Alcohol use and quality of life
2012-08-02 13:56:37.363764+00 by
Dan Lyke
1 comments
Alcohol Use Patterns and Trajectories of Health-Related Quality of Life in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A 14-Year Population-Based Study
Conclusions: Persistent moderate drinkers had higher initial levels of health-related quality of life than persistent nonusers, persistent former users, decreasing users, U-shaped users, and inverted U-shaped users. However, rates of decline over time were similar for all groups except those decreasing their consumption, who had a greater decline in their level of health-related quality of life than persistent moderate users. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 73, 581–590, 2012)
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#Comment Re: made: 2012-08-06 20:10:07.095203+00 by:
m
[edit history]
The difficulty is that no one knows before they have been drinking moderately for a long period of time whether or not they will fall into the 8-13% of problem drinkers in the US population. That number of problem drinkers is understated because some one half of all women, and a quarter of men do not drink at all.
It is commonly said that aspirin would not be approved by the FDA today for a variety of reasons. Alcohol does far, far more damage to the population than aspirin.
Arsenic can be a drug of abuse, as it provides a "high." Said use can be controlled for some time with careful titration of the dose. A minor miscalculation, or an attempt to stop using arsenic will quickly result in death.
While I believe that legal restrictions on the use of drugs (with the possible exception of antibiotics) does more harm than good, and believe in the freedom of the pharmacopoeia, attempts at portraying alcohol as harmless, or even healthful are more than a bit off the track.