as a function of whether or not participants drink alcohol regularly and whether or not they have a ‘local’ pub they visit regularly. Source: YouGov national UK poll

In order to evaluate the most likely causal relationships between these variables, we ran a path analysis. We excluded anxiety from this analysis, since it is unrelated to pub use and correlated (negatively) only with happiness ( r  = −0.419, N  = 2254, p  < 0.0001) and life satisfaction ( r  = −0.339, p  < 0.0001), but included the frequency with which participants stated that they visited pubs (on a 5-point Likert scale) as the key variable of interest. Figure 2 shows all the significant partial ß s, with a number of these being explicitly one-directional. These suggest a causal sequence that runs from satisfaction with life to both happiness and increased frequency of pub visits, which between them independently influence one’s sense that life is worthwhile and the level of trust in, and connection with, the local community (the latter indexed by IOS), which in turn influence the number of intimate friends one has.

Path analysis of the main variables in the UK national poll dataset ( N  = 2254 participants). Arrows indicate significant ( p  < 0.05) standardized ßs (given by the numbers against the arrows) from multiple regressions with each variable in turn as the dependent variable. All variables are scaled data. Single headed arrows: relationships in which the ß for the indicated direction is at least twice that for the converse direction. Double headed arrows and dashed lines: significant relationships of approximately equal weight (the larger ß is indicated in each case). Strength of the relationship is indicated by line weight

Taken together, these data suggest that there are benefits to be derived directly from drinking alcohol, especially in relaxed social environments. These effects are clearly involved in a complex feedback process, and it is clear from the path analysis that certain types of people (those who feel more satisfied with their lives) are more likely to visit pubs and benefit from these effects.

In-Pub Behavioural Data

Subjects sampled in the different venues did not differ significantly in blood alcohol level: a 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA with customer type (‘regulars’ vs casuals: i.e. drinking in their ‘local’ or not), venue (community pub vs city centre bar) and sex as factors was not significant (overall model F 3,90  = 1.96, p  = 0.126). Only sex came marginally close to significance, with women having consumed less than men on average ( F 1,90  = 3.39, p  = 0.069).

Those who declared that they were in their ‘local’ (‘regulars’) or who were in community pubs were in significantly smaller social groups than those who were casual visitors in city centre bars (Fig. 3 a: regulars, mean group size 3.94 ± 2.78SD vs 6.73 ± 3.74 for casuals; community pubs, mean = 3.56 ± 2.20 vs 5.84 ± 3.77 in city bars). 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA yielded a significant model ( F 3,91  = 9.00, p  < 0.001), with significant individual effects for customer type ( F 1,91  = 13.51, p  < 0.001) and pub type ( F 1,91  = 8.55, p  = 0.004), but not for sex ( F 1,91  = 0.03, p  = 0.855). Note that those attending their ‘local’ and those in community pubs were in conversation-sized groups (which typically have a maximum size of 4: Dunbar et al. 1995 ; Dezecache and Dunbar 2012 ; Dunbar 2016 ; Krems et al. 2016 ; Dahmardeh and Dunbar 2017 ), whereas casual customers and those in city centre bars were typically in parties that were larger than the normative limit for conversations.

a Mean (±2se) conversation group size and b mean (±2se) feeling of connectedness to the local community (indexed as the IOS: 1 = low, 7 = high) for individuals who were casual drinkers versus regular drinkers in the sampled venues, differentiated by whether the venue was a community pub ( shaded bars ) or a city centre bar ( open bars ). Source: pub behavioural sample

Figure 3 b plots how integrated into their local community people felt themselves to be (indexed by the IOS scale). Subjects in smaller, community-type pubs were more likely to feel that they were a member of their community than those in larger city centre bars. However, the 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA model with venue, customer and sex as predictors was not significant ( F 3,79  = 1.51, p  = 0.219), with location the only factor that was (marginally) significant ( F 1,79  = 3.71, p  = 0.058).

Participants were asked to rate the approachability, trustworthiness and attractiveness of a set of photographs of male and female faces; they also took the Reading-the-Mind-in-the-Eyes (RMET) test. For all four indices, there was no relationship between mean score and blood alcohol level (linear or quadratic fits: F 1,86  ≤ 1.406, p  ≥ 0.226). Nor were any of the linear or quadratic regressions significant when split by type of venue or gender.

Conversational Dynamics

Across all venues, the average size of conversations was 3.44 ± 1.33 SD (Fig. 4 a). This is again in close agreement with previous samples of conversation group size. Although the average conversation group size was larger in city centre bars than in community pubs (Fig. 4 b), the difference was not significant. However, conversations in city centre bars had a significantly greater range than those in community pubs (Levene’s test for homogeneity of variances: F 1,64  = 8.002, p  = 0.006, n  = 65 groups).

a Distribution of mean weighted conversation group sizes in pubs. b Mean (±2se) weighted conversation group size in small community pubs (‘locals’) versus larger city centre bars. Weighted group size is group size weighted by the length of time the conversation was at a given group size, and so takes account of the changes in size as individuals join and leave a conversation. Source: pub conversational behaviour sample

