On the wagon

      I don’t drink alcohol anymore.

      Well, that’s not completely true. Very occasionally—maybe every three, four weeks or so—I’ll have a small glass of wine, maybe half a glass. Very occasionally, I might have a sip or two from my wife’s wine glass, if wine is something that really goes with what we’re eating.

      But, in general, I’ve pretty much stopped. After my heart attack, the rehab nutritionist told me to stop. (The humane cardiologist, however, advised that yes, I should stop but yeah, maybe a small glass every few weeks won’t kill me.)

      It may be for other, different reasons, but I sense I’m not the only one who has stopped, and particularly not the only one in my age group. More and more friends, it seems, aren’t drinking anymore.  

      Some surely have quit because they’ve heard the surgeon general’s recent warning that there’s a direct link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk, or they know about the federal study that drinking just one alcoholic beverage a day increases the risk of a whole raft of really bad things.

      Others maybe have paid attention to the new research that has disproved the old research that moderate drinking of a little red wine each day was actually good for the heart.  No, it isn’t, says much of the new research. On the contrary.

      (Then again, in another successful attempt to totally confuse us, a recent review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that moderate drinking still had a link to fewer heart attack and stroke deaths, and fewer deaths overall, compared with no drinking. And the European Heart Journal reported that drinking a small or moderate amount of wine can lower the risk of serious cardiovascular disease in people at higher risk. So, choose your study.)

      Whatever research you believe, drinking when old is definitely riskier.  

      As we age, our ability to metabolize alcohol declines. We have higher blood alcohol concentrations after drinking the same amount of alcohol than younger people. That beer or two you could drink without consequence in your 30s or 40s has a lot more impact in your 60s or 70s.

      Because our eyesight and hearing may have deteriorated and our reflexes might have slowed, alcohol can mean more falls, automobile collisions or other kinds of accidents. Drinking also can worsen many medical conditions common among in our age, such as high blood pressure and ulcers.

      And since we tend to take more meds than younger folks, there’s more risk of bad interactions between alcohol and over-the-counter and prescription drugs.

      So, although I have not found indisputable statistical evidence of this, my anecdotal experience and reports from, among others, Harvard Medical School, are that most of us are drinking less as we grow older.

      And while there are lots of possible reasons for this, I think the biggest one is that many of us are worried about increasing memory loss, general cognitive impairment and that dreaded “d” word. All the kinds of stuff that a glass of wine with dinner or that a beer at the game or that a cocktail at the party could accelerate.

      So, many of us, we’ve stopped drinking, but, I think, we haven’t stopped wanting that drink. At least I haven’t.

      Oh, how I’d still like a deep red, full glass of a Cotes du Rhone with a hearty boeuf bourguignon. Or a glinting yellow glass of a New Zealand Marlborough sauvignon blanc with a runny brie.

      And yes, I have tried non-alcoholic wine. It tastes just like I thought it would—like it desperately needs some alcohol.