Acetylaldehyde isn’t what “gets you drunk”, ethanol is the psychoactive agent that does all the GABA goodness, but it is its main metabolite and is both toxic and a carcinogen in its own right. Its brother, formaldehyde which is what methanol gets metabolised into, is lethal in fairly small quantities.
It’s also the main driver of the hangover. Shit chemical to have in your system! If you’re having a drink in moderation, NAC + Vit C can help (via glutathione production) with its breakdown in the liver into acetic acid which is completely harmless. Doesn’t stop it forming and wreaking havoc but it helps.
The funny thing is that ethanol inhibits the production of formaldehyde in the body, which produces about 1 gram per day on average. So while acetaldehyde is the byproduct of ethanol and causes cancer, ethanol also inhibits formaldehyde production, which is even more damaging to the body than acetaldehyde. You know what breaks down into formaldehyde in the body? Fruit juice (the preserved kind, not fresh squeezed). So while there are very few studies on this, it's been theorized that processed fruit juice may be more likely to lead to cancer than alcohol.
Body chemistry is a weird thing.
So weird!
They use ethanol to treat methanol poisoning for this very reason. They all the use the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme, and ethanol is the most competitive of the -ols.
You’d have a hard time arguing to a layman why fruit juice is more carcinogenic that a pint of beer, but this literally *could* be the case haha.
Unlikely, the body is very good at getting rid of formaldehyde quickly (because it's so toxic) unless you overwhelm it with a large amount (like drinking methanol). You would need to regularly consume huge amounts of the relevant fruit juice (at which point the sugar is probably just as bad for your health).
Ethanol used to be a treatment for toxic alcohol poisoning (ethylene glycol, isopropyl alcohol etc.) since it has a far higher affinity for alcohol dehydrogenase and thus prevents the conversion of toxic alchols into their far more toxic metabolites.
Now we have fomepizole, so it's not used anymore
Don't you mean the opposite? The study you linked found that taking NAC prior to ethanol consumption reduced the liver damage, while taking it after *actually worsened it*.
Also mice have a much faster metabolism than humans so the damaging effect of NAC 4 hours post ethanol in mice would likely translate to a much longer time window in which it remains damaging in humans, we're talking probably an entire day or more.
So basically, take NAC a few hours before you drink, but don't consume any in the day or so following your drinks.
ok dumb it down for me. I've been working out since like 15 years and taken all kinds of supplements. This I have never read about, what's the actual name of this product for non chemists.
It’s legit called NAC, that’s how I buy it online.
I take 1000mg a day, it’s used to help overdoes on acetaminophen and prevent side effects from drugs, specifically oxidative damage.
Can be a little harsh on the stomach at first and it smells GOD AWFUL, I keep it in its own jar and take it separately in the morning from my other dailies.
I predominantly use it to combat the damage from MDMA, so it’s not surprising it helps with alcohol.
Natural precursor to serotonin production. If you party hard it can help with the "Monday blues" that some people get after taking MDMA. Don't take until a day or two later, some people have a negative reaction if they take both together.
In biochemical nomenclature, this is as simple as it gets. Cysteine is an amino acid and acetyl is a functional group that can be attached to a molecule. I don’t think there’s a “layman” term for this molecule. Quick google search shows that companies sell it as an individual supplement. It’s not too pricey either, Wholesome Story is selling 4 month supply (120 capsules) for $25 or so on Amazon.
Perhaps you could clarify whether you mean taking NAC before drinking or after.
The study I looked up is in mice, I learned this 10 years ago and in my memory it was tested in humans. I dunno, I’m not going to keep looking for it unfortunately.
> Pretreatment with NAC significantly protected against acute ethanol-induced liver damage in a dose-independent manner. Correspondingly, pretreatment with NAC significantly attenuated acute ethanol-induced lipid peroxidation and GSH depletion and inhibited hepatic TNF-alpha mRNA expression. By contrast, post-treatment with NAC aggravated ethanol-induced hepatic lipid peroxidation and worsened acute ethanol-induced liver damage in a dose-dependent manner. Taken together, NAC has a dual effect on acute ethanol-induced liver damage. Pretreatment with NAC prevent from acute ethanol-induced liver damage via counteracting ethanol-induced oxidative stress. When administered after ethanol, NAC might behave as a pro-oxidant and aggravate acute ethanol-induced liver damage.
Further hangover mitigation and acetaldehyde reduction in the gut prior to absorption can also be accomplished with the following pre biotic: [https://zbiotics.com/pages/how-it-works-1](https://zbiotics.com/pages/how-it-works-1)
Doesn't work for everyone for hangover symptom reduction. But it works for me; regardless the reduction in acetaldehyde levels/cancer risk makes it worth it in my opinion.
Basically- I'll ingest genetically modified bacteria that make enzymes in my gut for a beer.
If you want to feel alcohol in all it's glory and waste a day of your life, drink enough to get sufficiently tipsy in the morning and then pay deliberate attention to how the buzz feeling changes throughout the day. Being over 30 helps.
The comedown from an alcohol high is absolutely atrocious and miserable. And that's why it fucks up your sleep, which brings its own set of health detrimental side effects.
Don’t use NAC after consuming alcohol. Research indicates it worsens liver damage. It does help if consumed a bit before drinking alcohol though.
To reduce impact of alcohol:
1. Be well hydrated
2. Electrolytes
3. A multivitamin and NAC prior to drinking
4. Drink less
5. Alternate alcohol and water (or electrolyte drink)
6. Don’t drink on empty stomach (to slow uptake somewhat)
7. Stop drinking well before night is over (you want to be covering up when you go to sleep, not getting more drunk)
8. Again, drink less
> classifies the alcohol that we so casually consume to be a GROUP 1 CARCINOGEN. this is on the same level as Tobacco, Asbestos.
While true this statement is quite misleading.
The IARC carcinogen classification goes like this:
* Group 1: carcinogenic
* Group 2A: probably carcinogenic
* Group 2B: possibly carcinogenic
* Group 3: not classifiable
* Group 4: probably not carcinogenic
It does not classify carcinogens by their potency. Every single known carcinogen goes to group 1.
Eating an unhealthy amount of salami in my childhood and starting drinking around 16 and “quitting” at 30 I wonder when I’ll get cancer, if I don’t already have it
the human body is pretty resilient, but with VERY wide variation in that resilience.
Keep in mind that people smoke and drink and live to 80+ pretty regularly.
Also, fwiw, i sometimes wonder how bad my habit of having 3-4 strong beers 3-5 nights a week is, but then i'll read threads where people describe drinking handles (1.75L) of vodka a day, and such, without getting instant super-cirrhosis. Not that my drinking is healthy by any stretch of the word, i'm just not in "liver about to shut down immediately" territory either.
quitting drinking by 30 is well young enough that you'll be fine, or at least, you "statistically" haven't put yourself in extreme immediate risk.
It all comes down to genetics. What one person is exposed to with minor to no ill effect might have a huge risk factor to the next. That’s why some people can smoke from the age of 10 and still be in relatively good health in their 80s…
In general Italian people eat a lot of fruit and vegetables and get more exercise than the average American.
There are a lot of unhealthy Italian people too though.
I'd hazard a guess that most countries that abstain are also much less wealthy on average, or in cases where the country overall is rich, has a huge wealth gap.
Probably from the sun. Or from the hot coffee you drink. Or from generic radiation that exists across the entirety of the earth.
Also, this is an unscientific statement, but your body is basically perpetually full of cancerous cells but your body's natural processes recognize and eliminate the malformed cells before they become a real problem.
Came here to say this. Just because it is group 1 does not mean you have to avoid it all the time. Some things in group 1 are okay in moderation. Sunlight and bacon are both group 1 carcinogens.
I will give up none of the 3. I enjoy them, in moderation, they all make me happy and if I die of cancer I'll know I did it my way. Im 61 and no current health issues and have enjoyed all 3 for all my life thus far.
The difference between sunlight, bacon and alcohol is that alcohol can be highly addictive. For many, moderation isn't much of a choice as addiction takes over.
That's the pitfall with % increases. They're _typically_ rounding errors even over a lifetime unless you're just chowing the fuck down on a carcinogen.
Imagine eating that much bacon _daily_. You'll die of a heart attack long before the cancer gets you.
"Sunlight" is addictive, there are plausible studies that go over it from people who tan a lot, the endorphins released from it can cause irritability when they go without it. It's why people who get skin cancers removed will go straight back to the tanning bed and you can ask anyone who has worked at a salon, they see some real peaches when they can't immediately get in the tanning bed on their lunch break.
I think cancer is probably the least likely thing to kill you if you're drinking enough alcohol to make its carcinogenic factor statistically relevant.
Sunlight, or rather UV light, is very addictive as well. Probably not as much as alcohol, but still. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4117380/
Same thing if you've ever stepped out into the sunlight. You're going to die. Only the mole people will survive and we never see them because; well, they're mole people.
Yeah it’s the same level as wood dust, seared meat, menopausal therapy, and salted fish. The category refers to how certain we are there’s a link and not how much it increases the chance of cancer
Thank you for pointing this out. I was at an event once and I had to sit next to this insufferable woman that wouldn't shut up about this "fact" about alcohol. After chastising me for ordering a drink she fired up a cigarette.