The size of a social group had significant consequences for its dynamics. Irrespective of venue, conversations became more fragmented as the size of the group increased, with continuous stretches of conversation being shorter (Fig. 5 a: Pearson’s r  = −0.423, p  < 0.001, n  = 65 groups) and more people dropping out of the conversation as group size increased (Fig. 5 b: Pearson’s r  = 0.285, p  = 0.022, n  = 65 groups). Unbroken chains of conversation were also significantly shorter in proportion to the number of individuals in the group that were not paying attention to the speaker (Fig. 5 c: Pearson’s r  = −0.449, p  < 0.001, n  = 65 groups).

a Conversation duration plotted against conversation group size. b Mean number of people who left a conversation as a function of the number of people in the group at the time they left. c Duration of a conversation as a function of the number of people in the conversation who were not engaged with (i.e. paying attention to) the speaker. Source: pub conversational behaviour sample

A two-way ANOVA indicated that the proportion of people who were not engaged with (i.e. paying attention to) a conversation they were physically part of was significantly higher in city centre bars than in community pubs (Fig. 6 a: F 1 ,64  = 4.85, p  = 0.031); in fact, people in city centre bars spent significantly more time not taking part in the conversation they were associated with (Fig. 6 b: F 1 ,64  = 12.15, p  < 0.001). No one was ever recorded checking their phone in any of the samples in a small community pub, but in large city centre bars people often did so. Overall, the total time people spent on their phones was significantly positively correlated with total time spent not talking (Pearson correlation: r  = 0.311, p  = 0.012). Consequently, conversations lasted significantly longer in community pubs than they did in city centre bars (Fig. 6 c: F 1 ,64  = 20.47, p  < 0.001). There was a tendency for people to drop out of conversations more often in the latter type of venue, but the difference was not statistically significant (Fig. 6 d: F 1 ,64  = 2.01, p  < 0.161).

a Mean (±2se) number of people present but not actively involved in a conversation (talking or listening) in small community pubs and large pubs/bars. b Mean (±2se) time spent not talking in conversations in small community pubs and large pubs/bars. c Mean (±2se) length of conversations in small community pubs and large pubs/bars. d Mean (±2se) number of people who dropped out of each conversation in small community pubs and large pubs/bars. Source: pub conversational behaviour sample

In sum, conversations in community-type pubs were longer, more focussed and less liable to fragmentation than those in city centre bars.

The aim of this study was to ask whether there was any evidence that alcohol consumption has social benefits beyond a simple hedonic ‘high’ or anxiolytic effect. Because alcohol triggers an endorphin response, we hypothesised that it might increase the degree of social bonding (feelings of social closeness: see Dunbar and Shultz 2010 ; Roberts et al. 2014 ) and this might have implications for how happy and socially engaged people become. The evolutionary significance of this lies in the fact that our social networks provide us with the single most important buffer against mental and physical illness (House 2001 ; Fowler & Christakis 2008 ; Holt-Lunstad et al. 2010 ; Tilvis et al. 2012 ; Kim et al. 2016 ). We asked whether the frequency of social alcohol consumption (indexed by the frequency of drinking in pubs) or the type of venue (‘locals’ vs bars) influenced people’s social experiences and their wellbeing.

The survey data suggest that respondents who have a ‘local’ that they visit on a regular basis are more socially engaged, feel more contented in their lives, and are more likely to trust other members of their community. On some, but not all of our social measures, those who drink ‘casually’ were more socially engaged than those who didn’t drink at all, suggesting that there are independent effects due to being a drinker and having a regular drinking venue. Overall, the number of close friends that people have (those on whom one can count for support in times of crisis, often known as the ‘support clique’) is of the same magnitude as has been found in previous studies (present study: 6–7; previous studies: 4–6: Sutcliffe et al. 2012 ). However, those who did not have a ‘local’ had significantly smaller social networks and felt less engaged with, and trusting of, the communities within which they were embedded. The path analysis suggested that feeling satisfied with life and how often one visits a pub both independently influence a set of variables associated with happiness and trust in others, which in turn influence engagement with the community and personal network size.

The results of the pub behavioural study corroborated the findings from the national survey: people drinking in community pubs (or ‘locals’) felt significantly more engaged with their local community than those drinking in city centre bars. More importantly, those in ‘locals’ were more likely to be in ‘conversational’ sized groups, whereas those drinking in city centre bars were in groups that significantly exceeded not only natural conversation group size but also the typical size of the support clique. This difference in social environment may be expected to have significant effects on the formation and maintenance of social bonds. In large city centre venues, people were much less engaged with each other, moving rapidly from one brief conversation to another. As a result, they have less time to get to know their social companions or establish relationships with them. We interpret this as being at least part of the explanation for the fact that those who do not have a ‘local’ they visit regularly feel less engaged with their community, feel less satisfied with life and have smaller support networks. This may have wider implications because the size of support networks (cliques) scales up to predict the size of the extended social network (or active network) (Zhou et al. 2005 ; Sutcliffe et al. 2012 ).

It is always possible that these differences in behaviour might be due to personality differences. Extraverts, for example, have larger social networks than introverts, although the average quality of their relationships is typically weaker as a result (Roberts et al. 2008 ; Pollet et al. 2011 ). We did not include measures of personality because we did not want to overburden our participants, and hence we cannot evaluate this possibility here. However, we take the view that any relationship between particular personality dimensions and our dependent measures (happiness, social engagement) is likely to be mediated by the role of social drinking, or at least that the two effects are independent and additive. This remains to be tested, however.

