Too dark? Let’s look at ‘Timmy,’ ‘Soleil,’ and ‘Rummy’ instead
In the age of product awareness — when Canadian consumers expect to know the exact daily recommended intake of sugar in their morning serving of yogurt — it’s amazing that alcohol is exempt from this standard.
Apart from a beverage container’s alcohol content, no other warning label or nutrition table is required. Sure, consumers generally know that alcohol is harmful, but the risk assessment often stops there.
This lack of transparency is why UVic’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR) launched knowalcohol.ca — a tool that allows users to calculate the health risks related to their own personalized drinking patterns.
According to the website, Know Alcohol is the first website designed to provide Canadians with personalized information on health, costs, and calories related to their alcohol consumption, as well as the benefits and savings of reducing their intake.
The website also offers a Standard Drink Calculator which can inform users how many standard drinks any given pour contains — based on Health Canada’s standard drink definition (17.05 millilitres (mL) or 13.45 grams of pure ethanol).
For example, one 20-ounce, seven-per cent pint of, say, Driftwood Brewery’s Fat Tug IPA, would actually be 2.33 standard drinks.
The website’s generated health impacts — such as alcohol-related disease, cigarette equivalency, and minutes of life lost per drink — are created using mathematical models from Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health. While the financial impact cost of a user’s consumption is calculated using an average price of $2.71 for a standard drink in British Columbia, users can also adjust the price per drink feature as needed.
Let’s take a look at how this website works, using a few “University of Pretendoria” community members as examples.
Timmy Bean, 23 years old, male
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
Timmy considers his drinking moderate for his age, especially compared to his roommates. He studies diligently during the week and gives himself a green light on Fridays to get after it. It is university after all. Friday nights may include sharing a sixer of Pabst at the kitchen table with a friend while they play drinking games with Timmy’s roommates. Three standard drinks in, Timmy usually heads downtown with the group afterwards — recently, to Peacocks, then Big Bad Johns, where if he had to ballpark it, he drinks the equivalent of another seven or eight standard-sized drinks (between the shared pitchers and shafts his friend orders for the group). The hangover on Saturday ––sometimes lingering into Sunday –– is motivation enough to stray from the drinks for the rest of the weekend. However, every other week (give or take), Timmy goes to a pub with the rest of his indoor soccer team after their Wednesday night game, where he’ll have one or two sleeves of beer, and maybe one more when he gets home if there’s anything in the fridge. Timmy enters 12 standard drinks as his weekly amount and admits that, sure, maybe he could cut himself off a little earlier on those Friday nights.
Key knowalcohol.ca figures for Timmy:
With 12 drinks per week:
- Timmy’s chance of being diagnosed with an alcohol-related cancer, compared to a non-drinker, is 19.8%. With four fewer drinks per week, that likelihood goes down to 12.3%.
- Timmy currently spends $141.30 per month on alcohol. With four fewer drinks per week, Timmy will save $565.22 annually.
Soleil Bombay, 19 years old, female
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
Soleil is a freshman at university who seldom drank in high school. At university, however, she lives in residence and often finds alcohol to be at the center of her new social circle. Though she likes to be included in the party, she’s comfortable staying sober some nights — even on weekends — and enjoys looking out for her drunk friends when they go out. A labor of love, if you will. That being said, Soleil still drinks on occasion and has recently discovered a taste — refined, if she must say so herself — for oysters paired with Chablis. That is, if the restaurant is cute and she knows the oysters are fresh. Soleil enters her weekly average standard drink count at just under two but rounds up.
*Soleil has no risk of dying early from alcohol.
- Soleil saves $70.65 per month compared to someone who drinks an average of eight standard drinks per week.
Rummy DeAngelo, 29 years old, male
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
Rummy is a Master of Philosophy postgrad but is barely keeping up with the program’s demands of research, writing, and teaching that only ever compound instead of shrinking. Rummy fights fatigue most days but finds he can usually get through his tasks with a beer at lunch, followed by what’s slowly developing into a habit of rationing a mickey of rum throughout the afternoon and early evening. He drinks the rum mixed with OJ from a vacuum-sealed stainless steel water bottle. Rummy will often take Sundays off from drinking. His intention is to string together more than one sober day in a row, though he almost never does. Rummy’s cohort has yet to notice the severity of his daily coping mechanism, though Rummy suspects they can see the decline in the quality of his work. Rummy spends most evenings grading undergraduate papers or staring blurrily at his laptop trying desperately to contribute to his dissertation, while sipping sparingly from a bottle of red wine on his desk. Rummy guesstimates his weekly average standard drink count somewhere north of the Know Alcohol model’s max of 52 standard drinks per week.
Key knowalcohol.ca figures for Rummy:
With 52 drinks per week:
- Compared to a non-drinker, Rummy has an increased alcohol-related cancer risk higher than 134%.
- Average life lost per drink: over 16.4 minutes
- Equivalent number of cigarettes: over 42 per week
- Yearly cost: over $7 500
- Percentage of daily calories from alcohol: more than 56%