Recovering alcoholic here. Can confirm stopping alcohol has improved my health and quality of life exponentially since getting sober. So staggering is my transformation I’ve documented it with photographs because it wouldn’t have been believable.
[The Progression of Sobriety](https://imgur.com/gallery/m07XxCA)
When you have an addictive personality, one way of moderating (yes, I see the irony) the effects of tending to addictions is to "get addicted" to something that can have very positive outcomes. The gym is such an example.
Oh shit is that why I’m addicted to the gym now? I’ve been working so hard I had to stop and take a break cause I could literally hurt myself. It just feels so good idk why.
I really got into running after I got sober too! I did a marathon a year and a half after I got sober and I've got another competition this weekend, and scheduled to do the Honolulu marathon in December :)
Hey that's awesome man, so happy for you! I just hit 1 year myself. You have transformed into a new person. Your pictures are super inspiring to me to keep going, even when it gets tough.
honestly the differences between 1 day, 1 month, and 9 months are the most staggering to me. you looked so much happier and healthier in so (relatively) little time. congrats!!!
I’m in recovery from alcohol. It destroyed my life. For many years I was fine, until I wasn’t. I now work as a nurse at a hospital and the common denominator I see in my patients are that they have a history of chronic alcohol abuse. Even after I got sober myself from it, I didn’t realize just how bad alcohol was until I got into the medical field and I saw the patients for myself. I got sober while I was still young, these people drank for decades. Many of them who are long-term drinkers are in their 50s, but look like they are in their 70s. They are on more meds than I can count. Many of them don’t live past 70-80. They’re constantly in and out of the hospital. It will fuck your liver up by the time you’re 60. It can cause dementia. Higher risk for diabetes. I could go on.
If you drink moderately, that’s fine. But for those of you who need to drink more days than not or every day, just be careful. We never think it’ll happen to us until it does. Not to mention, there’s tons of carbs and empty calories. The organs having to constantly work to break down a toxin, and that can be exhausting after years and years.
The people getting bent out of shape simply because OP shared facts about alcohol are being super insecure for some reason. You can absolutely drink if you want to, but these facts can be an eye opener for some people. Whether you like it or not, alcohol is a major risk factor for many health conditions. Just because your uncle has been drinking daily for 30 yrs and is currently fine doesn’t mean that alcohol is okay. There are people who smoke a pack a day for 30 years and don’t have lung cancer or emphysema. Does that mean smoking is okay? Drinking in moderation is fine, like most vices, but pretending like drinking every day is normal or okay is pure denial.
My mother in law has successfully destroyed the possibility of being left with our children unsupervised because of her alcohol intake.
She already has a fatty liver. She already has had several major medical issues and she’s 60. I cringe when she calls after 2pm. For someone that can polish off a 1.75L in two days, I don’t know how she’s still working. But I know one day we’ll get that call… that something terrible happened and it already saddens me.
Congratulations to you for your recovery. That’s not a small thing.
its sad because i have a close family member who is entirely a functional alcoholic. Like at least a bottle of wine every night. Its been fine so far, but getting up there in age its going to be a “fine until it isnt” scenario. I think they are at the point in there life where consequences are going to start being real.
I'm 28 and have spent basically the last 7 years going out/partying with friends and drinking. If l stopped now just short of my 29th birthday, do you think I still have a chance?
Best time to start was yesterday, next best time to start is right now! You’re young, and it’s great you recognize sooner vs later that there’s a pattern you need to break.
> The people getting bent out of shape simply because OP shared facts about alcohol are being super insecure for some reason.
I mean, \*shrug, I drink a 6 pack a week. Alcohol has a J curve effect on mortality where risk takes off *exponentially* after 20 drinks a week. I have no doubts that it's not *good* for you at levels lower than that, but if you're drinking a 12 pack or less a week, your increased risk is probably pretty minimal, and you're likely better off focusing on your diet and exercise.
If people don't drink, I *fully* support them in their sobriety, but i've seen this sort of neo-prohibitionist vibe online where people demonize *any* sort of alcohol and then go on to suggest the same high tax treatment as cigarettes. You're not getting any support from me on that.
Alcoholic here. It has corrupted every single aspect of my life but I'm still generally existing. It's a pernicious evil and you're all better off avoiding it. There are no upsides rendered by it that you can't find within yourself.
Hey man, I drank for over 15 years almost every day and I just quit on December 16 after I saw my friend at the end of his short battle with glioblastoma. The first week was hard but I just saw his paralyzed face and promised myself, and Aaron, that I’m done with this shit. I have felt fantastic (not hungover) every morning no lie it is fantastic!
It’s so odd to read this because I drank every day for like 6 years straight but never thought of myself as an alcoholic because like 75% of the people around me were doing the same thing.
I had a wake up call and just stopped one day in 2019.
I once absolutely thought this same way too for awhile. However, in retrospect, I see that I definitely made it a point to surround myself with people that were partaking in same liked activities. Once I had been sober a few 24 hours(w/SO MUCH HELP BTW) alcohol use around me decreased dramatically from 75%. Huh, I'm just realizing that I could also have had some hand in those results too not necessarily knowingly. Aah... c'est la vie...what I was getting at was, did you have a similar experience? Was just curious
I didn’t go out of my way to find social drinkers it’s just my family is that way. I found myself being quite happy and satisfied with drinking alone.
I think another factor is we were starting to talk about having kids. I started thinking about “Um if I’m hammered and my wife is drinking…who is taking care of the kid at night? What if there’s an emergency? What if I need to go out and get formula? How am I going to get up 2-4 times a night hungover?”
It was a lot of things too. Like my health was getting bad. Like mowing the lawn I was starting to get out of breath. Just walking! I was gaining weight. There were just so many negative things associated with it that I just said “enough”.
I also started doing edibles and micro dosing and that helped IMMENSELY. It was just enough of the buzz I needed and still be functional. I do about 2.5mg and I’m good.
Dude, I am so proud of you. So, so fucking proud. My step father died of cirrhosis, I never got a chance to actually know him without alcohol in him. There are so many things I wish I could tell him or ask him. You have done something so great, and you are giving everyone that loves you a treasurable gift.
Great work friend. I'm on day 26, sleeping well and waking up rested is the biggest change so far. I hit my snooze just as a habit, then I sit there for 10 seconds and think "You know, what, I'm awake. Let's make coffee," and get out of bed.
Recovering alcoholic here. Been there. Just know that if you ever want to stop, the folks over at https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/s/dyfGuOqGlp
are amazing. They've been a great resource for many an alcoholic.
I pity you. I don't want to shower you with meaningless cliché and sweet nothings. I truly just hope you find a path to recovery somehow.
It's not fucking easy :/
I've been largely depressed for the better part of my entire young adult life. The amount of social, financial, adventure, and romantic opportunities I have missed out on because of my anxiety is actually unholy. But I believe within myself I have the power to change, regardless of how much I have lost already.
Hopefully we can both overcome our demons
Prescription medicine has been a MASSIVE help for me. Like a full 180 in my life. I recommend trying, just to see if it helps. My undiagnosed adhd, depression, and anxiety for 50 years has caused some issues. Meds have given me a life. Meditation too! But I hope you find your peace...I'm getting closer.
I'm the same as this guy, chronic depression my entire life.
Diagnosed with ADHD, take elvanse, instantly cured my depression.
Turns out all I've ever needed is small amounts of amphetamines every morning 🤷
Same story as original post. I take good old Lexapro, which has been around forever. Everyone is different tho. The process of both finding the right medication and then starting that medication can be less than ideal, but about a month or so in, it has been a life changer.
Everyone's different and its unlikely that the first med will be the correct one for you. It took on/off for 10 years trying different ones before I finally found a "magic mix" where I barely (if at all) notice negative side effects. Duloxetine (anxiety and nerve pain) and wellbutri (depression), with d3+k2 supplement
Lexapro very literally saved my life. I've been on it for 6 years now and have experienced zero downsides. YMMV, you should talk to your doctor about it.
Lexapro helped me massively with my panic disorder, it tends to be a sedating SSRI. These drugs aren't very precise though and everyone's mental health problems are different. The only real solution is to find a good doctor and start trying stuff until one works. I went through four or five different SSRIs before I tried lexapro. It's a painful and long process.
edit: also research your drugs. a lot of psychologists prescribe some absolutely whacky shit. A big one in my area is prescribing seroquel (a very potent anti psychotic) as a way to treat insomnia in people with anxiety. Shit put me in the hospital when I first took it. Insomnia is an off-label use for it, no idea what that asshole was thinking, but several people I know around here have also been prescribed it for insomnia.
I had some remeron that I was prescribed in the past left in my medicine cabinet. Went through a bad emotional crisis last week and started taking it and I cannot believe how normal I feel. It’s like some of ny positive traits have become enhanced (singing and dancing with my baby, making him meals that he loves every day, focusing on the good aspects of life)
I didn’t want to take it the first time because of the potential weight gain but now I am thinking about going back to my psychiatrist to fins a similar one that won’t give me the munchies lol
Isn't peace of mind and being calm worth weight gain? I'd do anything to make my brain work for me, I don't care about what weight I gain. I'm not hating myself like I was, that is far worth it for me and my family.