Although there is considerable evidence that moderate alcohol consumption can enhance some aspects of cognition, including memory, mental arithmetic and inhibition, even though excessive consumption inevitably has deleterious effects (Christian et al. 1995 ; Henrie et al. 1996; Launer et al. 1996 ; Elias et al. 1999 ; Galanis et al. 2000 ; Krahn et al. 2003 ; Schreckenberger et al. 2004 ; Easdon et al. 2005 ; Lang et al. 2007 ; Sinforiani et al. 2011 ), we could detect no effect on people’s assessment of strangers’ approachability, trustworthiness or attractiveness on the basis of facial cues, at least within the modest range of alcohol consumption that we sampled. There is an important contrast between most laboratory studies of the effects of alcohol, where subjects are required to consume large doses of alcohol (in some cases, by intravenous injection) in artificial settings, and our real-world observational study involving mostly moderate social drinking. The lack of any effects of social alcohol consumption on social cognition and the positive findings on the more general aspects of life satisfaction and social engagement outside the immediate pub environment suggests that the role of alcohol is more likely associated with the maintenance of existing relationships than with the initiation of new ones with strangers.

Because the endorphin system is central to social bonding in primates (including humans) (Keverne et al. 1989 ; Panksepp 1999 ; Depue and Morrone-Strupinsky 2005 ; Dunbar 2010 ; Machin and Dunbar 2011 ; Nummenmaa et al. 2016 ) and seems to have a direct effect on the body’s capacity to resist endogenous and exogenous disease threats (Sarkar et al. 2012 ; Kim et al. 2016 ), anything that triggers the endorphin system is likely to have been adopted once discovered. This is not, of course, to suggest that excessive alcohol consumption does not have serious health consequences.

Aside from direct health benefits that might arise from up-regulating the endorphin system, the principal benefit of the social consumption of alcohol may thus be that it acts much like the many other endorphin-stimulating activities that we use for social and community bonding (notably laughter, singing, dancing, and even storytelling: Dunbar et al. 2012 ; Tarr et al. 2015 , 2016 ; Pearce et al. 2015 ; Dunbar et al. 2016 ). This is not to suggest that alcohol consumption is an adaptation in the formal biological sense, but rather that we discovered how it could be used to trigger a mechanism (the endorphin system) that is an adaptation for social bonding. Indeed, there is now a widespread view among archaeologists that cereal cultivation was first started in order to brew beer rather than to provide food (Dietrich et al. 2012 ; Hayden et al. 2013 ). We suggest that, like these other social bonding activities, the consumption of alcohol, once it had been discovered, came to be adopted as part of the complex set of activities and rituals associated with bonding our (by monkey and ape standards) large social communities.

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Acknowledgments

The study forms part of the research programme funded by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator grant to RD. We thank the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) for making the results of the national survey available to us and for the funding that made the pub behavioural study possible. Ethics approval for the pub studies was given by the University of Oxford Combined University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC). We are grateful to the landlords who allowed us to have access to their pubs, and to Joe Bennett, Mary Kempnich, and Anna Szala who acted as research assistants for the study of conversational behaviour.

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Dunbar, R.I.M., Launay, J., Wlodarski, R. et al. Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3 , 118–133 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0058-4

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Received : 21 November 2016

Revised : 12 December 2016

Accepted : 14 December 2016

Published : 28 December 2016

Issue Date : June 2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-016-0058-4

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The Benefits of Quitting Alcohol

What happens to your body and mind when you stop drinking

Buddy T is a writer and founding member of the Online Al-Anon Outreach Committee with decades of experience writing about alcoholism. Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website.

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At a Glance

Alcohol has many negative effects on your physical and mental health. The benefits of quitting drinking are often apparent soon after you stop, and will only continue to improve the longer you abstain from drinking. 

Even if you know that there are benefits to  quitting alcohol , it does not mean that it’s easy to stop drinking —especially if you’ve been misusing alcohol for a long time.

Research shows that some damage to your brain, liver, heart, and gut done by alcohol will slowly heal when you stop drinking. While it’s true that alcohol withdrawal symptoms can be severe, they will not last forever. Once you get through that part of the process, you’ll start to feel better physically and mentally. 

In this article, we’ll talk about the health risks that come with drinking and the benefits of quitting alcohol.

What Alcohol Does to Your Body

Joseph Volpicelli, MD, PhD , founder and medical director of the Volpicelli Center and executive director of the Institute of Addiction Medicine, says that alcohol can have a negative effect on your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Unhealthy drinking is a continuum. Cognitive, emotional, and sleep disturbances can occur at even moderate levels of drinking. As one drinks more over time, these disturbances get worse and become more difficult to reverse.

One of the most profound ways that alcohol affects you is through what it does to your body. After you drink alcohol, Volpicelli explains that the small molecules inside it get absorbed by your gut. From there, they travel to other parts of your body and affect organ systems, including the cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems, along the way.

As alcohol is broken down and metabolized by your body, toxins get released. Some will eventually get broken down into less harmful compounds, but your body's ability to process these substances is limited. 

