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Bad news for booze zealots

Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers, Study Finds
One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.
Actually this has been known for years but it is good to see it reinforced.

God save us all from zealots and politicians that go along with them.

Comments

  1. How interesting. It's good to see that moderate use of the red vino is good for health.

    In my own personal study, I noticed that when I gave up red wine for a while (it was one of my Lent sacrifices a couple of years back), and I drank fizzy drinks instead, my health degraded quite a bit.

    The anti-wine people should really be targeting coke and lemonade.

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  2. "The anti-wine people should really be targeting coke and lemonade.

    The anti-wine people should really be minding their own damn business.

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  3. Alcoholics make terrible spouses and parents. My father drank himself to death after alienating anyone who cared about him. It wasn't a nice way to go.

    Sometimes life isn't about quantity but about quality. Alcoholics don't have quality of life I assure you.

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  4. Alcoholics don't have quality of life I assure you

    I know muerk - but you can't cure alcoholism by restricting non-alcoholics access to alcohol.

    And unless you ban it outright alcoholics will continue to drink and other things will suffer in order to maintain their addiction.

    Even banning it outright wouldn't work - it was tried in the US and failed disastrously.

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  5. You can minimise harm from over-consumption of alcohol by a variety of factors, including sensible legislation. I mean really what we want to stop is drunkeness. It's about alcohol being used as a recreational drug, not having a glass of wine with dinner or a cold beer after mowing the lawns on a hot summer day.

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