KEY POINTS:
Hardly a week goes by without another headline trumpeting the surprise perks, or insidious harms of alcohol.
Mix in the popular myths about drinking - and the impulse to rationalise our behaviour - and you have a dizzying blend of truth, self-delusion and misinformation. The reality of what alcohol does to you, according to the experts, is less terrifying, but also less consoling.
Last week was the 40th anniversary of the end of 6 o'clock closing, long fingered as partly to blame for our binge-drinking culture. Getting drunk is a national pastime, as much part of the grain of Kiwi life as home ownership and going to the beach. Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC) figures show nearly half the population thinks it's okay to get drunk, while some 1.2 million drinkers accept binge drinking (drinking beyond the point you feel the effects) as normal and regularly do so, including 125,000 teenagers.
Drink sloshes across social boundaries: we're all doing it, from the lawyers sipping their Campari to the "girls" working their way through the chardonnay and teenagers necking their R2Ds.
A little probably isn't bad for you, but it's debatable whether it's good for you, from a strict health perspective. How good it can make you feel, though, shouldn't be sniffed at.
"There's no evidence that having one glass, or even two, with dinner is going to do most people harm," says Sandra Kirby, deputy CEO of ALAC. "However, for people under 40, the health benefits are questionable. Over 40, there's some evidence that alcohol protects against heart disease, though some people are questioning that now."
The rub is that regular, heavy drinking is pretty much all bad; and a researcher's definition of "heavy" may be more modest than the average social drinker's. Kirby: "It's enough to feel drunk. More than six standard drinks for a man, and more than four for a women." Less if you're sensitive to alcohol, or not a regular tippler. And a large glass of wine may contain two or more standard drinks, defined as 10g of alcohol (100ml of wine, a 330ml can of beer, one shot of spirits).
Jason Humphrey, 34, had his last bender after the All Blacks' thumping of Scotland two weeks ago. Regular drinking, though, comes with the job for the Auckland-based finance professional and singleton. It's not unusual for him to get through a bottle of red with dinner and six to eight pints of beer over a night, and, with a little help from Berocca, turn up at work by 6.45am after carousing until 3am.
"I thought I was a pisshead at uni, but I reckon in this work environment, I drink more [regularly] than I did at uni." Drinkers often do, though, use inebriation to justify, or at least laugh away, indiscretions, bad behaviour and acting out of character (we claim).
Time to take a closer look at the myths, and realities, of getting ratted.
Alcohol brings out your inner, true self.
Undoubtedly, grog dissolves inhibitions. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant - it slows activity in the brain and spinal cord. The euphoria we feel after those first few glasses is partly because the first brain region it acts on is the pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for planning, reasoning, and suppressing urges from the limbic system, the seat of emotion and the unconsciousness.
Gin makes you cry, bubbly makes you flirt, tequila makes you violent.
Despite common lore, there's no evidence that different kinds of alcohol elicit different moods. Intriguingly, there's evidence our expectations heavily influence how alcohol transforms us. Psychologist Alan Marlatt set up a fake bar at the University of Washington, plied volunteer students with either real alcoholic drinks or taste-identical substitutes, and observed their behaviour. The students who drank a substitute under the impression it was the real thing, felt, and behaved, as if they were really drunk. They were louder, flirting, standing up and feeling dizzy, despite being stone-cold sober.
Says Dr Simon Adamson, senior lecturer at Otago University's National Addiction Centre, "How people behave when they drink is not simply a result of the pharmacology. Some people will anticipate that they're going to become aggro when they drink, and the fact they tend to get into fights at the pub isn't a surprise - that's more than the effects of alcohol."
Wine is better for you than other alcohol, especially red wine.
A raft of studies has reinforced the long-held belief that a little vino a day keeps the doctor away. Wine drinkers have been found to have lower rates of cancer, coronary artery disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, and to live longer than people who drink other alcohol and teetotallers.
Red wine has been particularly feted for being high in free-radical busting antioxidants, believed to help fend off heart disease and cancer.
However, a closer look suggests wine drinkers tend to lead healthier lives in general. Wine may be a marker, rather than a cause, of salubrity. Danish researchers analysed 3.5 million supermarket receipts and found that wine-only drinkers tended to buy more fruit and vegetable, low-fat meals and cheeses than did other shoppers. Beer-only drinkers stacked their trollies with ready-to-eat meals, cold-cuts, sausages, sugary food and soft drinks. The wine drinkers also tended to be more highly educated, wealthier and fitter than beer drinkers.
Not to knock a good brew, other research has shown beer is as rich in certain antioxidants and contains more protein and B vitamins than red wine, and that all alcoholic drinks appear to be equally protective against heart disease.