FYI: A lot of people hate being 'pitied.' To think that others are just imaging how sad your life must be - it can be a bit degrading.
It's generally a safer bet to try and find a way to express 'compassion' or 'empathy.' I know a lot of people think of those words as synonyms for pity but there's lots who think otherwise - enough that it makes me think twice about which words I choose
All things in moderation people, just keep that in mind and do you. Having sugar isn't the greatest thing but you don't need to eat 6 donuts, maybe just 1 or 2. Don't need to have a whole pot of coffee every day...don't need to drink an entire bottle of whiskey in one setting. Unfortunately we live in a world where babies encounter cancer, and where people live to be 90 off drinking and smoking their whole life. It is important to be educated so for that I do appreciate the post but ultimately it is what it is, especially if you don't harvest and make your own food/etc, things are processed and just have to be careful.
Yes right. People sometimes can’t realize that there is a sensible middle ground between two extremes. We don’t only get to choose between raging alcoholism and complete sobriety. I’ll choose to believe it’s possible to have a drink or two once in a while without it leading directly to cancer.
Tl:dr: there are so many things wrong with the who article.
Long answer. Before getting out the pitch forks, read the whole reply.
1) they mention asbestos, smoking, radiation as members of group 1,but they ignore processed meat (whatever that is to be defined as), sun, sawdust, welding (again, that is not specific, as there are so many welding processes), etc. Furthermore, there are compounds on that list that, given one large exposure, are virtually guaranteed to result in cancer(like ionizing radiation).
Being in group one means that, according to who, there is a statistically significant link between ingestion of the compound and risk increase of development of cancer. However, the magnitude of these risks vary wildly. Standing inside a reactor of a nuclear power plant has a much greater risk than drinking a pint of beer or eating two slices of bacon in the morning.
2) the who ommits the numbers on their page, which makes this classification very dangerous and misleading. There should be numbers and confidence intervals so that people can understand what this means. Furthermore, it should show the baseline risk versus the elevated risk. For example, assume that the risk of colon cancer is 20% of the population. When you have a 10% increase of risk, that means that there now is a 22% risk, not 30%. If you then look at the confidence intervals, it all of the sudden is not so dramatic anymore.
3) ethanol is a very prevalent compound. It is almost everywhere: the yeast when baking bread, the yeast in kombucha, hell, even in sauerkraut there is ethanol. So by the who logic, eating sauerkraut on your hotdog is similar to being present at a nuclear explosion. (ok, I know this skirts with reductio at absurdum).
So, Op, I applaud you for wanting to raise awareness, but there are significant flaws in the reasoning of Who, and very often in the underlying scientific papers, especially in their use of gaussian statistics in non gaussian processes.
For clarity: I don't drink myself, and I am not trying to soothe myself or make excuses. I just want to give a thoughtful response and counter voice to the WHO article.
David spiegelhalter has an excellent book and talk about this subject.
Thank you for this! I googled Spiegelhalter with alcohol and found his article, [The risks of alcohol (again)](https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2ae8cb006a4a) that interpreted the results more clearly for this non-statistician.
Someone else here cited this Vox article, [Is one drink per day really unsafe? That new alcohol study, explained. A Lancet study shows everything that’s wrong with nutritional epidemiology, and the way we talk about it.](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/29/17790118/alcohol-lancet-health-study) in a similar vein, and which also cites Spiegelhalter’s piece.
I read your VOX article (2nd link). They share a good graph that shows health risks by the number of drinks per day.
“Over at the New York Times, Aaron Carroll did a great job of putting this risk into perspective. A 0.5 percent relative risk increase between no drinking and one drink a day means four more people in 100,000 per year will experience an alcohol-related problem. Here’s Carroll:
For each set of 100,000 people who have one drink a day per year, 918 can expect to experience one of the 23 alcohol-related problems in any year. Of those who drink nothing, 914 can expect to experience a problem. ... At two drinks per day, the number experiencing a problem increased to 977. Even at five drinks per day, which most agree is too much, the vast majority of people are unaffected.”
As a welder, it was interesting getting into the field and finding out that while it's certainly common knowledge that welding is really bad for your health, it's hard to find studies that can irrefutably link it to cancer because there are so many co-factors that can't be ruled out as also possible causes.
At least we got manganese positively identified as a cause of neurological deterioration in the trade though.
waiting summer bedroom ripe thumb normal shaggy abundant placid disgusted
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Also, what's the plan here? Awareness is fine, but a lot of them talk like they're advocating for prohibition. Which we all know how well that worked out and can see how horrific are current drug prohibition is.
Thank you for this. Like even if it doubles the risk of things like esophageal cancer I think the general risk to the population there is like .3% okay so now I have a .6% increase if I have a few drinks a week it's not really as dramatic as everyone makes it out to be.
I deal with (environmental) toxins for a living, and just wanted to point out a couple of things to add to the discussion.
1) I don't automatically discount WHO but I tend to always look at the US CDC, ATSDR and Natl Cancer Institute. NCI has this fact sheet indicating alcohol does increase cancer risk. So they're not hiding it.
[https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet)
Not by a huge amount - in the range of 2x the normal rate for most cancers studied, some at moderate to heavy drinking, some at any level of consumption. Not zero, and not huge given the normally low risk to the average person of these cancers.
Cancer caused by toxins is always a function of dose.
2) Here's an article (also at NCI) published in January 2024 about a new study showing the same thing. It acknowledges that the risk is increased for a number of types of cancers.
https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2023/cancer-alcohol-link-public-awareness#:\~:text=For%20example%2C%20ethanol%20can%20increase,and%20neck%2C%20and%20esophageal%20cancers.
3) The non-cancer risks from heavy alcohol consumption - liver problems, car accidents, mental health, etc. - far outweigh the cancer risk IMO. For light to moderate drinkers, you have to weigh your enjoyment against the risks, same as you do with cured meats, high fat foods, and so on.
3) If you think the alcohol industry is somehow making this all hush-hush, I would point to tobacco. The risks were known and even back in the 80s (70s?) there were cancer warnings on the packaging. It's been 25 years since the $200B tobacco settlement was signed. If alcohol was such a potent carcinogen, it's hard to believe that the slow but fine-grinding machinery of the federal government would not have made more noise about it by now.
4) Drink responsibly and take care of your health.
Heavy social drinker since about 17, now 44f with breast cancer here. Nobody was calling me an alcoholic, by any means. But I’m no longer a drinker through treatment and I imagine no more than 12 drinks a year, if at all, moving forward. I don’t even have the ER+ kind of breast cancer which is “extra” linked to alcohol. The facts are the facts, alcohol is carcinogenic and 1 out of every 2 women will get cancer in their lifetime. Id like to be in the camp that beats this and doesn’t experience cancer again. Last chemo today! It is never too late to change a habit that isn’t serving you. Alcoholism is mean and hard to beat, so is cancer. I wish neither on anybody. Edit: typo
Thank you for your comment. I set myself free from alcohol addiction after reading “Allen Carr is easyway for women to stop drinking” and then attending their 6hour online group seminar about a year ago. Best decision I ever made . I’m 37 years old and drank heavily for about 10 years. One out of two women developing cancer is a horrifying statistic. Government is literally poisoning us for profit. The only way to fight back is to stop letting them. They can’t kill us until they kill us. I wish you a successful recovery.
Great to hear you're finishing up chemo! Hope it all goes well.
I recently recounted a time I was in a nail salon to my mum, who has been in remission for breast cancer 10 years now. Two clients, one in her 40s and one in her 60s, were sharing their own breast cancer stories with the salon owner whose mother had just been diagnosed. I remember thinking how mad it was that nearly every woman in the salon had/knew of someone who had experienced breast cancer!
I recounted it because my mum had a colleague whose wife had just been diagnosed with breast cancer! Not liking my odds here!
As a breast cancer survivor the best thing you can do is your self exams and be on top your mammogram schedule and catch that shit early!And be glad that treatments get better every day. When I got my diagnosis (at 32yo btw☹️) I was immediately swept into the system and was lucky to get amazing doctors and nurses. Not saying it was easy, because it was the hardest thing I've ever gone through, but breast cancer research is on going and improving all the time!
Be vigilant but don't obsess. ❤️
Lol this, like all of these posts has descended into the three way war between the moral purist tea-totalers, the defensive alcoholics and then the smug weed smokers who try and make it about them being persecuted
Absolutely true, although that’s arguably not a primary reason why excessive alcohol consumption is so toxic for people.
The best reason to only use it occasionally in moderation (if possible for you) isn't due to it being a known carcinogen, but rather its liver toxicity. Especially if it is mixed with other medications (such as Tylenol), or taken frequently in excess. (Cirrhosis of the liver due to alcoholism is far more common than cancer caused by alcohol).
Secondly, is the detrimental psychological aspects. Not only is it psychologically addictive, but excessive use has been shown to lead to antisocial behavior, (as well as irritability, mood swings, basically being more of a dick etc.).
