Does drinking shorten your life?
On this page
Heavy drinking does, by years. Light drinking doesn’t add years once studies stop counting former drinkers as non-drinkers. Fewer drinks is safer, and none is fine.
What we’d do
Don’t start drinking for your health. If you drink, keep it to a few drinks a week, and fewer is better. The part with years attached is staying away from heavy drinking, which in the big US habits study meant about two or more drinks a day.
Why everyone thought a glass a day was good for you
For decades, study after study found that moderate drinkers outlived non-drinkers. Plotted on a chart, risk dipped for light drinkers and climbed for heavy ones, a J-shaped curve that turned into headlines about red wine.
The trouble was the “non-drinkers”. In many studies they included former drinkers, some of whom had quit because they were already ill. Comparing light drinkers with that group made light drinking look protective.
The simple version
Imagine comparing people who go to work with people who stay home, and concluding that work keeps you healthy. Some of the people at home are there because they’re sick. Light drinkers looked healthy for the same reason.
What happens when the comparison is fair
In 2023, researchers pooled 107 studies with 4.8 million people and 425,564 deaths, and adjusted for former drinkers and study quality. Compared with lifelong non-drinkers, occasional drinkers and low-volume drinkers (up to 24 grams a day, a bit under two US drinks) had no lower risk of dying beyond what chance could explain. Risk rose at 45 grams a day and up, by 19%, and at 65 grams and up, by 35%. Women who drank had higher risk than women who’d never drunk.
A US standard drink holds about 14 grams of alcohol: a 12-ounce beer at 5%, a 5-ounce glass of wine at 12% or a 1.5-ounce shot of spirits at 40%.
How many years?
A 2018 study in the Lancet pooled 599,912 current drinkers in 83 studies across 19 high-income countries. Compared with drinking up to 100 grams a week (about 7 US drinks), life expectancy at 40 was shorter by:
| Drinks a week | Grams a week | Years shorter at 40 |
|---|---|---|
| About 7 to 14 | 100 to 200 | about half a year |
| About 14 to 25 | 200 to 350 | 1 to 2 years |
| Over 25 | over 350 | 4 to 5 years |
The CDC counts about 178,000 US deaths a year from excessive drinking in 2020 and 2021, and those deaths cut lives short by an average of 24 years.
How our calculator handles it
The Harvard habits study counted moderate drinking as one of its five healthy habits, and in its data people who drank nothing had 27% higher risk than light drinkers. That’s the same former-drinker problem. Our calculator counts no more than 7 drinks a week for women and 14 for men, none included, as meeting the habit, and only ever shows drinking as a cost at about two drinks a day or more, where the study found 25% higher risk. It never tells a non-drinker to start.
For blood pressure and weight, see does alcohol raise blood pressure and does alcohol make you fat. For the red wine story, a glass of red wine a day helps you live longer.
5 sources
- Zhao J and others, Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-analyses, JAMA Network Open, 2023pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Wood AM and others, Risk thresholds for alcohol consumption: combined analysis of individual-participant data for 599 912 current drinkers in 83 prospective studies, Lancet, 2018pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Li Y and others, Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population, Circulation, 2018pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Facts About U.S. Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Usecdc.gov
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, What Is A Standard Drink?niaaa.nih.gov
