03/30/2026
Some Americans are trading the blurry haze of intoxication for the crystal clarity of sobriety. While it may be a blessing for their minds and guts, they may also be trading an ancient drug of socialization for the novel intoxicants of isolation, Derek Thompson wrote in 2025: https://theatln.tc/unC9Hg21
This month, the U.S. surgeon general published a new recommendation that all alcohol come with a warning label indicating it increases the risk of cancer. But for centuries, the data and guidance surrounding the health benefits and risks of moderate drinking have been unclear. In the 1990s, for example, it was widely accepted that moderate imbibing of red wine could help lower rates of cardiovascular disease. Many scientists today believe that some previous conclusions about the health effects of drinking were based on bad research and confounded variables. For example, “a study can find a relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and breast-cancer detection, but moderate consumption is correlated with income, as is access to mammograms,” Thompson writes.
“I’m willing to believe, even in the absence of slam-dunk evidence, that alcohol increases the risk of developing certain types of cancer for certain people. But as the surgeon general’s report itself points out, it’s important to distinguish between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ risk,” Thompson writes. “Owning a swimming pool dramatically increases the relative risk that somebody in the house will drown, but the absolute risk of drowning in your backyard swimming pool is blessedly low.”
“Life isn’t—or, at least, shouldn’t be—about avoiding every activity with a whisker of risk. Cookies are not good for your health, either … but only the grouchiest doctors will instruct their healthy patients to foreswear Oreos,” Thompson continues. “To reduce our existence to a mere game of minutes gained and lost is to squeeze the life out of life … At best, moderate alcohol consumption is enmeshed in activities that we share with other people: cooking, dinners, parties, celebrations, rituals, get-togethers—life! It is pleasure, and it is people. It is a social mortar for our age of social isolation.”
Read more: https://theatln.tc/unC9Hg21