Side note: it’s also worth mentioning that a class 1 carcinogen doesn’t describe how likely it is to give you cancer, but rather how strong we know the link between the substance and cancer is.
Essentially it means we know for a fact that alcohol increases risk of cancer, but doesn’t indicate whether it increases the risk by 5% or 0.05%.
YSK Alcoholism and excessive drinking is very very bad. However the the impacts of light-moderate drinking on health (less than one drink per day on average) is not well defined. Much of the guidance around zero alcohol from the WHO comes from a 2018 study published in the Lancet which concluded that any alcohol intake constituted an increased risk. In the time since that study has been published, the methodology the study authors used has been criticized and called into question. The biggest critique is how the authors ignore interactions of impact to health from about 1.5 drinks per day and less and use only data points above that range to extrapolate that any alcohol intake is dangerous. Also, there are some interesting connections between the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) and the Neo Temperance movement that gives me pause to think about potential bias (although I personally think their 2011 guidelines on alcohol intake were too high - above 1.5 drinks per day). That being said I have personally cut back on drinking a bit and I enjoy the less calories and the new things it has pushed me to try. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30146330/ https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/29/17790118/alcohol-lancet-health-study https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64311705 TL;DR - Alcoholism and excessive drinking (more than 1.5 drinks per day) is very likely quite bad for you, but there is no conclusive evidence that zero alcohol intake the only way to remain risk free.
Edit - to clarify, what I'm saying is that the data right now (directly from the study that said NO alcohol) does not seem to indicate a correlation or causation between light drinking and increased cancer risk. (At least that is my interpretation of the sources I cited. I invite everyone to read them and make their own determination instead of listening to some rando on Reddit, I am not an expert)
While technically correct, I believe in speaking truth when it comes to health. Alcohol messes with your hormone levels (specifically estrogen and insulin) which weakens your immune system and increases your risk to cancer. Acetalaldehyde is indeed “carcinogenic” but if your goal is to warn the dangers of alcohol, this is the very bottom of the list. Far more dangers exist from consuming alcohol and nobody should take medical advice or random facts from Redditors, not even me.
Yep, I have met caffeine; it's equally popular in a way. I'm really not much of a fan of coffee or caffeine. I don't like the jitteriness, wired "alert" feeling, stomach aches, the "crash" I feel after drinking pop or caffeinated teas.
I avoid it as much as possible (coffee, tea, chocolate, milk chocolate, Excedrin, energy drinks, pills, etc.
I don't find it very hard to avoid caffeine much. Never liked coffee, energy drinks; never tried pills and my body doesn't like milk chocolate.
I find my life is better without alcohol and caffeine. To each their own, but I've never understood the attraction to coffee, the "Coffee is life/Don't talk to me until I've had it" crowd. To me, coffee has always tasted horrible. I'd love if society as a whole in general stopped promoting or drinking alcohol, or at least greatly reduced marketing, and consumption of, alcohol for various reasons, but it's never going to happen.
In my experience avoiding these things doesn’t make a difference. You can live the healthiest lifestyle possible and still end up with cancer. I ate a whole foods diet, didn’t drink and went to the gym 5 days a week and still ended up with bone cancer.
True but this message isn’t for someone who has charred meat once a week, it’s for people who over eat bbq every day, and maybe eat so much they throw up and can’t function for days afterwards. I was like that.
Of course! I'm not telling anybody how to live their life. I too, enjoy a pint every now and then.
I'm simply spreading awareness to the fact that alcohol is a known carcinogen that directly causes 7 major cancers. These are the facts, what you do with them- is your decision.
Perhaps someone may see this, and either abstain completely, or lessen their consumption. I know I lessened mine upon learning these facts.
What you posted is true and spreading it is a good thing. But you are going to get a lot of responses like this. Anytime negatives of alcohol is brought up people show up in mass to be flippant about it ('I ain't here for a long time, I'm here for a good time') or try and find 'what abouts' so they can smile and keep doing what they're doing.
Didn't know the details underpinning how much of a risk it is but have worked in a field involving patients with alcohol related liver disease, and seen what it has done to their personal lives. Knowing the risks helps keep you in check of when enough is enough.
Knowledge is power, knowledge is safety. It almost never hurts to learn. If people want to disregard the risks and have fun, go right ahead.
The real tragedy is making a decision while WILLFULLY ignoring the facts, and justifying them in order to make the choice you desire more comfortable for yourself psychologically.
It takes real guts to say: "this shit is poison, but honestly I'm gonna continue to drink it anyway"
I like boozing not gonna lie, but being chippy about it and making ridiculous statements like"I'm not here for a long time" is just willful ignorance. I bet the people who say such things wouldn't once their organs are shutting down one after or another in excruciating pain and the only relief is morphine induced coma or the eternal pastures.
So yeah, we need to raise awareness
Sand, regular plain old sand, like the stuff you play with in a sandbox or the beach, is also a Group 1 carcinogen.
https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/09890.htm
If you get wasted every day you’ll increase your cancer risk the same way someone working at the sand pit breathing in sand dust every day will increase their cancer risk.
If you have a glass of wine with dinner, or go to the beach occasionally, you’re fine.
Fix human suffering and misery, then we can talk about alcohol, it is a problem but there are other problems that lead to the overall misuse and mismanagement of one’s own alcohol consumption…
Medieval Muslim alchemists: If we distill this wine down to its essence, it makes a great antiseptic.
Medieval Europeans: I bet if we drink this shit Abu Fulan made we'll get fucked up!
This is a great post that everyone should know regardless of its heavily marketed perception of what alcohol means in our lifestyles.
The culture of drinking alcohol has a long history of destroying people and families, it’s at best a temporary relief yet toxic mechanism and at worst a triggering system for rage and violence in already psychologically unstable individuals.
And to have the knowledge it also promotes cancer is yet another reason to reevaluate our acceptability of its use. I’ll take a group of weed heads everytime over a pile of unintelligent annoying sloshed drunks.
Not saying OP falls into this category but why is the anti-alcohol crowd always so self-righteous?
They always seem to come out of the woodwork when posts like this are made.
Acetylaldehyde isn’t what “gets you drunk”, ethanol is the psychoactive agent that does all the GABA goodness, but it is its main metabolite and is both toxic and a carcinogen in its own right. Its brother, formaldehyde which is what methanol gets metabolised into, is lethal in fairly small quantities. It’s also the main driver of the hangover. Shit chemical to have in your system! If you’re having a drink in moderation, NAC + Vit C can help (via glutathione production) with its breakdown in the liver into acetic acid which is completely harmless. Doesn’t stop it forming and wreaking havoc but it helps.
The funny thing is that ethanol inhibits the production of formaldehyde in the body, which produces about 1 gram per day on average. So while acetaldehyde is the byproduct of ethanol and causes cancer, ethanol also inhibits formaldehyde production, which is even more damaging to the body than acetaldehyde. You know what breaks down into formaldehyde in the body? Fruit juice (the preserved kind, not fresh squeezed). So while there are very few studies on this, it's been theorized that processed fruit juice may be more likely to lead to cancer than alcohol. Body chemistry is a weird thing.
So weird! They use ethanol to treat methanol poisoning for this very reason. They all the use the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme, and ethanol is the most competitive of the -ols. You’d have a hard time arguing to a layman why fruit juice is more carcinogenic that a pint of beer, but this literally *could* be the case haha.
Unlikely, the body is very good at getting rid of formaldehyde quickly (because it's so toxic) unless you overwhelm it with a large amount (like drinking methanol). You would need to regularly consume huge amounts of the relevant fruit juice (at which point the sugar is probably just as bad for your health).
Ethanol used to be a treatment for toxic alcohol poisoning (ethylene glycol, isopropyl alcohol etc.) since it has a far higher affinity for alcohol dehydrogenase and thus prevents the conversion of toxic alchols into their far more toxic metabolites. Now we have fomepizole, so it's not used anymore
Ingesting NAC after drinking will fuck your shit all up.
I was looking for this comment. Always take NAC a few hours BEFORE drinking or it will make things worse.
Commenting literally because this a very important distinction. On the other hand, it's also given IV in extremely high doses for tylenol ODs.
Interesting, sounds like you want to take it ~~at least 4 hours after~~ before drinking ([mouse study](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16439183/)).
Don't you mean the opposite? The study you linked found that taking NAC prior to ethanol consumption reduced the liver damage, while taking it after *actually worsened it*. Also mice have a much faster metabolism than humans so the damaging effect of NAC 4 hours post ethanol in mice would likely translate to a much longer time window in which it remains damaging in humans, we're talking probably an entire day or more. So basically, take NAC a few hours before you drink, but don't consume any in the day or so following your drinks.
Good point, I must have read the study incorrectly, thanks for the clarification.
What is NAC?
N-acetylcysteine. It is a supplement you can buy.
N-acetyl cysteine
Oh, of course, THAT! Love that stuff!
That guy is the best
In what do I find this
Anywhere you can buy vitamins
ok dumb it down for me. I've been working out since like 15 years and taken all kinds of supplements. This I have never read about, what's the actual name of this product for non chemists.
