Thanks, Joost, for your thoughtful comment and for sharing your personal experience. I can relate to the effect of alcohol on mental clarity. My personal experience with it is similar to yours. Aging has a noticeable effect on my ability to metabolize wine and beer. That’s a natural incentive to reduce intake to the level where my mental acuity doesn’t feel compromised. That’s exactly what I’m doing. The enjoyment of a good wine or fresh draft beer still outweighs the statistical risk that comes with it, which is, of course, an entirely subjective point of view.

I didn’t address this issue of mental clarity in my article, because (a) there is insufficient data to argue one way or another, and (b) I wanted to make the point of how risk is typically communicated in a biased way. That’s why I emphasized the paradigm of responsible reassurance (as opposed to biased fear-mongering) that enables readers to informed dissent to either side of the debate.