Excessive drinking can lead to the build-up of toxic, highly cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds that contribute to inflammation in your body, especially in your liver.

Alcohol also affects your mind. There are certain brain chemicals called excitatory neurotransmitters that will stop doing their job when you drink, which can make you feel sleepy and sedated.

Alcohol can also trigger the release of chemicals called endorphins and raise levels of the “feel good” hormone dopamine. This can make you feel energetic and even extremely happy (euphoric) shortly after you drink alcohol, but the effects don’t last.

Neurotransmitters can rebound beyond their usual activity levels, which can leave you feeling anxious and irritable. Volpicelli explains that this volleying can also lead to low motivation or anxiety and depression.

According to Volpicelli, the cognitive changes people can have from drinking—like memory trouble, slowed reaction time, difficulty controlling behavior, and poor concentration—get worse over time. 

"Over time, the toxic effects of alcohol can cause damage to the protective coating surrounding nerve cells and ultimately to the nerves themselves,” says Volpicelli. “The ability to learn, remember, plan, and focus all becomes compromised.” 

Health Risks of Alcohol Use

Heavy drinking can take a major toll on numerous aspects of your health, elevating your risk of:  

• Alcoholic hepatitis
• Arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat)
• Digestive symptoms
• Hearing loss
• High blood pressure
• Pancreatitis
• Sexually transmitted infections

Physical Benefits of Quitting Alcohol

Quitting alcohol has a number of important mental health benefits. In addition to improving your mental well-being, it may lower your risk for some mental illness and contribute to better sleep.

Better-Looking Skin

One outer body place where you’ll notice the negative effects of alcohol on your body is your skin. For example, drinking alcohol can cause:

• Broken capillaries on the face and nose
• Dry skin due to dehydration
• Inflammation
• Jaundice (with chronic, long-term use)
• Reduced collagen levels, resulting in loose, saggy skin

When you stop drinking, your skin gets more elastic and the redness and discoloration on your face will slowly fade.

Weight Management

Alcohol robs your body of nutrients and derails your metabolism. Alcoholic beverages are a source of added  sugar  and empty calories. Binge drinking can lead to consuming an extra 600 calories or more in a day. 

The National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse defines binge drinking as a pattern of alcohol consumption that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels to 0.08 g/dLi in a short period of time (about 2 hours). This typically occurs after five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women.

A big part of alcohol recovery is taking steps to improve your lifestyle through changes like diet and  exercise . If you’ve been trying to get to and maintain a weight that supports your health, quitting alcohol can help you meet that goal. 

Better Nutrition

Drinking alcohol can make it harder to stay nourished. Sometimes, people with alcohol use disorder “drink” meals instead of having nutritious meals. So, they’re not getting the carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals their body needs to function. 

Alcohol can also affect digestion, storage, utilization, and excretion of nutrients. That’s why it’s common for people who use alcohol to be malnourished.

When you stop drinking and start  focusing on your health , you’ll likely start to feel better once your body is properly nourished. 

Improved Immunity

Alcohol makes it harder for your body’s  immune system to make enough white blood cells to fight off germs and bacteria. People who have been drinking a lot of alcohol for a long time tend to get frequent infections like pneumonia and tuberculosis because their immune system has been worn down. 

When you quit drinking, you’ll probably notice that the colds, flu, and other illnesses you always seem to catch happen less often. When you do get sick, you’ll probably feel like you recover more easily when you’re sober.

Lower Cancer Risk

Alcohol is a cancer-causing substance (carcinogen). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the more alcohol you drink, the higher your risk of developing certain types of cancer, including:

• Breast cancer
• Colon and rectal cancer
• Esophageal cancer
• Laryngeal cancer
• Liver cancer
• Oral cancer
• Throat cancer

The American Society of Clinical Oncology adds that limiting or quitting alcohol while you’re having cancer treatment may help you avoid complications. This includes cancer recurrence or the development of secondary primary tumors (SPTs).

Reduced Heart Disease Risk

People who drink heavily are about twice as likely to have a cardiovascular event within 24 hours than people who do not drink at all. If you look out a longer time, people who drink are six times more likely to have a cardiovascular event within a week compared to people who don’t drink.

A 2021 study of 371,463 people found that alcohol use contributes to an increased risk of  cardiovascular disease regardless of how much alcohol is consumed. However, alcohol misuse specifically is associated with an increased risk of heart problems like:

• Atrial fibrillation (“AFib” and irregular heart rhythm)
• Congestive heart failure
• Heart attack

Studies have also connected alcohol use to an increased risk of stroke, especially for people under the age of 45 years old.

Mental Health Benefits of Quitting Alcohol

Quitting alcohol won’t just protect your physical health—it can also improve your mental well-being.

Many people with alcohol use disorder also have other mental health conditions like  depression , anxiety,  bipolar disorder , or schizophrenia.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 9.2 million U.S. adults had both mental health disorders and a  substance use disorder  in 2018, yet nearly 60% did not get treatment.

While scientists don’t totally understand the link, they do know that many people use alcohol and other substances to self-medicate when they have symptoms of mental health conditions—even though doing so can actually make mental health symptoms worse.