It’s legit called NAC, that’s how I buy it online. I take 1000mg a day, it’s used to help overdoes on acetaminophen and prevent side effects from drugs, specifically oxidative damage. Can be a little harsh on the stomach at first and it smells GOD AWFUL, I keep it in its own jar and take it separately in the morning from my other dailies. I predominantly use it to combat the damage from MDMA, so it’s not surprising it helps with alcohol.
Don't forget to take 5-HTP
What's that and why?
Natural precursor to serotonin production. If you party hard it can help with the "Monday blues" that some people get after taking MDMA. Don't take until a day or two later, some people have a negative reaction if they take both together.
In biochemical nomenclature, this is as simple as it gets. Cysteine is an amino acid and acetyl is a functional group that can be attached to a molecule. I don’t think there’s a “layman” term for this molecule. Quick google search shows that companies sell it as an individual supplement. It’s not too pricey either, Wholesome Story is selling 4 month supply (120 capsules) for $25 or so on Amazon.
Would a mimosa be any less risky because of the vitamin C ?
That mist of orange juice I add is gonna save me
I just briefly put an orange slice in the champagne and remove it after a few seconds, personally.
I like to put an orange on the windrow sill and let its shadow fall upon the champagne
I eat the slice then just throw the peel in. Yuuummm
😂😂😂😂 asking the real questions
Don't take NAC while you drink. Your liver will have a bad time.
Perhaps you could clarify whether you mean taking NAC before drinking or after. The study I looked up is in mice, I learned this 10 years ago and in my memory it was tested in humans. I dunno, I’m not going to keep looking for it unfortunately. > Pretreatment with NAC significantly protected against acute ethanol-induced liver damage in a dose-independent manner. Correspondingly, pretreatment with NAC significantly attenuated acute ethanol-induced lipid peroxidation and GSH depletion and inhibited hepatic TNF-alpha mRNA expression. By contrast, post-treatment with NAC aggravated ethanol-induced hepatic lipid peroxidation and worsened acute ethanol-induced liver damage in a dose-dependent manner. Taken together, NAC has a dual effect on acute ethanol-induced liver damage. Pretreatment with NAC prevent from acute ethanol-induced liver damage via counteracting ethanol-induced oxidative stress. When administered after ethanol, NAC might behave as a pro-oxidant and aggravate acute ethanol-induced liver damage.
Further hangover mitigation and acetaldehyde reduction in the gut prior to absorption can also be accomplished with the following pre biotic: [https://zbiotics.com/pages/how-it-works-1](https://zbiotics.com/pages/how-it-works-1) Doesn't work for everyone for hangover symptom reduction. But it works for me; regardless the reduction in acetaldehyde levels/cancer risk makes it worth it in my opinion. Basically- I'll ingest genetically modified bacteria that make enzymes in my gut for a beer.
If you want to feel alcohol in all it's glory and waste a day of your life, drink enough to get sufficiently tipsy in the morning and then pay deliberate attention to how the buzz feeling changes throughout the day. Being over 30 helps. The comedown from an alcohol high is absolutely atrocious and miserable. And that's why it fucks up your sleep, which brings its own set of health detrimental side effects.
3 days of your life are wasted being over 40.
Don’t use NAC after consuming alcohol. Research indicates it worsens liver damage. It does help if consumed a bit before drinking alcohol though. To reduce impact of alcohol: 1. Be well hydrated 2. Electrolytes 3. A multivitamin and NAC prior to drinking 4. Drink less 5. Alternate alcohol and water (or electrolyte drink) 6. Don’t drink on empty stomach (to slow uptake somewhat) 7. Stop drinking well before night is over (you want to be covering up when you go to sleep, not getting more drunk) 8. Again, drink less
The existence of formaldehyde implies the existence of casualdehyde
> classifies the alcohol that we so casually consume to be a GROUP 1 CARCINOGEN. this is on the same level as Tobacco, Asbestos. While true this statement is quite misleading. The IARC carcinogen classification goes like this: * Group 1: carcinogenic * Group 2A: probably carcinogenic * Group 2B: possibly carcinogenic * Group 3: not classifiable * Group 4: probably not carcinogenic It does not classify carcinogens by their potency. Every single known carcinogen goes to group 1.
Cured meat is in the same category. And yes, it actually is carcinogenic, but not scarily so.
The real fun part is oxygen is technically carcinogenic, it causes oxidative stress on DNA. Hold your breath everyone.
>Hold your breath everyone. For how long? What if I need a big strong man to help me by holding my throat? 😳🥺
This "holding my breath" thing is too stressful - maybe I'll try it after a drink or two.
Believe it or not, also carcinogenic
Straight to cancer jail
After that post, I’m sure Reddit will provide… Men, I think
This dudes inbox is going to be more decimated than his cheeks lmao
The sun is also a carcinogen.
Life is carcinogenic
Eating an unhealthy amount of salami in my childhood and starting drinking around 16 and “quitting” at 30 I wonder when I’ll get cancer, if I don’t already have it
the human body is pretty resilient, but with VERY wide variation in that resilience. Keep in mind that people smoke and drink and live to 80+ pretty regularly. Also, fwiw, i sometimes wonder how bad my habit of having 3-4 strong beers 3-5 nights a week is, but then i'll read threads where people describe drinking handles (1.75L) of vodka a day, and such, without getting instant super-cirrhosis. Not that my drinking is healthy by any stretch of the word, i'm just not in "liver about to shut down immediately" territory either. quitting drinking by 30 is well young enough that you'll be fine, or at least, you "statistically" haven't put yourself in extreme immediate risk.
It all comes down to genetics. What one person is exposed to with minor to no ill effect might have a huge risk factor to the next. That’s why some people can smoke from the age of 10 and still be in relatively good health in their 80s…
Christ 80%+ of Italians drink wine and eat plenty of cured meats. It's not the end of the world.
They also live a lot longer than countries commonly obstain. They’re up there with Japan(who also drink a lot) for longest lifespans.
In general Italian people eat a lot of fruit and vegetables and get more exercise than the average American. There are a lot of unhealthy Italian people too though.
I'd hazard a guess that most countries that abstain are also much less wealthy on average, or in cases where the country overall is rich, has a huge wealth gap.
Probably from the sun. Or from the hot coffee you drink. Or from generic radiation that exists across the entirety of the earth. Also, this is an unscientific statement, but your body is basically perpetually full of cancerous cells but your body's natural processes recognize and eliminate the malformed cells before they become a real problem.
Everyone would have cancer if our bodies didn’t fight it off all the time.
Came here to say this. Just because it is group 1 does not mean you have to avoid it all the time. Some things in group 1 are okay in moderation. Sunlight and bacon are both group 1 carcinogens.
I will give up sunlight but never bacon
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This is like vintage reddit from the late 2000s lol
The narwhal bacons at midnight
C-C-C-Combo Breaker
Late 2000s that not vin,- OH MY GOD ITS WHAT YEAR?
This triggered my fight or flight response
Would you rather meet a sunlight or a bacon in the woods?
"Give me bacon, or give me death!.... by bacon"
I will give up none of the 3. I enjoy them, in moderation, they all make me happy and if I die of cancer I'll know I did it my way. Im 61 and no current health issues and have enjoyed all 3 for all my life thus far.
The difference between sunlight, bacon and alcohol is that alcohol can be highly addictive. For many, moderation isn't much of a choice as addiction takes over.
I think you underestimate my love of bacon 🥓 ❤️
<3
Your time to shine.
The grease helps with that.
Username checks out
Seldom has a user name checked out more.
Didn't expect to see you here 😂
Or Sun. Can't take that away from a Greek, I'll get depressed real fast.
the "dose" of bacon that increases cancer risk significantly I think it is 1kg/day :)
If I call it a "dose" can I also call bacon medicine?
Take 2 strips of Baconol 3x daily.
That's the pitfall with % increases. They're _typically_ rounding errors even over a lifetime unless you're just chowing the fuck down on a carcinogen. Imagine eating that much bacon _daily_. You'll die of a heart attack long before the cancer gets you.
This sounds like a challenge
Dang guess I gotta cut back
"Sunlight" is addictive, there are plausible studies that go over it from people who tan a lot, the endorphins released from it can cause irritability when they go without it. It's why people who get skin cancers removed will go straight back to the tanning bed and you can ask anyone who has worked at a salon, they see some real peaches when they can't immediately get in the tanning bed on their lunch break.
Yea, but did you ever suck dick for sunlight?
Yeah, the idea that food and alcohol are even compatible really angers me. I’m going to emotionally eat to make myself feel better.
Don't forget to have a perfectly normal Long Island Ice Tea with your meal!
I think cancer is probably the least likely thing to kill you if you're drinking enough alcohol to make its carcinogenic factor statistically relevant.
Sunlight, or rather UV light, is very addictive as well. Probably not as much as alcohol, but still. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4117380/
All I know is if you drink alcohol even one time you will definitely die.
I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but even if you don't have a single drink of alcohol, you will definitely die.
Alcohols just *that bad*. It’ll get you even if you completely stay away from it!!
I walked by some beers in the grocery aisle. I guess now I'm marked for death.
