Study confirms that, oh shit, we’ve all been drinking too much

At some point in recent years you have likely stumbled upon the notion that moderate drinking is in some ways good for you. Something about the heart, and antioxidants—whatever, you didn’t really want to delve into deep. Medical studies that conveniently fit your lifestyle are like $20 bills randomly found on the street. The more questions you ask, the less satisfying the answer.

Anyway, we bring this up because of a new multi-nation study published in the Lancet that says in essence, no, not really. Whereas moderate low-risk drinking for men in the U.S. was defined by doctors as two drinks a day or 14 drinks a week, the new study says anything more than a drink a day has hazardous effects on your life expectancy. A little bit of drinking still has some redeeming benefits in that it lowers the risk of heart attack. But after that, other risks are elevated: stroke, heart failure, random texting of old girlfriends, etc.

Of course this is particularly relevant to us given our own recent study about the effects of alcohol on your golf game, in which Golf Digest editors made complete asses of themselves submitted their bodies to science to see how their games held up the more they drank. The results in a sense mapped the findings of this new study. A little bit of booze had some upside, but there were precipitously diminishing returns once they ventured into lampshade-wearing territory.

So with that in mind, we say have a beer tonight, and one tomorrow, but if you think that fourth Bud Light is basically the canned equivalent of a kale smoothie, well you’re even more delusional than the rest of us.