Volpicelli says that some of the negative effects of alcohol on mental health can be reversed if you stop drinking. 

For example, research shows that people will see their stress levels, relationships, work performance, and self-confidence get better when they get sober.

"These improvements can be observed not only in people who abstain from alcohol but in people who reduce heavy drinking," Volpicelli says.

Improved Sleep

Alcohol use and poor sleep  are closely linked because alcohol messes with your sleep-wake cycle. For one, drinking alcohol makes falling and staying asleep much harder. Alcohol also relaxes the muscles in your throat, so you’re more likely to have problems like snoring or disorders like sleep apnea. 

Volpicelli notes that the relationship between sleep and drinking is complex. Alcohol gets in the way of quality sleep, but people may also use alcohol when they’re having trouble sleeping. So, it’s like a “chicken or the egg” dilemma—what came first, the sleep problems or the alcohol use? 

One study found that around 70% of participants had sleep problems when they were admitted for alcohol treatment. That number dropped to 50% when the participants went home, and many reported that their sleep quality got better after treatment.  

"Quitting drinking can improve a person’s sleep, but there may still be a significant number of people who continue to have sleep problems even with continuous abstinence," Volpicelli says. 

If you’ve stopped drinking and still can’t sleep, talk to your provider. There are many things that can affect your sleep—physically and mentally. But there are also things you can do to cope and improve your sleep. 

Trouble sleeping is common after you stop drinking, especially early in recovery. But the longer you abstain from alcohol and work on your  sleep hygiene , the more improvements in your sleep you’ll see over time. 

Cognitive Benefits of Quitting Alcohol

Your brain is sort of between your body and mind, so you'll see a lot of benefits of quitting alcohol here as well. You may notice that you have better memory and can think more clearly after you stop drinking alcohol. 

Heavy drinking can actually cause the part of the brain that’s critical to memory and learning ( hippocampus ), to shrink.

Quitting alcohol and abstaining for several months to a year gives your brain a chance to try to recover.

"While for some people these structural changes are not reversible, most people are able to show less shrinkage in one to three months with alcohol abstinence," says Volpicelli.

When you stop drinking, it can also reverse the negative effects alcohol has had on your cognitive functions like  problem-solving ,  memory , and  attention .

Research suggests that you may start seeing cognitive improvements two to four weeks after you stop drinking. As your cognition improves, you may find that you can remember information and concentrate better, and planning and organizing tasks get a lot easier.

How to Get Help Quitting Alcohol

If you want to reduce your alcohol use and stop drinking, there is help and support for you. Behavioral interventions, medications, and social support can all play a role in your alcohol recovery.

Start by talking to your doctor about how much alcohol you’ve been using and your plan to quit. It’s important that you work with your doctor when you’re ready to stop drinking rather than trying to do it alone. 

Chronic, heavy alcohol use is associated with worse  alcohol withdrawal symptoms  when you try to stop, and can even be dangerous. There’s also a severe form of alcohol withdrawal called  delirium tremens (DT) that causes confusion, hallucinations, nausea, rapid heart rate, and seizures. 

DT can be life-threatening, so you should get immediate medical attention if you have these symptoms after you quit drinking.

Other medicines, counseling, and psychosocial support can also help to abstain or reduce unhealthy drinking. The important point is that one must be aware of the bad consequences of drinking and take steps to stop or reduce excessive drinking.

Your doctor can recommend medications that can help with alcohol withdrawal symptoms and cravings during your recovery. Naltrexone is one type of medication that can help reduce alcohol cravings, making it easier for some people to stop drinking.

If you or a loved one are struggling with substance use or addiction, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for information on support and treatment facilities in your area.

For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database .

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Benefits of Lowering Drinking Age

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Words: 998 |

Published: Apr 29, 2022

Words: 998 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited

• Federal Highway Administration. (2018). National Minimum Drinking Age Act.
• Griggs, R. A. (2015). “Should the drinking age be lowered?” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/06/should-the-drinking-age-be-lowered
• Johnson, J. (2019). “The Debate on Lowering the Drinking Age.” Alcohol.org.
• Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Miech, R. A., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2016). Monitoring the Future national survey results on drug use, 1975-2015: Overview, key findings on adolescent drug use. Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan.
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (2022). Underage Drinking. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/underage-drinking
• National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2021). Alcohol.
• Powell, K. (2015). “The Case Against Reducing the Drinking Age.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/06/should-the-drinking-age-be-lowered/the-case-against-reducing-the-drinking-age
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2018). Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. SMA 18-5068, NSDUH Series H-53).
• Wagenaar, A. C., & Toomey, T. L. (2002). Effects of minimum drinking age laws: Review and analyses of the literature from 1960 to 2000. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Supplement(14), 206-225.
• Wechsler, H., & Nelson, T. F. (2010). Will increasing alcohol availability by lowering the minimum legal drinking age decrease drinking and related consequences among youths? American Journal of Public Health, 100(6), 986-992.

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Tips for enjoying a social life without alcohol

For people who are used to drinking at most social occasions, the thought of socialising without alcohol can seem scary.

I know it did for me. I was terrified. What if people think I’m weird? What excuse should I say as a reason for not drinking? What if they only sell alcohol? What will I do with my hands if I’m not drinking? Surely I can’t dance sober?!