A drink or two a day fends off heart disease
One school of thought says alcohol is protective against heart disease, another says it's harmful. Rod Jackson, professor of epidemiology at Auckland University, used to be a proponent of the first. Then he realised there was a third explanation. "The evidence best supports there being little benefit of alcohol on the heart until one drinks at least daily, and probably at least two to three drinks per day. Any apparent benefit from light to moderate drinking (less than that) is probably due to those drinkers being light to moderate people in lots of other ways (for example, diet, exercise, risk taking behaviours) and these other behaviours are probably protecting them, not the alcohol."
The sting is by the time you drink enough to benefit your coronary arteries, the adverse effects of alcohol (think liver disease, cancer, injury, high blood pressure, other forms of heart disease) outweigh the benefits.
A research review by Auckland University professor Ross McCormick and GP Graham Gulbransen also led them to suspect it was other factors that helped moderate drinkers' hearts. They don't rule out protective powers, especially in older people, but found binge drinkers appeared to be at greatest risk of cardiovascular disease than any other group.
More than 35 drinks a week can give you "holiday heart", a rapid, irregular heartbeat caused by the heart's upper chambers contracting too quickly, increasing the risk of a stroke fivefold.
Booze causes cancer.
Last month, research came out suggesting women who have more than three drinks a day increase their risk of breast cancer by 30 per cent. Sounds scary, says McCormick, but you must weigh up your personal risk. "If I was relatively risk-free, I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest."
There's a stronger link between alcohol and head and neck cancers, because of the toxins produced in the breakdown of alcohol. The "horrors" in the dry horrors come from the build-up of the toxin acetaldehyde in the mouth, which is carcinogenic.
Heavy drinkers are more likely to suffer stomach ulcers, high blood pressure or accidents than cancer. McCormick cites research suggesting blood alcohol at the current limit for driving increases the risk of road accidents by seven times over driving sober. An estimated 4 per cent (1040) of deaths every year are alcohol related, mainly from car accidents and other injuries in younger people and men.
Booze gives you beer-goggles.
A Scottish study found men and women who had drunk a moderate amount of alcohol found photos of the opposite sex 25 per cent more attractive than their sober counterparts. The explanation: as well as clouding judgment and making it harder to focus, alcohol stimulates the part of the human brain used to determine facial attractiveness, the nucleus accumbens.
Alcohol makes you horny, but undermines your sexual performance
It's a cruel fact: alcohol's disinhibition can unleash the libido, but often the mind is writing cheques the body can't cash. Brewer's droop happens when men drink so much their sexual arousal system is depressed, along with the rest of their central nervous system. Chronic heavy drinking can cause a drop in testosterone levels, testicular shrinkage and impotence. In women, menstrual cycles can be disrupted and fertility is affected. Studies have shown women who have up to five drinks a week are twice as likely to conceive than those who drink 10 or more.
Excessive drinking in Kiwi women, especially young women, seems to be on the rise, with more women than men now admitted to hospital with alcoholic poisoning than men. Anecdotally, young women sometimes use alcohol to get around the sexual double standard. Observes Adamson, "Men have to work hard to achieve a one night stand, for women it's not difficult but there's still that social opprobrium. Women are more likely to say, 'I had so much to drink last night I can't remember what I did and I woke up at this complete dick's place.' It's a way of distancing themselves from what they're doing."
More women drinking more heavily inevitably raises the risk of women boozing up in the first weeks of pregnancy, before they realise they're pregnant. Adamson believes this is an argument for strongly promoting contraception and for curbing binge drinking.
Drink to drown your sorrows.
When All Black Doug Howlett and friends racked up their $33,000 bar tab in London last week, it's a fair bet they were doing what many of us would do after suffering a broken heart - trying to drown their sorrows. But new research by Professor Matt During and Dr Maggie Kalev from Auckland University suggests it was more likely they were burning the pain of their World Cup loss deeper into their memories.
High doses of alcohol seemed to impair memory, except for emotionally charged memories, especially negative ones. Explains Kalev: "That doesn't mean it's beneficial. We all discard a lot of information every day, particularly information that's negative, so our behaviour doesn't get paralysed." Alcohol may impede the production of new neurons needed for this discarding.
There's a gene for alcoholism.
The causes of alcoholism are roughly half genetic, half environmental. And perhaps 100 genes cumulatively stack up the risk. Among them may be genes for otherwise adaptive qualities like curiosity and risk-taking.
DRUNK TALK
* tiddly
* squiffy
* merry
* on the turps
* whizzed
* wangered
* pissed (as a newt; to beat the band)
* horsed
* munted
* blotto
* drunk-as-a-skunk
* axed, or pole-axed
* wasted
* boozed
* bamboozled
* hammered
* slaughtered
* bladdered
* slashed
* smashed
* lashed
* sh*tfaced
* pie-eyed
* trolleyed
* mortal
* ratted
* sozzled
* mullered
* loaded
* fubar
* roaring
* steaming
