Drink more and live longer! (but you won't remember as much so it balances out)

The new study showing that drunks live longer than teetotalers is a bit of the inebriated elephant in the room 'round these parts, so I suppose that's what I'll write about today. From Time (a note to young readers. You may not have heard of Time. It's a news magazine and it's a little weird because it's printed on paper):

The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over 69% of the never-drinkers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died.

These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who have never drunk. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health.

This goes back to my chicken-or-the-eggnog question. Do people live longer because they drink? Or do people prone to living longer pend to drink because they're less stressed about toeing some particular line? And what does this mean for people like me, who have that impressive combo of being a drinker, yet are more stressed-out than any non-drinker they know?

Frankly, I don't give this study a lot of cred. I can't find the actual document (MichM? Where are you when I need you?), but splitting drinkers into three groups doesn't allow for a lot of leeway. What about people who drink every once in a while, like a couple times a year? They aren't teetotalers, so they'd be lumped into the moderate group. What about people who are generally moderate, but cut loose every now and then? I have 0 to 2 drinks a day, usually, but if I'm at a dinner party, I've been known to have an aperitif, a few glasses of wine with dinner, and maybe a port afterward. Technically, that puts me in the heavy drinker camp, but I'm no Charles Bukowski, so I throw off the numbers too. For the record, the poet Bukowski died of leukemia at 73, which had nothing to do with his famous alcoholism.

Maybe we need to realize that the primary utility of studies such as this is to serve as word-fodder for dated news magazines and self-important bloggers. I'd never advocate alcoholism, but that has less to do with death and more to do with the quality of your life and the lives of those around you. I do, however, think it's perfectly fine to lose your shaker of salt in Margaritaville every now-and-again. I also think that if you feel better off without the hooch, go hoochless.

Either way, sometimes it's more important to listen to poets than studies, so I just spent 30 minutes trying to find the perfect Bukowski quote to end this post, but the best I could find was, ""Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink."

For some reason, it kind of fits.