But taking some time away from alcohol is almost always a good thing. Even if only temporary, giving your body a break from drinking will have a positive impact on your physical health and mental health, but most importantly, you’ll have the time to re-evaluate your relationship with alcohol.

For me, drinking alcohol used to be mindless. I would order a pint out of habit, routine and familiarity. It was pretty much a subconscious decision. I would never ask myself “ do I want this extra alcoholic drink at this time, and if so , why?” but instead an automatic habit.

I gave up the booze in March 2022 and, for me, I found it easier to say no altogether than to try and moderate (after many years of trying). Here are some of the tips for social socialising I’ve found useful in the last nine months, and I hope you do too!

Start small

I wouldn’t recommend your first sober excursion to be your best friends birthday, your brother’s wedding or your long-awaited trip to Vegas. Start to build up a few sober social experiences doing things where alcohol is typically less prevalent. You could start with brunch if entering a pub feels too scary.

Build up slowly

Once you’ve had one or two small events sober, start to increase the number of people you socialise with, and/or go out later in the day, at times when more other customers are likely to be drinking. I wouldn’t go straight to a nightclub but going to a bar after work on a Wednesday or Thursday can be a good start.

Eventually, even after building up slowly, you’re likely to find yourself in a situation with people who you used to drink with, in situations where you would have been drinking. I’ve found there’s no point lying about being on antibiotics, having to get up at 6am for something important, or any other excuse. Tell people that you’re taking a bit of time of alcohol because it wasn’t making you feel good. It’s also absolutely fine to simply say “I’m not drinking tonight”. You don’t owe people any explanation other than the fact you don’t want to drink.

Plan an exit

At some point in the night, you’re going to want to leave. It could be that you become overwhelmed with an urge to drink or are just not having fun. Or more likely, you’ll have had a great time for a few hours and a ready to get home to bed. Make sure you have a plan to get home, ideally one that doesn’t rely on others who are drinking. Don’t be afraid to duck out when the time is right for you, even if that is a lot earlier than drunk-you.

When going sober I found so many benefits: I had no hangovers, more money, my anxiety had pretty much disappeared overnight, clearer skin, better sleep, less stress, and so much more time to live life. I realised that I’d spent at least one day every weekend (often two days) with a shocking hangover and feeling rubbish all day. When working full-time, our time off is so precious and I’d been wasting at least half of my non-working days feeling utterly rotten.

Treat yourself

Order a mocktail in a nice glass, a nice alcohol-free beer, or a nice mixer and no spirit. The benefit of not drinking is that you’re likely to save money, each individual drink is cheaper and you’re also likely to have fewer drinks. I used to rack up 10+ beers with ease, but I don’t think I’ve ever had more than six alcohol-free beers in one sitting; not because they’re not nice (they are!) but because there’s no chemical reaction in my brain pushing me for another.

I hope these few small tips help you get started and you are able to create your own path of living alcohol-free. I’ve never heard anybody say they regret taking a bit of time away from alcohol. I doubt you will be the first. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy sober socialising and some tasty A-F alternatives!

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The Cause and Effects of Drinking Alcohol, Essay Example

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Alcohol is widely abused across the world and the effects of excessive alcohol intake can be devastating. When not taken in moderation, alcohol can be harmful to the health and social life of the individual, as well as harmful to the individual’s family. These devastating effects can result in alcohol related disease, outcast from social circles and loss of friends and a breakdown in the family.

Excessive alcohol consumption is extremely harmful to the health of a person. Alcohol abuse can lead to heart disease, liver failure and rapid aging. Many deaths are caused by alcoholism. Excessive drinking also increases the decision to take risky actions, including drinking and driving. Drinking and driving causes many deaths every year and is a major problem among those of all ages. Excessive alcohol consumption can also cause memory loss and other psychological issues.

Consuming alcohol at a high rate can also cause social problems. This can include loss of friends and being outcast from your community. This happens because of the bad choices that come with alcoholism and most people do not want to associate with those who drink excessively. It is not just harmful to the drinker, but harmful to their friends and family.

In relation to loss of friends, it is likely that excessive drinking can cause a breakdown in family. Alcoholism is devastating for families. Many times an excessive drinker will not keep up with their responsibilities within the family. This means that they are likely to not finish school or college, lose their jobs and not participate in taking care of their children. This can lead to financial problems and the inability to take care of the themselves of the family.

There are many reasons why excessively consuming alcohol is dangerous and harmful. Drinking in moderation or abstaining from alcohol altogether is important to live a happy and healthy life. Among the effects of drinking alcohol, the most obvious are major health problems, loss of friends and social status and a breakdown in the family unit.

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Teen Drug Use Habits Are Changing, For the Good. With Caveats.

Dr. Nora Volkow, who leads the National Institutes of Drug Abuse, would like the public to know things are getting better. Mostly.

By Matt Richtel

Historically speaking, it’s not a bad time to be the liver of a teenager. Or the lungs.

Regular use of alcohol, tobacco and drugs among high school students has been on a long downward trend.

