Ep. 1822 - Debunking The Most Absurd Anti-Alcohol Propaganda

**Matt Walsh** (0:00)
For the first time since the temperance movement of the 19th century, which led to the catastrophe of prohibition, alcohol has once again become a very dirty word in the United States. And it happened pretty suddenly too. No matter where you look, from podcasts to television news to WebMD, you'll find the same message, which is genuinely insane. They'll tell you that any amount of alcohol, no matter how small, will poison you. They'll tell you that you'll get cancer if you drink in addition to destroying your sleep cycle, and your will to live.
This message is everywhere. Watch.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:35)
But of course, alcohol is worse than pot.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:38)
Alcohol is worse than pot.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:39)
Everything, right?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:40)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:40)
Basically, isn't alcohol worse than everything?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:42)
Yeah. Zero alcohol is better than any.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:45)
Right.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
Two drinks maximum for an adult non-alcoholic per week. It's the upper threshold.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:51)
Week.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:51)
Per week.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:52)
Week.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:53)
What you can do without starting to increase your risk for cancer, increase your, you know, about 5% of all cancers.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:58)
Business week.

**SPEAKER_7** (1:01)
About 100,000 cases of cancer each year in the United States are due to alcohol consumption. And about 20,000 deaths. This isn't a small problem.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:11)
Mayo Clinic's Dr. Donald Hendrude says alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the US behind tobacco use and obesity.

**SPEAKER_7** (1:20)
The risk starts with actually relatively low intakes of alcohol over a long period of time. Assuming it once in a while probably isn't going to increase the risk that much. But there are many people who consume it regularly. And there are many people who assume that there are health benefits on the heart.
And these benefits probably aren't as strong as what we used to believe.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:42)
He says when drinking alcohol is combined with tobacco use, the risk of cancer increases significantly.

**SPEAKER_7** (1:48)
Studies have suggested the optimal amount of alcohol for people less than 50 is zero. We need to dial back, I think, a little bit on our alcohol consumption.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:57)
It's one of those areas where you don't understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a while.
And I think about my own relationship with drinking, I stopped drinking at 30 years old, I'm now 33 And I had just drank because I just drank. I'd never ran the experiment of just giving it up for a while. And then, like, I don't know, maybe I was at 31, I thought, you know, I'll have a drink again, because now I could really A-B test it. I had a year of not drinking, decided to have a drink again. It ruined three days of my life. I had a couple of glasses of wine, didn't get drunk, it ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect it caused. So it meant that I got worse sleep that night. And then because I got worse sleep that night, I ate more poorly the next day because my dopamine system or whatever, the cortisol system was messed up.
And then I podcasted worse. I didn't go to the gym the day after, that day or the day after because of that, because I felt really bad.

**Matt Walsh** (2:46)
Now, we played that last clip before a few months ago, but it truly never gets old. I mean, you'd have to waterboard me for like a month to get me to talk like that. And I still probably wouldn't. I mean, he says he podcasted worse and that three days of life were ruined because he drank a couple glasses of wine.
I mean, it couldn't have been anything else like maybe a virus, food poisoning, couldn't be the fact that he's really a woman in disguise. I mean, no, it was definitely the two glasses of wine that somehow caused a debilitating three day hangover in this otherwise healthy young adult man. Then there's the claim on Bill Marshow and from the Mayo Clinic that alcohol causes cancer, which sounds scary until you realize that everything you consume, literally everything, including bacon, red meat, coffee, tea, Chinese food, so on, also increases your risk of cancer. There are studies on all of this and I could sit here for the next hour listing foods that might cause cancer, beef, pork chops, cereal, white bread, cookies, ice cream, and on and on and on. Do you enjoy barbecued chicken cooked over charcoal? Well, I do too. Well, guess what? The high temperature and the smoke creates chemicals that stick to the surface of the chicken and might cause cancer. Have fun at the cookout. Like I said, we could be here all day and it's not just stuff you eat by the way, scented candles, household cleaners, plastic bottles, mattresses, furniture every day you are surrounded by seemingly innocuous objects that according to research, can increase your risk of cancer to some degree. That's to say nothing of the cell phone you're currently holding in your hand or in your pocket. Life itself increases the risk of developing cancer. Everybody will get cancer eventually if they live long enough, like Commissioner Gordon or whichever character said in The Dark Knight, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself get cancer, or words to that effect. I don't really remember. I think it was something like that. Now, of course, amid all this fear-mongering, nobody ever really explains, when they tell us about increased cancer risk from alcohol or anything else, they don't really explain that they're talking about relative risk, not absolute risk. I explained this also on the show a few months ago, but it bears repeating. You know, when it's announced that, for example, moderate drinking increases a woman's risk of breast cancer by 23%, which is what they'll say, what they mean, though they rarely explain it, is that it increases her relative risk by 23%.