Alcohol Causes Cancer, But Does Anyone Really GAF?
Observations Of Drinking Culture in the Age of Health Warnings We’d Rather Ignore
My husband and I went out to dinner on Saturday night. Since we are parents to a 14 month old who we had in tow, we went early—5:30 to be exact—and the intimate Japanese restaurant was packed with people just like us. Families. Just like us, but slightly different because we were the only table not drinking.
This might sound like an exaggeration, but I can assure you it’s not. I walked the loop of the dining room at least five times with my kid on my hip, pointing out the lanterns and exit signs to keep him entertained while we waited on our food. While doing so, I did a very sober-person thing, and took note of how many folks were drinking, what they were drinking and how much they were drinking (IYKYK). Which is why I can confirm that every table except ours was consuming alcohol.
While we enjoy the restaurant’s small, delicious food menu, others apparently appreciate the robust bar menu, which is six pages compared to the food’s two. The focus of the restaurant is clearly on a little bit of food that pairs well with a whole lot of booze, but since we usually order take out, we missed the memo.
One table behind us, with three small kids, was ordering as many drinks as they could as long as food was still coming to the table—as the kiddos ordered dessert, the parents threw on one more round of Sapporo, while they downed the remainder of their craft cocktail. I get it. It was 5:30pm. If they played their cards right, they could have three rounds of drinks and still call it a night by seven or be home by seven and pour one (maybe two) more after the kids are in bed by eight…
But I digress.
People were drinking. They were drinking early, they were drinking a lot—cocktails, beers, a fancy smoked drink that the bartender revealed table side—and it occurred to me that nobody actually GAF about the fact that alcohol causes cancer. If they did, surely they wouldn’t be blissfully be sipping away, right?
Right?
Of course, I never actually took a poll. I never stood up and called the attention of the diners to say, “By a quick raise of hands, how many people in here are aware that alcohol is a class one carcinogen, linked to all sorts of cancers?” Follow up question: now that you know, do you give-a-f**k?” But I imagine if I had, the hand raises would have been few.
As I ate my sashimi as quickly as I possibly could (because I’m a parent and parents eat fast), I wondered why that was. Was it only sober folks and wellness weirdos that even read the recent call by the US Surgeon General? Or was it only us who cared? And even if it did briefly resonate with the masses, did it matter?
I remember traveling to London for work in my early 20’s, where I would pick up a pack of Marlboro Lights at the shop before heading to the pub with colleagues and absolutely shutter at the gnarly photograph of diseased lungs that came with the warning label…and then I would move that image into a far away corner of my mind, have a few drinks and step outside to light one up anyway. Which is to say, I guess it only impacts you if you allow it to impact you. It’s easy to miss something you don’t want to see in the first place. Who doesn’t love a good dose of cognitive dissonance with their drag of a cigarette? I know I did.
Drinking booze is ingrained in our culture and while things like the sober curious movement and surge in non alcoholic options are creating some kind of a social shift, it’s only creating a shift for those who want it to.
Sure the evidence exists, but the mainstream narrative is the same: a little is perfectly safe, a lot is not. The answer to drinking like “everyone else” and not getting cancer is simple: control your intake and you’ll be fine. Can’t control your intake? Something is wrong with you—not the highly addictive substance, not the marketing of the substance, not the glamorization of the substance by the media, it’s you.
Also, how are we measuring “a little”? How do we define “normal”? I can assure you it is not the same way the CDC defines it (The CDC defines moderate drinking as two drinks or fewer per day for men and one drink or fewer per day for women. A standard drink is defined as: 12 fl oz of regular beer, 5 fl oz of wine, 1.5 fl oz of 80-proof dust defines distilled spirits). In fact I would bet not one person at that restaurant on Saturday night, believed they were drinking in excess, even if they were having a sophisticated version of a power-hour.
When my drinking was at its worst, I surrounded myself with people who drank like me. We affirmed to each other that our drinking was normal—even when we weren’t drinking daily, we were doing some real damage two to four times a week that made us far exceed moderate drinking. But in the the realm of young, work-hard-play-harder New York City kids (that label lasts into your 30’s by the way) our over consumption of alcohol was totally normal.
Which brings me back to the restaurant on Saturday night and my consensus that nobody who wants to drink really gives a f**k. My 24 year old self can totally relate. Shit, my 35 year old self can relate. Sure I didn’t want to put myself at increased risk of cancer, but so many things put me at an increased risk of cancer. Yes, the warning label on that pack of cigs was terrifying, but a few vodka sodas later and that smoke outside was just piled on with the other stuff I would regret from last night—that’s a tomorrow problem. It’s the good ‘old “I’ll do better next time, diet starts tomorrow,” mentality, that keeps us blissfully ignoring health warnings, the way we feel physically, emotionally, spiritually…
Alcohol-free folks, sober folks and wellness weirdos who care about the alcohol-free movement are still a subculture. For those of us that are in it, it feels much bigger than it actually is.
I stopped drinking five and a half years ago—I coach people on how to do the same—and even I do mental gymnastics over the use of “I’m sober” vs. “I don’t drink” in certain social situations. Not because I carry shame around the label—quite the opposite—but rather because I am hyper aware of who is ready for the conversation and who wants to continue to enjoy a nice bottle of red without connecting or reflecting on my story or my point-of-view. Hell, they don’t want to think about the hangover tomorrow let alone talk about long term health implications. And that’s ok. I am not trying to change everyone (I am only meant to guide certain ones).
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with the fact that most people still don’t care. They aren’t meant to care yet. It’s not our job to force the timing, but rather to trust it. Our sober subculture exists and we’re (super) accessible. If and when they want to tap into us as a resource—to see how the alcohol-free live, to ask questions and to read essays like this, that makes them stop and connect to our stories and start to peel back the onion—we’ll be here, with open arms. And even if the information on cancer causation is already being de-prioritized in search engines and sugar coated in press releases from the alcohol industry, the information is out there. Which means, anyone who wants to can (and will) find it.
When I knew I needed to stop drinking, but didn’t know how—when sobriety felt abstract and unfathomable—I suddenly became a pro at finding information I craved at a soul-level. The information I needed in order to find my path to alcohol freedom. I found articles that challenged my understanding of normal drinkers vs. alcoholics. I learned that addiction existed on a spectrum. I found the stories of sober people who had a whole range of reasons they stopped drinking and ways they went about stopping. I began to understand that rock bottoms didn’t need to look the way that they did in the movies and that I had had many. My desire to break my toxic patterns became my gateway drug for learning as much as I possibly could about alcohol, sobriety, spiritual growth and…myself.
Maybe the mommy that sat behind me in the restaurant will never think twice about her relationship with alcohol. But on the other hand, maybe she will. Maybe she will become sick and tired of feeling run down all the time, maybe her doctor will suggest she “just drink less.” Maybe she will struggle with how to do that or wonder how it is that moderation can seem so dang easy to everyone else, yet feel so hard to her. Maybe that will cause her to start looking things up. Maybe upon a quick Google search, she’ll find a Holistic Sobriety Coach is local to her and say “what the hell is a sobriety coach?” Maybe she’ll stalk me in that low-key way we all do when our mind and soul craves more, and she will stumble across my Substack and read this very essay you are reading right now. And maybe she’ll start to go down the rabbit hole, because now she’s been cracked open and she needs to know as much as she possibly can, about all of it, but most of all, herself.
Be Radically Well,
Courtney
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