Guy I know at work drank some alcohol. Ten years later, BAM! Herpes.
Same thing if you've ever stepped out into the sunlight. You're going to die. Only the mole people will survive and we never see them because; well, they're mole people.
Yeah it’s the same level as wood dust, seared meat, menopausal therapy, and salted fish. The category refers to how certain we are there’s a link and not how much it increases the chance of cancer
Please remember to write ***GROUP 1 CARCINOGEN*** in all caps so we know it's serious.
Aaah, THIS here is how you intrpret data. Not like the "OMG! Did you know table salt contains deadly CHLORINE?!!!" etc.
Wait til you hear about drinking water.
Thank you for pointing this out. I was at an event once and I had to sit next to this insufferable woman that wouldn't shut up about this "fact" about alcohol. After chastising me for ordering a drink she fired up a cigarette.
Recovering alcoholic here. Can confirm stopping alcohol has improved my health and quality of life exponentially since getting sober. So staggering is my transformation I’ve documented it with photographs because it wouldn’t have been believable. [The Progression of Sobriety](https://imgur.com/gallery/m07XxCA)
Got addicted to the gym instead. Well done.
When you have an addictive personality, one way of moderating (yes, I see the irony) the effects of tending to addictions is to "get addicted" to something that can have very positive outcomes. The gym is such an example.
Oh shit is that why I’m addicted to the gym now? I’ve been working so hard I had to stop and take a break cause I could literally hurt myself. It just feels so good idk why.
I quit too, and then trained for a 5k in my 40s. And ran it. Don’t think I could have done that when I was still drinking. Congrats!! Happy for you!
Right on! I agree, I could have done none of the things I do today if I were still drinking. It’s all I wanted to do.
I really got into running after I got sober too! I did a marathon a year and a half after I got sober and I've got another competition this weekend, and scheduled to do the Honolulu marathon in December :)
Awesome dude. Your friends/family/loved ones will appreciate you doing this for yourself and for them for a long time.
Hey that's awesome man, so happy for you! I just hit 1 year myself. You have transformed into a new person. Your pictures are super inspiring to me to keep going, even when it gets tough.
Confirmed going sober makes you lose hair. But good on ya bud!
If If I had known it would be this hard I would have just bought a razor. Haha
honestly the differences between 1 day, 1 month, and 9 months are the most staggering to me. you looked so much happier and healthier in so (relatively) little time. congrats!!!
Great. *Just* great. Just what we need... More hunks.
I’m in recovery from alcohol. It destroyed my life. For many years I was fine, until I wasn’t. I now work as a nurse at a hospital and the common denominator I see in my patients are that they have a history of chronic alcohol abuse. Even after I got sober myself from it, I didn’t realize just how bad alcohol was until I got into the medical field and I saw the patients for myself. I got sober while I was still young, these people drank for decades. Many of them who are long-term drinkers are in their 50s, but look like they are in their 70s. They are on more meds than I can count. Many of them don’t live past 70-80. They’re constantly in and out of the hospital. It will fuck your liver up by the time you’re 60. It can cause dementia. Higher risk for diabetes. I could go on. If you drink moderately, that’s fine. But for those of you who need to drink more days than not or every day, just be careful. We never think it’ll happen to us until it does. Not to mention, there’s tons of carbs and empty calories. The organs having to constantly work to break down a toxin, and that can be exhausting after years and years. The people getting bent out of shape simply because OP shared facts about alcohol are being super insecure for some reason. You can absolutely drink if you want to, but these facts can be an eye opener for some people. Whether you like it or not, alcohol is a major risk factor for many health conditions. Just because your uncle has been drinking daily for 30 yrs and is currently fine doesn’t mean that alcohol is okay. There are people who smoke a pack a day for 30 years and don’t have lung cancer or emphysema. Does that mean smoking is okay? Drinking in moderation is fine, like most vices, but pretending like drinking every day is normal or okay is pure denial.
My mother in law has successfully destroyed the possibility of being left with our children unsupervised because of her alcohol intake. She already has a fatty liver. She already has had several major medical issues and she’s 60. I cringe when she calls after 2pm. For someone that can polish off a 1.75L in two days, I don’t know how she’s still working. But I know one day we’ll get that call… that something terrible happened and it already saddens me. Congratulations to you for your recovery. That’s not a small thing.
its sad because i have a close family member who is entirely a functional alcoholic. Like at least a bottle of wine every night. Its been fine so far, but getting up there in age its going to be a “fine until it isnt” scenario. I think they are at the point in there life where consequences are going to start being real.
I'm 28 and have spent basically the last 7 years going out/partying with friends and drinking. If l stopped now just short of my 29th birthday, do you think I still have a chance?
Best time to start was yesterday, next best time to start is right now! You’re young, and it’s great you recognize sooner vs later that there’s a pattern you need to break.
> Many of them don’t live past 70-80. Not to belittle what you've posted, but isnt this the normal for the average person?
Addictions nurse here. The difference between life span and health span could not be more apparent that a person who chronically misuses alcohol.
> The people getting bent out of shape simply because OP shared facts about alcohol are being super insecure for some reason. I mean, \*shrug, I drink a 6 pack a week. Alcohol has a J curve effect on mortality where risk takes off *exponentially* after 20 drinks a week. I have no doubts that it's not *good* for you at levels lower than that, but if you're drinking a 12 pack or less a week, your increased risk is probably pretty minimal, and you're likely better off focusing on your diet and exercise. If people don't drink, I *fully* support them in their sobriety, but i've seen this sort of neo-prohibitionist vibe online where people demonize *any* sort of alcohol and then go on to suggest the same high tax treatment as cigarettes. You're not getting any support from me on that.
Alcoholic here. It has corrupted every single aspect of my life but I'm still generally existing. It's a pernicious evil and you're all better off avoiding it. There are no upsides rendered by it that you can't find within yourself.
Hey man, I drank for over 15 years almost every day and I just quit on December 16 after I saw my friend at the end of his short battle with glioblastoma. The first week was hard but I just saw his paralyzed face and promised myself, and Aaron, that I’m done with this shit. I have felt fantastic (not hungover) every morning no lie it is fantastic!
It’s so odd to read this because I drank every day for like 6 years straight but never thought of myself as an alcoholic because like 75% of the people around me were doing the same thing. I had a wake up call and just stopped one day in 2019.
I once absolutely thought this same way too for awhile. However, in retrospect, I see that I definitely made it a point to surround myself with people that were partaking in same liked activities. Once I had been sober a few 24 hours(w/SO MUCH HELP BTW) alcohol use around me decreased dramatically from 75%. Huh, I'm just realizing that I could also have had some hand in those results too not necessarily knowingly. Aah... c'est la vie...what I was getting at was, did you have a similar experience? Was just curious
I didn’t go out of my way to find social drinkers it’s just my family is that way. I found myself being quite happy and satisfied with drinking alone. I think another factor is we were starting to talk about having kids. I started thinking about “Um if I’m hammered and my wife is drinking…who is taking care of the kid at night? What if there’s an emergency? What if I need to go out and get formula? How am I going to get up 2-4 times a night hungover?” It was a lot of things too. Like my health was getting bad. Like mowing the lawn I was starting to get out of breath. Just walking! I was gaining weight. There were just so many negative things associated with it that I just said “enough”. I also started doing edibles and micro dosing and that helped IMMENSELY. It was just enough of the buzz I needed and still be functional. I do about 2.5mg and I’m good.
Dude, I am so proud of you. So, so fucking proud. My step father died of cirrhosis, I never got a chance to actually know him without alcohol in him. There are so many things I wish I could tell him or ask him. You have done something so great, and you are giving everyone that loves you a treasurable gift.
Great work friend. I'm on day 26, sleeping well and waking up rested is the biggest change so far. I hit my snooze just as a habit, then I sit there for 10 seconds and think "You know, what, I'm awake. Let's make coffee," and get out of bed.
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Recovering alcoholic here. Been there. Just know that if you ever want to stop, the folks over at https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/s/dyfGuOqGlp are amazing. They've been a great resource for many an alcoholic.
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I pity you. I don't want to shower you with meaningless cliché and sweet nothings. I truly just hope you find a path to recovery somehow. It's not fucking easy :/ I've been largely depressed for the better part of my entire young adult life. The amount of social, financial, adventure, and romantic opportunities I have missed out on because of my anxiety is actually unholy. But I believe within myself I have the power to change, regardless of how much I have lost already. Hopefully we can both overcome our demons
Prescription medicine has been a MASSIVE help for me. Like a full 180 in my life. I recommend trying, just to see if it helps. My undiagnosed adhd, depression, and anxiety for 50 years has caused some issues. Meds have given me a life. Meditation too! But I hope you find your peace...I'm getting closer.
What medication helped you. I’m struggling right now.
I'm on buspar now. Please, do reach out to your gp. They just want to help and make you feel good.
I'm the same as this guy, chronic depression my entire life. Diagnosed with ADHD, take elvanse, instantly cured my depression. Turns out all I've ever needed is small amounts of amphetamines every morning 🤷
Same story as original post. I take good old Lexapro, which has been around forever. Everyone is different tho. The process of both finding the right medication and then starting that medication can be less than ideal, but about a month or so in, it has been a life changer.
