Right off, you understand.
An alert reader (be a lert, your blog needs lerts!) sent me this:
According to Margaret Rhodes, the Queen\’s cousin, HM\’s alcohol intake never varies. She takes a gin and Dubonnet before lunch, with a slice of lemon and a lot of ice. She will take wine with lunch and a dry Martini and a glass of champagne in the evening. That comes to six units a day, which would make Her Majesty a binge drinker by Government standards.
Could be more than 6 units, depends on the heavy or not hand there. And I will admit that I prefer not the lunch part. Same consumption, a cocktail, some wine, perhaps a cognac or a port after dinner. 6-8 units a day…..8-10 with that hand.
HM is 88…clearly booze kills….
85, actually, 86 later this year. But still doing very well for her age. And her mother lived to over 100 despite being famously fond of a tipple.
HM is 86
Pedant alert- she’s 85, will be 86 in April, but your point still stands well made.
I knew a guy who could drink a lumberjack under the table and he lived to be 95. Good genes will do that for you
for what its worth, my grandmother of about the same generation (maybe ten years older) gave up smoking at the age of 88 and drank a few sherrys and half a bottle of whisky a day
old age killed her at 98
” And her mother lived to over 100 despite being famously fond of a tipple.”
And also famously fond of a smokle if my memory serves me right, true?
– MJM
The current definition of “dangerous drinking” in Australia is *2* units a day.
For healthy men and women, drinking no more than two standard drinks on any day reduces the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury.
From http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/your-health/alcohol-guidelines
Doctors who deal with substance abuse just laugh at this. For them, if you can get down to less than 10 units, all in the afternoon/evening and none after midnight (so you’re sober for work in the morning), their job is done.
It used to be 4 for men and 2 for women, but they decided to get all egalitarian about it. Biology be damned.
Yes, but one can expect somebody of such privileged background and upbringing not to be effected by alcohol consumption. But what about the poor…(continues)
The lower the ‘limit’ the better – the loons are overreaching themselves and being exposed as the fanatics they are.
I can recommend following the link that Ltw provided, if only for its opening sentence (spoilers!) “Alcohol has a complex role in Australian society.”
I was hoping to find that an “Australian standard drink” made up for the 2 drink limit, but surprisingly a standard Australian drink was much less than a bottle! (In fact, since an average “restaurant serve” of wine is 1.6 drinks, you’re over with 2!)
That Australian site is for a Health and Medical Research Council. If you carry on to one of the information pages (http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/your-health/alcohol-guidelines/alcohol-and-health-australia)
you’ll find that over 8 years they spent over $19.7m on research related to alcohol, but even so, the text above says:
“While the number of emergency department presentations caused by alcohol is unknown, it is likely to account for a large proportion of all presentations”, and
“It has been estimated that alcohol cost the Australian community about $15.3 billion in 2004–05, when factors such as crime and violence, treatment costs, loss of productivity and premature death were taken into account. These figures are recognised to be conservative, as the cost of alcohol related absenteeism alone has recently been estimated at $1.2 billion per year, using self-report data from the 2001 National Drug Strategy Household Survey”
and I thought the RIAA and MPIAA were unusually self-serving in making up their figures (on piracy).
Drinking enough booze to damage your liver, or to lead to falling-down injuries, fighting injuries and car crash injuries is pretty bloody silly. The idea that you can do anything useful about such idiocies by bullying moderate drinkers to drink a little bit less is disgustingly dishonest and/or stupid.
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“bullying moderate drinkers …”
It’s similar with drink-driving. I’m one of those who learnt to drive late enough that I follow the rule that I don’t drink anything at all if I’m going to be driving, so reducing the limits wouldn’t affect me. It still bothers me, though, because the figures I’ve read suggest that drink-drivers are really seriously over the existing limit. As you say, reducing the limit for everyone else would apparently have little or no effect on the accident results (except to create more criminals by reducing the existing limit).
Similarly, with this unit business, being scientifically inclined, I’d actually like to know what “enough” *really* is in the context of “drinking enough booze to damage your liver/kidney/pancreas/brain/etc.” (Obviously there’s a non-trivial personal element, so it’s a range.) Instead I get numbers that (a) a committee made up because the government of the day wanted a number, and (b) change periodically to suit some campaign.
“Alcohol has a complex role in Australian society.”
I found that hilarious too CHF. I suspect they mean “you’re really not going to like what we have to tell you”…
It should be kept in mind that the figures for “safe” levels of booze were plucked out of thin air.
who gives a flying fuck what that old crone says