In 2023, 46 percent of seniors said that they’d had a drink in the year before being interviewed; that is a precipitous drop from 88 percent in 1979, when the behavior peaked, according to the annual Monitoring the Future survey, a closely watched national poll of youth substance use. A similar downward trend was observed among eighth and 10th graders, and for those three age groups when it came to cigarette smoking. In 2023, just 15 percent of seniors said that they had smoked a cigarette in their life, down from a peak of 76 percent in 1977 .

Illicit drug use among teens has remained low and fairly steady for the past three decades, with some notable declines during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2023, 29 percent of high school seniors reported using marijuana in the previous year — down from 37 percent in 2017, and from a peak of 51 percent in 1979.

There are some sobering caveats to the good news. One is that teen overdose deaths have sharply risen, with fentanyl-involved deaths among adolescents doubling from 2019 to 2020 and remaining at that level in the subsequent years.

Dr. Nora Volkow has devoted her career to studying use of drugs and alcohol. She has been the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse since 2003. She sat down with The New York Times to discuss changing patterns and the reasons behind shifting drug-use trends.

What’s the big picture on teens and drug use?

People don’t really realize that among young people, particularly teenagers, the rate of drug use is at the lowest risk that we have seen in decades. And that’s worth saying, too, for legal alcohol and tobacco.

What do you credit for the change?

One major factor is education and prevention campaigns. Certainly, the prevention campaign for cigarette smoking has been one of the most effective we’ve ever seen.

Some of the policies that were implemented also significantly helped, not just making the legal age for alcohol and tobacco 21 years, but enforcing those laws. Then you stop the progression from drugs that are more accessible, like tobacco and alcohol, to the illicit ones. And teenagers don’t get exposed to advertisements of legal drugs like they did in the past. All of these policies and interventions have had a downstream impact on the use of illicit drugs.

Does social media use among teens play a role?

Absolutely. Social media has shifted the opportunity of being in the physical space with other teenagers. That reduces the likelihood that they will take drugs. And this became dramatically evident when they closed schools because of Covid-19. You saw a big jump downward in the prevalence of use of many substances during the pandemic. That might be because teenagers could not be with one another.

The issue that’s interesting is that despite the fact schools are back, the prevalence of substance use has not gone up to the prepandemic period. It has remained stable or continued to go down. It was a big jump downward, a shift, and some drug use trends continue to slowly go down.

Is there any thought that the stimulation that comes from using a digital device may satisfy some of the same neurochemical experiences of drugs, or provide some of the escapism?

Yes, that’s possible. There has been a shift in the types of reinforcers available to teenagers. It’s not just social media, it’s video gaming, for example. Video gaming can be very reinforcing, and you can produce patterns of compulsive use. So, you are shifting one reinforcer, one way of escaping, with another one. That may be another factor.

Is it too simplistic to see the decline in drug use as a good news story?

If you look at it in an objective way, yes, it’s very good news. Why? Because we know that the earlier you are using these drugs, the greater the risk of becoming addicted to them. It lowers the risk these drugs will interfere with your mental health, your general health, your ability to complete an education and your future job opportunities. That is absolutely good news.

But we don’t want to become complacent.

The supply of drugs is more dangerous, leading to an increase in overdose deaths. We’re not exaggerating. I mean, taking one of these drugs can kill you.

What about vaping? It has been falling, but use is still considerably higher than for cigarettes: In 2021, about a quarter of high school seniors said that they had vaped nicotine in the preceding year . Why would teens resist cigarettes and flock to vaping?

Most of the toxicity associated with tobacco has been ascribed to the burning of the leaf. The burning of that tobacco was responsible for cancer and for most of the other adverse effects, even though nicotine is the addictive element.

What we’ve come to understand is that nicotine vaping has harms of its own, but this has not been as well understood as was the case with tobacco. The other aspect that made vaping so appealing to teenagers was that it was associated with all sorts of flavors — candy flavors. It was not until the F.D.A. made those flavors illegal that vaping became less accessible.

My argument would be there’s no reason we should be exposing teenagers to nicotine. Because nicotine is very, very addictive.

Anything else you want to add?

We also have all of this interest in cannabis and psychedelic drugs. And there’s a lot of interest in the idea that psychedelic drugs may have therapeutic benefits. To prevent these new trends in drug use among teens requires different strategies than those we’ve used for alcohol or nicotine.

For example, we can say that if you take drugs like alcohol or nicotine, that can lead to addiction. That’s supported by extensive research. But warning about addiction for drugs like cannabis and psychedelics may not be as effective.

While cannabis can also be addictive, it’s perhaps less so than nicotine or alcohol, and more research is needed in this area, especially on newer, higher-potency products. Psychedelics don’t usually lead to addiction, but they can produce adverse mental experiences that can put you at risk of psychosis.

Matt Richtel is a health and science reporter for The Times, based in Boulder, Colo. More about Matt Richtel

The Side Effects of Drinking Alcohol Cause and Effect Essay

Introduction, causes of drinking addiction, side effects of drinking alcohol, works cited.

Although the health effects of drinking have been a subject of great controversy, a keen examination of the issue reveals that alcohol consumption has more negative effects on health than it can possibly be beneficial to human health.

Drinking of alcohol has been proven to have adverse effects on the health of people with certain health conditions like the IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease), liver problems, and even problems with digestion. That notwithstanding, excessive drinking can lead to development of a myriad of health complications (Tresca 1).

