Staying Alive (and a nice glass of red)

I think you are absolutely right. I have always been a drinker - a binge drinker in my teens and early twenties then I settled into a life of drinking 4-5 glasses of wine most evenings by my late 20s. Had a break in my early thirties for my 3 pregnancies and breast feeding but went back to it soon after that. I did cut back a bit when I hit 40 (from drinking 6 days a week to 3) but it is only in the last year of so that I've reached pretty much the same conclusion you have.

When I was diagnosed with my cancer two years ago at 46 I had heard about the breast cancer risk (it was my main reason for cutting back when I turned 40) and one of my first thoughts was "I've brought this on myself by drinking so much."  

So when I decided to fess up to my oncologist I was expecting a bit of a lecture and a stern warning to cut right back or even stop  (I knew I'd still been drinking too much). So I was quite taken aback when she said "Don't beat yourself up about it, the link between breast cancer and alcohol is actually quite weak". Yes, she really did say exactly that!

At the time I thought "Great, I can keep drinking." but since then I have on several occasions trawled  the web on this subject myself and almost everything I have read supports the conclusion of a strong link between alcohol and breast cancer and that there are really no "safe" limits  particularly for estrogen positive breast cancer like mine. One site described drinking alcohol when you've had estrogen positive breast cancer as like throwing gasoline on a fire! Scary.

I don't know why my oncologist said what she said. Maybe she was trying to be kind and make me feel better or maybe she likes a drink herself and has downplayed the risk in her own mind. Whatever the reason, I have decided that I need to disregard her comment on this issue. 

But of coursse it's not an easy thing to give up alcohol after decades of heavy drinking, particularly when we live in a culture that is so focussed on alcohol as part of every occasion and celebration. I admit I have struggled with it and am still struggling with it. 

What has helped me enormously - and I would highly recommend it to anyone reading this who might want to cut down or stop drinking - is the website Hello Sunday Morning. I first heard about it when I read Jill Stark's book about heavy drinking called High Sobriety. (Also well worth a read.) The website is a basically an online forum for people trying to cut back or stop drinking. You blog about how you're going (anonymously) and others comment and support you. 

Participating on this site helped me reduce my drinking from 3 days a week to about once a fortnight initially. I then tried to cut back to only drinking on special occasions and now I'm about one month into a 3 month HSM as they call it  - or period of total abstinance. It is getting easier but I do still struggle with this. 

I think given the eveidence I probably should give up completely, for ever. But that is a hard thing for me to get my head around at the moment (yes. I suppose I must be an addict). So I am working towards it in steps. I'll get through this three month period first then see where I go from there. If I do continue to drink I know it needs to be very sparingly and very occasionally. Ideally though, you are right. We shouldn't drink at all.