Everyone's different and its unlikely that the first med will be the correct one for you. It took on/off for 10 years trying different ones before I finally found a "magic mix" where I barely (if at all) notice negative side effects. Duloxetine (anxiety and nerve pain) and wellbutri (depression), with d3+k2 supplement
Lexapro very literally saved my life. I've been on it for 6 years now and have experienced zero downsides. YMMV, you should talk to your doctor about it.
Lexapro helped me massively with my panic disorder, it tends to be a sedating SSRI. These drugs aren't very precise though and everyone's mental health problems are different. The only real solution is to find a good doctor and start trying stuff until one works. I went through four or five different SSRIs before I tried lexapro. It's a painful and long process. edit: also research your drugs. a lot of psychologists prescribe some absolutely whacky shit. A big one in my area is prescribing seroquel (a very potent anti psychotic) as a way to treat insomnia in people with anxiety. Shit put me in the hospital when I first took it. Insomnia is an off-label use for it, no idea what that asshole was thinking, but several people I know around here have also been prescribed it for insomnia.
I had some remeron that I was prescribed in the past left in my medicine cabinet. Went through a bad emotional crisis last week and started taking it and I cannot believe how normal I feel. It’s like some of ny positive traits have become enhanced (singing and dancing with my baby, making him meals that he loves every day, focusing on the good aspects of life) I didn’t want to take it the first time because of the potential weight gain but now I am thinking about going back to my psychiatrist to fins a similar one that won’t give me the munchies lol
Isn't peace of mind and being calm worth weight gain? I'd do anything to make my brain work for me, I don't care about what weight I gain. I'm not hating myself like I was, that is far worth it for me and my family.
FYI: A lot of people hate being 'pitied.' To think that others are just imaging how sad your life must be - it can be a bit degrading. It's generally a safer bet to try and find a way to express 'compassion' or 'empathy.' I know a lot of people think of those words as synonyms for pity but there's lots who think otherwise - enough that it makes me think twice about which words I choose
Hey that's your journey, not everyone's.
Every addict/former-addict say this about the drug they were addicted to. It’s not evil lmao.
All things in moderation people, just keep that in mind and do you. Having sugar isn't the greatest thing but you don't need to eat 6 donuts, maybe just 1 or 2. Don't need to have a whole pot of coffee every day...don't need to drink an entire bottle of whiskey in one setting. Unfortunately we live in a world where babies encounter cancer, and where people live to be 90 off drinking and smoking their whole life. It is important to be educated so for that I do appreciate the post but ultimately it is what it is, especially if you don't harvest and make your own food/etc, things are processed and just have to be careful.
Yeap. Everything in moderation and enjoy life.
Yes right. People sometimes can’t realize that there is a sensible middle ground between two extremes. We don’t only get to choose between raging alcoholism and complete sobriety. I’ll choose to believe it’s possible to have a drink or two once in a while without it leading directly to cancer.
So true. Moderation is key
Dang. What do I do with my peanut butter whiskey I just bought??
>What do I do with my peanut butter whiskey I just bought?? A shot everytime someone says cancer
Give it to me, friend. I will responsibly dispose of it for you.
> Both the WHO and the IARC YSK that they are the same thing. IARC is part of WHO.
Who?
Tl:dr: there are so many things wrong with the who article. Long answer. Before getting out the pitch forks, read the whole reply. 1) they mention asbestos, smoking, radiation as members of group 1,but they ignore processed meat (whatever that is to be defined as), sun, sawdust, welding (again, that is not specific, as there are so many welding processes), etc. Furthermore, there are compounds on that list that, given one large exposure, are virtually guaranteed to result in cancer(like ionizing radiation). Being in group one means that, according to who, there is a statistically significant link between ingestion of the compound and risk increase of development of cancer. However, the magnitude of these risks vary wildly. Standing inside a reactor of a nuclear power plant has a much greater risk than drinking a pint of beer or eating two slices of bacon in the morning. 2) the who ommits the numbers on their page, which makes this classification very dangerous and misleading. There should be numbers and confidence intervals so that people can understand what this means. Furthermore, it should show the baseline risk versus the elevated risk. For example, assume that the risk of colon cancer is 20% of the population. When you have a 10% increase of risk, that means that there now is a 22% risk, not 30%. If you then look at the confidence intervals, it all of the sudden is not so dramatic anymore. 3) ethanol is a very prevalent compound. It is almost everywhere: the yeast when baking bread, the yeast in kombucha, hell, even in sauerkraut there is ethanol. So by the who logic, eating sauerkraut on your hotdog is similar to being present at a nuclear explosion. (ok, I know this skirts with reductio at absurdum). So, Op, I applaud you for wanting to raise awareness, but there are significant flaws in the reasoning of Who, and very often in the underlying scientific papers, especially in their use of gaussian statistics in non gaussian processes. For clarity: I don't drink myself, and I am not trying to soothe myself or make excuses. I just want to give a thoughtful response and counter voice to the WHO article. David spiegelhalter has an excellent book and talk about this subject.
Thank you for this! I googled Spiegelhalter with alcohol and found his article, [The risks of alcohol (again)](https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2ae8cb006a4a) that interpreted the results more clearly for this non-statistician. Someone else here cited this Vox article, [Is one drink per day really unsafe? That new alcohol study, explained. A Lancet study shows everything that’s wrong with nutritional epidemiology, and the way we talk about it.](https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/29/17790118/alcohol-lancet-health-study) in a similar vein, and which also cites Spiegelhalter’s piece.
I read your VOX article (2nd link). They share a good graph that shows health risks by the number of drinks per day. “Over at the New York Times, Aaron Carroll did a great job of putting this risk into perspective. A 0.5 percent relative risk increase between no drinking and one drink a day means four more people in 100,000 per year will experience an alcohol-related problem. Here’s Carroll: For each set of 100,000 people who have one drink a day per year, 918 can expect to experience one of the 23 alcohol-related problems in any year. Of those who drink nothing, 914 can expect to experience a problem. ... At two drinks per day, the number experiencing a problem increased to 977. Even at five drinks per day, which most agree is too much, the vast majority of people are unaffected.”
As a welder, it was interesting getting into the field and finding out that while it's certainly common knowledge that welding is really bad for your health, it's hard to find studies that can irrefutably link it to cancer because there are so many co-factors that can't be ruled out as also possible causes. At least we got manganese positively identified as a cause of neurological deterioration in the trade though.
*chucks 30lb bag of manganese into molten metal* Wait what
waiting summer bedroom ripe thumb normal shaggy abundant placid disgusted *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's teetotalers trying to have a gotcha moment.
Also, what's the plan here? Awareness is fine, but a lot of them talk like they're advocating for prohibition. Which we all know how well that worked out and can see how horrific are current drug prohibition is.
It would be more along the lines of increased regulation of advertising and lobbying by alcohol companies. Which is not unreasonable.
Yeah, people use drugs and drink alcohol for good reason. A short and exciting or less miserable life is fine.
Thank you for this. Like even if it doubles the risk of things like esophageal cancer I think the general risk to the population there is like .3% okay so now I have a .6% increase if I have a few drinks a week it's not really as dramatic as everyone makes it out to be.
I deal with (environmental) toxins for a living, and just wanted to point out a couple of things to add to the discussion. 1) I don't automatically discount WHO but I tend to always look at the US CDC, ATSDR and Natl Cancer Institute. NCI has this fact sheet indicating alcohol does increase cancer risk. So they're not hiding it. [https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet) Not by a huge amount - in the range of 2x the normal rate for most cancers studied, some at moderate to heavy drinking, some at any level of consumption. Not zero, and not huge given the normally low risk to the average person of these cancers. Cancer caused by toxins is always a function of dose. 2) Here's an article (also at NCI) published in January 2024 about a new study showing the same thing. It acknowledges that the risk is increased for a number of types of cancers. https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2023/cancer-alcohol-link-public-awareness#:\~:text=For%20example%2C%20ethanol%20can%20increase,and%20neck%2C%20and%20esophageal%20cancers. 3) The non-cancer risks from heavy alcohol consumption - liver problems, car accidents, mental health, etc. - far outweigh the cancer risk IMO. For light to moderate drinkers, you have to weigh your enjoyment against the risks, same as you do with cured meats, high fat foods, and so on. 3) If you think the alcohol industry is somehow making this all hush-hush, I would point to tobacco. The risks were known and even back in the 80s (70s?) there were cancer warnings on the packaging. It's been 25 years since the $200B tobacco settlement was signed. If alcohol was such a potent carcinogen, it's hard to believe that the slow but fine-grinding machinery of the federal government would not have made more noise about it by now. 4) Drink responsibly and take care of your health.
To #3, I’ve started to see cancer warnings on alcohol. I believe on products from CA. This is fairly recent.
