CHARBONNEAU – Dry January is just the start

AFTER OVERINDULGING during the holiday season, many Canadians will be abstaining from alcohol completely in January.

That’s a good idea but it’s just the start. For me, I’m going to reduce consumption all year round.

Dry January works for some in reducing harmful drinking. In one study, the University of Sussex found that 72 per cent of participants stopped drinking over recommended limits for six months after completing a month alcohol free.

The tricky part in setting limits is to know how much alcohol is harmful.

We Canadians have been kidding ourselves for years. First by thinking that daily alcohol consumption is actually good for you. This myth goes back to the 1980s, when researchers identified the “French paradox,” the notion that low rates of cardiovascular disease among men in France was associated with daily wine consumption.

Although the research was later found to be flawed, the belief that moderate drinking improved health became widely accepted. Much of the research was funded by the alcohol industry.

A red flag should go up when research is funded by the industry selling the product. Would I smoke cigarettes if the tobacco industry was funding studies showing that, oh no, smoking isn’t bad for you? Even so, I wanted to believe that moderate alcohol consumption was not harmful.

The belief that alcohol consumption is beneficial, even therapeutic, is pervasive. Drunks unburden themselves as a form of psychoanalysis. Sad people become happy. Wine on a terrace of Paris conjures up an image of a bon vivant.

“It’s often been thought that wine is something special, that alcohol in wine somehow has magic properties,” says Tim Stockwell, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria.

“It was just a publicity coup for the wine industry three decades ago. The role of alcohol in wine as protective is now disputed, and the evidence doesn’t hold up.”

“This is controversial because people like to drink,” adds Stockwell. “It’s our favourite recreational drug. We use it for pleasure and relaxation, and the last thing we want to hear is that it causes any harm. … It’s comforting to think that drinking is good for our health, but unfortunately it’s based on poor science.”

I was under the influence of bad science and joviality in this column a year ago. In my article titled “The effects on health of moderate alcohol consumption are greatly exaggerated,” I quoted a study that said: “Research in the last decade is more nuanced with the most recent and highest quality systematic reviews showing that drinking a little alcohol neither decreases nor increases the risk of heart disease.”

I now realise this was wishful thinking. I thought seven drinks a week were OK. A standard drink in Canada equals a 12 oz. bottle of five per cent beer, 1.5 oz. of 40 per cent hard liquor, or a 5 oz. glass of 12 per cent wine.

I was wrong.

According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, I should consume no more than two standard drinks a week. Things get worse as consumption goes up. Three to six drinks per week increases moderate risk of negative health outcomes. Six or more puts a person at a high risk.

So, my new guide for moderate drinking will be four a week. Some days I will not drink at all. Not exactly a dry January; call it a damp year.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.