However, the side effects associated with alcohol normally vary from one person to another. These effects can either be short-lived or long-term. Some of these effects are reversible in cases where the person stops taking alcohol. However, continued consumption of alcohol leads to permanent health complications, or death. This paper is an in-depth exploration of the health effects that are associated with drinking alcohol.

Research has shown that people who are not addicted to alcohol may be lucky to escape health complications. On the other hand, alcohol seems to have more devastating effects on people who are addicted to alcohol. It is thus of essence that before a discussion of the side effects of alcohol consumption, a detailed analysis of the causes of addiction to alcohol be conducted.

One of the leading causes of addiction to alcohol is peer pressure. Social drinkers find themselves being addicted to alcohol due to the pressure that is characteristic of this kind of drinking. A social drinker may decide that he/she will never take alcohol again, but he/she may later be influenced by his/her friends to take alcohol.

Other causes of addiction to alcohol include psychological disorders like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is because psychological disorders like the stated PTSD make their victim to live in distress, and thus the victim may result to substance abuse in a bid to escape the depression associated with these disorders. Let us now have a look at the side effects of drinking alcohol.

Drinking little amount of alcohol has been associated with a couple of health benefits like the lowering of the probability of heart diseases. However, the side effects of drinking beat such benefits. Drinking is associated with a number of side effects affecting mental health. Some of these side effects include insomnia, depression, and even amnesia. Drinking alcohol is also associated with a number of short term side effects that depend on how much a person has taken.

These side effects include unconsciousness, vomiting and dizziness. Among the long-term effects of alcohol consumption, which are the most serious side effects of consuming alcohol, is depression, heart diseases, liver disease and diabetes. Alcohol addiction is also associated with increased risk of developing cancer in a variety of tissues in the body. Some of the tissues that are prone to cancerous growth after consumption of large amounts of alcohol include the throat, the liver, the esophagus, the mouth etcetera.

Alcohol abuse is also associated with a number of neurological effects on its victim. It normally leads to extreme numbness, dementia, twitching of muscles, and other neurological disorders. The neurological disorders are caused by the fact that alcohol interferes with the nervous system, and thus its continued intake may ultimately lead to the aforementioned disorders of the nervous system (Lietz 1). These are very serious conditions that every person who consumes alcohol should be aware of.

Alcohol is also known to have adverse effects on the intestinal lining of the alimentary canal. When a person drinks too much alcohol, the latter irritates the lining of the gastro-intestinal tract. This is the cause of the aforementioned vomiting, and other effects like nausea and even diarrhea.

Worse still, the lining of the gastro-intestinal layer may be irritated to an extent that the victim starts to bleed. The information on this paragraph is particularly useful for people suffering from IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease). This is because people suffering from this disease experience the worst relative irritation of the GI tract by alcohol (Lietz 1). The latter even worsens the condition.

The aforementioned effect of alcohol consumption on the liver is exhibited by liver diseases like liver cirrhosis. When a person consumes alcohol excessively, he/she may develop alcoholic hepatitis. This is the condition that causes liver cirrhosis after an extended period of consuming alcohol. Cirrhosis is characterized by scarring of the liver due to constant healing, which eventually destroys the tissues of the liver.

Cirrhosis, caused by drinking of alcohol, has claimed a myriad of lives since time immemorial. Drinking too much alcohol is also associated with worsening of liver diseases that may exist before the victim starts abusing alcohol. This is caused by the fact that the liver is the organ responsible for removing toxic materials from the body, and also the fact that when a person is intoxicated with alcohol, the liver concentrates on removing alcohol from the body.

This leads to a build-up of undesirable materials like fatty acids in the liver, causing existing diseases to worsen. The liver can also get damaged by alcohol because alcohol can potentially alter or damage the cells of the liver. As stated above, a number of the medications prescribed for GI (Gastro-Intestinal) problems may react badly with alcohol (Marsh 1). This may make the liver unable to function properly in its role of removing toxins from the body.

Women who consume alcohol during their pregnancy make their babies develop a condition known as fetal alcohol syndrome, which is a serious combination of physical and mental disorders. Some of the disorders that such babies develop include birth defects, heart problems, eye defects, small heads, and the like (Lietz 1). These disorders make the child live a stressful life.

Making the personal choice to drink should be based on a clear understanding of the side effects of drinking. It is thus important for any person wishing to start drinking to evaluate the effects of drinking on the stomach, the liver and other body organs, and weigh these effects against the possible benefits that he/she may derive from drinking. However, many people get addicted to drinking even without knowing that they are becoming addicts.

What starts as social drinking or even occasional drinking may result to very serious repercussions like chronic conditions, or even death. Although there has been substantial controversy over this issue, with some people arguing that drinking has some health benefits, research has proven that in most cases, alcohol is harmful to human health. This is especially the case with people who have certain conditions like liver disease, or people who are taking medication that can negatively react with alcohol.

Lietz, Jessica. “Side effects of drinking alcohol”. 1999. Web.

Marsh, Jennifer. “Alcohol addiction and its side effects”. 2009. Web.

Tresca, Amber. “ Effects of drinking alcohol on IBD ”. 2009. Web.

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