You really believe that light alcohol consumption carries no risk?
For example, no one has ever, in the history of humans, had a single beer which has impaired them enough to get into a fatal crash? Even a single such accident would raise the impact of alcohol above the baseline by some tiny amount.
Perhaps the impact is minimal but it certainly exists.
That's a pretty strong claim there. Yes you are right that alcohol has a role a social lubricant. But to claim not having leads to being lonely at home is extreme.
I’m absolutely not implying in any way that alcohol is needed to make social connections. It’s just a fact, either in scientific research and historical research, that it helps tremendously.
You are fine and that’s nice. But my thinking was about people who struggles to socialize and suffer from it.
From a health perspective, are those people better alone at home or should they profit from the alcohol properties, even at moderate doses to create better connections ?
The question is important because socialization is important for your health. It greatly reduces stress and anxiety, it improves self confidence, and more generally, it gives you more luck in life. COVID lockdowns impacts on mental health are real, for example.
You seem to don’t drink alcohol (which, again, is perfect) so maybe you don’t know that its social lubricant effects (making shy people talk without anxiety, if you want) are effective at really low dose, way before being drunk.
You can socialize without alcohol and you should, like people do literally all the time. Imagine being able to talk to others only when you are "socially lubricated"... a slippery slope for alcoholism.
Struggling with socializing is a matter of being inexperienced at it, like you would struggle to play guitar or to swim if you've never done it long enough to be at least proficient at them. Luckily socializing is one of the few things we've been doing since we were born so we got a degree of experience there.
If the struggle comes from having underlying issues that undermine your ability to socialize, say, lack of self esteem, depression or any other mental health issues, those need to be addressed as well and drinking is not going to solve them.
Actually those conditions will most likely improve by socializing without alcohol. Alcohol is just a false friend.
As a moderate outgoing and sober person, alcohol actually makes me shy, it numbs me down and takes away the edge I've been sharpening all my life. In other words it prevents me from actually be myself.
20 years ago in college and while in the military I drank and partied like everyone else, and have all the stories to go with it -- so I'm extremely aware of the theoretical social benefits
Looking back however, there were really zero added benefits to the relationships that were "lubricated" by alcohol that we couldn't have gotten had we put more effort into doing something creative or actively community building - rather than going out to drink and flirt. All of my best relationships were formed this way.
In fact if I think of times I was aware of or involved in when bad things happened (luckily I never had any problems personally) - alcohol was almost always involved.
At this point I will always prefer figuring out something interesting to do instead of contributing to "drinking culture."
I didn't claim that. We are talking about population level trends, not individual anecdotes. The question is: does light drinking cause people to live shorter or worse lives overall? The answer is: we have no idea, and the answer may be that it has the opposite effect.
You have no idea of the actual baseline though. Perhaps the effects of one glass of alcohol on blood pressure and some random internal protein already give light drinkers an average extra three days of lifespan, which would far outweigh your one time a beer killed someone.
For example, no one has ever, in the history of humans, had a single beer which has impaired them enough to get into a fatal crash? Even a single such accident would raise the impact of alcohol above the baseline by some tiny amount.
Perhaps the impact is minimal but it certainly exists.