Body & Soul - Message in a Bottle

Message in a Bottle by Sarah Ryder
One of the irritating things about the internet is that it’s so difficult to get a straight answer on anything. For example, I’m trying to discover whether drinking a moderate amount of alcohol every day is bad for my health. For every website that says it is, there’s another equally credible looking one that says actually, a small amount of alcohol daily is a good thing.

An article written by psychologist Cynthia Hickman got me thinking; it’s entitled ‘Message in a Bottle’ and says even low level alcohol use may contribute to negative psychological or physical consequences and mask issues that need to be addressed. Hickman describes it as “using alcohol as a crutch”:

This is where people are only drinking one or two drinks a night, but they would really miss it if they had to stop. It helps them cope with life. It takes the edge off, relaxes them and is a reward for dealing with the stresses of life. It is like popping a happy pill à la George Orwell’s 1984. It keeps people ‘comfortably numb’.

I read this in the hairdressers while enjoying a glass of wine. The article goes on to list the ‘symptoms’ that you may be using alcohol as a crutch:
life without drinking would seem boring or empty; you think a drink helps manage stressful times; a drink distracts you from problems you are facing; you need alcohol to have fun in a social setting; you feel you have to have a drink every day; you look forward to the evening drink and think about it during the day; having a drink gives you a feeling of relief; and you like the fuzzy, numb feeling alcohol gives you.

Yikes – check, check, and check. It gets me thinking – maybe I do have a problem. Am I on a slippery slope to loitering in Anzac Park? What’s this level of drinking actually doing to my physical and mental health? Or is this just another example of the ‘worried well’ looking for problems where none exist?

One of the first things I do is measure how much I’m actually drinking. According to ALAC (Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand) one standard drink is 10gms of alcohol. This is equivalent to 100mls of wine, a 330ml can of beer or 30mls of straight spirits. Uh-oh, have you seen how tiny that glass of wine is? Turns out my daily glass of wine is more like 200mls, or two standard drinks. Therefore, I’m actually drinking two to four standard drinks per night rather than the one to two I’d previously thought. (The recommended daily amount for women is one standard drink, compared to two for blokes).

But what I still can’t figure out is whether this amount of alcohol is actually doing any harm. I ask a doctor friend for his advice. He tells me that new research shows that the previous research may have over-stated the benefits of a daily tipple. He also describes a checklist doctors use to assess whether alcohol is affecting your health – it looks at areas such as whether it’s affecting your job, your relationships, or your health and whether it’s led to any brushes with the law. I decide I am OK based on those measures, but I do decide to try giving up alcohol for a month.… watch this space!