Binge Drinking!
June 18th, 2008 Posted in News
OK, what constitutes binge drinking? Big question, but who can honestly answer with any conviction? Certainly not the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines (see this article at News-Medical.net), which states that the upper limit for drinking is four drinks in one sitting. Wow — I would have thought that was the average for most people. Surely they can’t be serious? Well, they are, Shirley. And there are many who would disagree, including myself. But as much as I disagree with the amount they are suggesting, I can understand what they are trying to say.
It’s pretty common now for people to suggest that two drinks a day is either beneficial, or harmless. There have been numerous longitudinal studies that show the long-term benefits of daily consumption of low levels of alcohol, and an abundance that show the detrimental effects of exceeding those low levels, but where is the cut-off point? The new research suggests that any more than four drinks puts you at a higher risk for developing some kind of bodily harm. Which is… fair enough, really. Nobody can deny the next-day feeling of a hundred midgets playing cards in your skull. It can’t be doing good things to your body.
So maybe a warning is necessary — if you’re gonna drink, try to limit it to four. It sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me, although not one that I would adhere to. If there is a safe level, there should be a concrete upper limit…But who would have thought it would be so low?
Personally, I would have to disagree with four being the optimal choice. I think the guidelines are trying to wrap people in bubble-wrap — you know, be overly safe. And I think that’s what pissing people off. OK, four may be the point where — for a very very small number of the population — some form of harm may develop, but it’s extremely unrealistic to think that the general public are going to be accepting of such a suggestion when the amount is so… pedestrian. Four drinks sounds like breakfast to me. OK, so I’m not the picture of health and they won’t be knocking down my door to ask me to be a spokesperson for alcohol (you’d need a healthy liver for that), but I am an extreme case. Most people are not as stupid as I was. And most people are pretty healthy, even given that they have drunk more than four drinks in one setting, on many many wonderful occasions.
Now, in my position, I am at a point where I would be thinking pretty seriously about whether I need another beer if it’s the fifth one (before thinking “hell yeah!”and cracking it open), but five years ago I would have skulled four drinks consecutively just to spite the guidelines. Perhaps that is the reason we need some guidelines? Well, yeah, it is, but four is ridiculous.
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