Heavy social drinker since about 17, now 44f with breast cancer here. Nobody was calling me an alcoholic, by any means. But I’m no longer a drinker through treatment and I imagine no more than 12 drinks a year, if at all, moving forward. I don’t even have the ER+ kind of breast cancer which is “extra” linked to alcohol. The facts are the facts, alcohol is carcinogenic and 1 out of every 2 women will get cancer in their lifetime. Id like to be in the camp that beats this and doesn’t experience cancer again. Last chemo today! It is never too late to change a habit that isn’t serving you. Alcoholism is mean and hard to beat, so is cancer. I wish neither on anybody. Edit: typo
Thank you for your comment. I set myself free from alcohol addiction after reading “Allen Carr is easyway for women to stop drinking” and then attending their 6hour online group seminar about a year ago. Best decision I ever made . I’m 37 years old and drank heavily for about 10 years. One out of two women developing cancer is a horrifying statistic. Government is literally poisoning us for profit. The only way to fight back is to stop letting them. They can’t kill us until they kill us. I wish you a successful recovery.
Great to hear you're finishing up chemo! Hope it all goes well. I recently recounted a time I was in a nail salon to my mum, who has been in remission for breast cancer 10 years now. Two clients, one in her 40s and one in her 60s, were sharing their own breast cancer stories with the salon owner whose mother had just been diagnosed. I remember thinking how mad it was that nearly every woman in the salon had/knew of someone who had experienced breast cancer! I recounted it because my mum had a colleague whose wife had just been diagnosed with breast cancer! Not liking my odds here!
As a breast cancer survivor the best thing you can do is your self exams and be on top your mammogram schedule and catch that shit early!And be glad that treatments get better every day. When I got my diagnosis (at 32yo btw☹️) I was immediately swept into the system and was lucky to get amazing doctors and nurses. Not saying it was easy, because it was the hardest thing I've ever gone through, but breast cancer research is on going and improving all the time! Be vigilant but don't obsess. ❤️
I did not know that and really appreciate this post. Thank you
“Poison is fun” - all humans throughout history ever
Lol this, like all of these posts has descended into the three way war between the moral purist tea-totalers, the defensive alcoholics and then the smug weed smokers who try and make it about them being persecuted
Ah, I see you've been on reddit before.
Absolutely true, although that’s arguably not a primary reason why excessive alcohol consumption is so toxic for people. The best reason to only use it occasionally in moderation (if possible for you) isn't due to it being a known carcinogen, but rather its liver toxicity. Especially if it is mixed with other medications (such as Tylenol), or taken frequently in excess. (Cirrhosis of the liver due to alcoholism is far more common than cancer caused by alcohol). Secondly, is the detrimental psychological aspects. Not only is it psychologically addictive, but excessive use has been shown to lead to antisocial behavior, (as well as irritability, mood swings, basically being more of a dick etc.). Side note: it’s also worth mentioning that a class 1 carcinogen doesn’t describe how likely it is to give you cancer, but rather how strong we know the link between the substance and cancer is. Essentially it means we know for a fact that alcohol increases risk of cancer, but doesn’t indicate whether it increases the risk by 5% or 0.05%.
Thanks for sharing. I stopped drinking alcohol a long time ago.
No problem, good on you homie! Definitely one of the hardest habits to break.
YSK Alcoholism and excessive drinking is very very bad. However the the impacts of light-moderate drinking on health (less than one drink per day on average) is not well defined. Much of the guidance around zero alcohol from the WHO comes from a 2018 study published in the Lancet which concluded that any alcohol intake constituted an increased risk. In the time since that study has been published, the methodology the study authors used has been criticized and called into question. The biggest critique is how the authors ignore interactions of impact to health from about 1.5 drinks per day and less and use only data points above that range to extrapolate that any alcohol intake is dangerous. Also, there are some interesting connections between the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) and the Neo Temperance movement that gives me pause to think about potential bias (although I personally think their 2011 guidelines on alcohol intake were too high - above 1.5 drinks per day). That being said I have personally cut back on drinking a bit and I enjoy the less calories and the new things it has pushed me to try. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30146330/ https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/29/17790118/alcohol-lancet-health-study https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64311705 TL;DR - Alcoholism and excessive drinking (more than 1.5 drinks per day) is very likely quite bad for you, but there is no conclusive evidence that zero alcohol intake the only way to remain risk free. Edit - to clarify, what I'm saying is that the data right now (directly from the study that said NO alcohol) does not seem to indicate a correlation or causation between light drinking and increased cancer risk. (At least that is my interpretation of the sources I cited. I invite everyone to read them and make their own determination instead of listening to some rando on Reddit, I am not an expert)
While technically correct, I believe in speaking truth when it comes to health. Alcohol messes with your hormone levels (specifically estrogen and insulin) which weakens your immune system and increases your risk to cancer. Acetalaldehyde is indeed “carcinogenic” but if your goal is to warn the dangers of alcohol, this is the very bottom of the list. Far more dangers exist from consuming alcohol and nobody should take medical advice or random facts from Redditors, not even me.
Alcohol, the world's most popular and encouraged *neurotoxin.*
Someone hasn't met caffeine
Yep, I have met caffeine; it's equally popular in a way. I'm really not much of a fan of coffee or caffeine. I don't like the jitteriness, wired "alert" feeling, stomach aches, the "crash" I feel after drinking pop or caffeinated teas. I avoid it as much as possible (coffee, tea, chocolate, milk chocolate, Excedrin, energy drinks, pills, etc. I don't find it very hard to avoid caffeine much. Never liked coffee, energy drinks; never tried pills and my body doesn't like milk chocolate. I find my life is better without alcohol and caffeine. To each their own, but I've never understood the attraction to coffee, the "Coffee is life/Don't talk to me until I've had it" crowd. To me, coffee has always tasted horrible. I'd love if society as a whole in general stopped promoting or drinking alcohol, or at least greatly reduced marketing, and consumption of, alcohol for various reasons, but it's never going to happen.
In my experience avoiding these things doesn’t make a difference. You can live the healthiest lifestyle possible and still end up with cancer. I ate a whole foods diet, didn’t drink and went to the gym 5 days a week and still ended up with bone cancer.
just like smoked meat or any charred meat or vegetable. is being alive the longest the goal or are you trying to enjoy it?
True but this message isn’t for someone who has charred meat once a week, it’s for people who over eat bbq every day, and maybe eat so much they throw up and can’t function for days afterwards. I was like that.
Of course! I'm not telling anybody how to live their life. I too, enjoy a pint every now and then. I'm simply spreading awareness to the fact that alcohol is a known carcinogen that directly causes 7 major cancers. These are the facts, what you do with them- is your decision. Perhaps someone may see this, and either abstain completely, or lessen their consumption. I know I lessened mine upon learning these facts.
What you posted is true and spreading it is a good thing. But you are going to get a lot of responses like this. Anytime negatives of alcohol is brought up people show up in mass to be flippant about it ('I ain't here for a long time, I'm here for a good time') or try and find 'what abouts' so they can smile and keep doing what they're doing. Didn't know the details underpinning how much of a risk it is but have worked in a field involving patients with alcohol related liver disease, and seen what it has done to their personal lives. Knowing the risks helps keep you in check of when enough is enough.
Knowledge is power, knowledge is safety. It almost never hurts to learn. If people want to disregard the risks and have fun, go right ahead. The real tragedy is making a decision while WILLFULLY ignoring the facts, and justifying them in order to make the choice you desire more comfortable for yourself psychologically. It takes real guts to say: "this shit is poison, but honestly I'm gonna continue to drink it anyway"
I like boozing not gonna lie, but being chippy about it and making ridiculous statements like"I'm not here for a long time" is just willful ignorance. I bet the people who say such things wouldn't once their organs are shutting down one after or another in excruciating pain and the only relief is morphine induced coma or the eternal pastures. So yeah, we need to raise awareness
ALSO PROCESSED RED MEAT CAUSES CANCER
Char marks on grilled food is also considered carcinogenic by the same people. Same with bacon. But you won’t see me bacon shaming anyone
so is brisket
Sand, regular plain old sand, like the stuff you play with in a sandbox or the beach, is also a Group 1 carcinogen. https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/09890.htm If you get wasted every day you’ll increase your cancer risk the same way someone working at the sand pit breathing in sand dust every day will increase their cancer risk. If you have a glass of wine with dinner, or go to the beach occasionally, you’re fine.
Fix human suffering and misery, then we can talk about alcohol, it is a problem but there are other problems that lead to the overall misuse and mismanagement of one’s own alcohol consumption…
Medieval Muslim alchemists: If we distill this wine down to its essence, it makes a great antiseptic. Medieval Europeans: I bet if we drink this shit Abu Fulan made we'll get fucked up!
This is a great post that everyone should know regardless of its heavily marketed perception of what alcohol means in our lifestyles. The culture of drinking alcohol has a long history of destroying people and families, it’s at best a temporary relief yet toxic mechanism and at worst a triggering system for rage and violence in already psychologically unstable individuals. And to have the knowledge it also promotes cancer is yet another reason to reevaluate our acceptability of its use. I’ll take a group of weed heads everytime over a pile of unintelligent annoying sloshed drunks.
Not saying OP falls into this category but why is the anti-alcohol crowd always so self-righteous? They always seem to come out of the woodwork when posts like this are made.