The Danger of Thinking Dangerously About Danger
I am alarmed.
The U.S. Surgeon General has forthrightly stated that drinking causes cancer. Period.
I admit, I like a glass of wine or two. I am being told my lifestyle crashes upon the reef of reality. That lovely pinot noir from the Santa Maria valley could kill me.
Surfing is also dangerous. Especially if it’s done on a real reef, such as the one in Tahiti where the Olympics were held in the summer of 2024. Scenes from that competition, held on top of a three foot deep, razor-sharp mass of coral which could maim or kill anyone who crashed upon it, were some of the most mesmerizing Olympic scenes of all time. As with drinking wine, someone could get killed doing that. Yet the surfers persisted, and we watched, with more people joining the telecasts every day. And nobody died. Many of us shared Jerome Brouillet’s image of Brazil's Gabriel Medina: kicking out from a monster wave, victorious one finger salute, his board perfectly aligned as if floating weightlessly in mid-air, away from the warning and danger of it all.
Brazil's Gabriel Medina reacts after getting a large wave in the fifth heat of the men's surfing Round 3.
Photo by JEROME BROUILLET/AFP
Can we compare the surgeon general’s very sober call for us to take it easy on the booze to surfing that reef in Tahiti? And is every one of us who drinks a couple living life on some dangerous edge, like the Brazilian surfer dude who conquers nature and celebrates with a timeless flex? We wish! If you think that about yourself, maybe have another drink before sleeping.
I don’t know that much about surfing, but I’ve been told that it’s all about calculating the risks and attempting highly trained, skilled execution. Most of all, it’s about knowing which wave to choose, studying and reacting to the breaks and, having caught the perfect wave, knowing how to bail at just the right time; hopefully with an epic salute and several photojournalists to document the moment.
In drinking parlance, it’s not about slamming back tequila, yelping like a wild hyena, and passing out in the parking lot. More like sipping fine mezcal while enjoying delicious tacos al carbon.
So is the surgeon general’s warning to be interpreted as “Don’t surf, it’s too dangerous!”?
Or is it more of a “Go ahead and surf, but pick your waves and bring common sense to your ride” situation? Sounds to me like the former. Extrapolated, playing the cancer card feels like the general danger card. Don’t do this, don’t do that, it’s dangerous. Of course, we need to hear this, and as the Surgeon General, he needs to speak truth to us about it.
But could there be danger in speaking dangerously about danger?
It turns out that morbidity is rampant in America. Millions of people die every year! Good God, let’s run for our lives!
Here are just a few of the causes of death which, according to the Center for Disease Control, will kill more Americans than the approximately 20,000 cancer deaths which the Surgeon General says will be caused by alcohol consumption:
Accidents of all kinds. In fact, there must be ten different categories of accidents resulting in more than 20k deaths/year
Legal drug overdoses
Chronic lower respiratory disease
Alzheimer’s
Diabetes
Gunshot wounds in general
Suicides by gunshots
Car accidents
And yes, even Covid
It appears that danger is everywhere. Maybe we should just hide under our bedsheets?
No.
I am grateful to the Surgeon General for pointing out the obvious. Drinking more than just a little is probably not healthy. Eating entire blocks of cheese and loaves of that borax-laden American wheat bread is not going to get you far. Let’s not be sissies about this. If we choose to consume certain things, or to surf above a killer reef in Tahiti, we must know that we put ourselves at risk and might possibly suffer the consequences.
Yet, I feel our surgeon general is making another, perhaps more important point. He is most likely not coming for our pinot noir. I see no signs of neo-prohibition here. It’s more about the hint of suggested moderation. And discernment.
And what of the suggestion that something as seductively delicious and intoxicatingly powerful as alcohol should now be considered absolutely toxic? Must we march to the drumbeat of some syncopated algorithm which insists that our core sense of self be inextricably bound by the knot of preference for a bottle of this or that?
I say: resist. Have a wee dram if you like! You don’t have to drink the whole bottle.
Yes, there is danger in being overly cautious. After all, damn near everything can kill you. But there is also danger in avoiding moderation.
So “cheers!” to the surgeon general, for pointing out the obvious. That we should take it easy with the booze because it can make us feel bad, sick, and may even kill us. You might consider pushing that next drink back toward the barkeep and telling him you no longer want it. Hope he will not charge you for it, but even if he does…cost of doing business. Moderate, dammit! And every so often, have another. Try not to feel guilty for risking your life right then and there, because the surgeon general seems to have tagged you as some irresponsible cretin who defies statistical truths when you are just trying to enjoy a few more minutes of the most human quest there is — a temporary state of happy indulgence. I would argue that failing to occasionally enjoy this state of being also causes cancer, although I have no empirical evidence to prove it.
Let me conclude with this bit of advice, from uncle Bob:
All things in moderation, including moderation.
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