17/08/2026
My father was an alcoholic. Although once I became an adult, he quit. My mother rarely had a drink.
I never drank in high school. In college, I tried a Long Island Iced Tea once—and hated it. But what made an even bigger impression on me was watching so many young people get drunk, throw up, suffer through terrible hangovers, and sometimes not even remember what they had done the night before.
I never understood it.
I never understood the desire to intentionally make yourself sick in the name of having fun. I never understood why “cutting loose” had to mean losing control or making a fool of yourself. And I never understood using alcohol to escape or numb pain, knowing that whatever you were trying to escape would still be there the next morning.
In my entire life, I have probably had fewer than 10 alcoholic drinks with dinner. And I truly don’t feel as though I have missed a thing. I have celebrated, traveled, danced, laughed until I cried, attended parties and enjoyed an incredibly full life without needing alcohol to enhance any of it.
As another college year begins, I think this is worth talking about.
So many parents accept drinking as a “rite of passage.” Some become drinking buddies with their young adult children. Some laugh about fraternity and sorority drinking. Others turn a blind eye. And at football games across the country, adults will tailgate for hours, sometimes drinking to the point of intoxication, while an entire generation watches.
Children begin watching us long before college.
When they’re little, they see the glass in our hand and hear, “That’s a grown-up drink.” As they get older, they absorb the message that alcohol is how adults celebrate, relax, socialize, cope and have fun.
Then suddenly they’re 18, 19 or 21, and we’re surprised when they believe drinking is simply part of becoming an adult.
There is something else I wish more parents knew: alcohol is a known human carcinogen. Scientific evidence links alcohol consumption to at least seven types of cancer, including cancers of the breast, colon and re**um, liver, mouth, throat, esophagus and voice box. And in general, the more alcohol consumed, the greater the risk.
I’m not writing this to judge anyone who chooses to drink. I’m writing it because I think we should be honest with ourselves—and especially with our children—about what alcohol is and the risks that come with it.
We spend years teaching our children to make healthy choices. Maybe alcohol deserves to be part of that conversation too.
Read the data below. Then decide what message you want to send.
WHO states that there is no amount of alcohol that can be considered completely risk-free with respect to cancer. Even relatively small amounts can increase the risk of some cancers, particularly breast cancer.
But that doesn’t mean one glass of wine gives you a high cancer risk. Cancer risk generally rises with the amount and frequency of alcohol consumed. In other words:
Zero alcohol = lowest alcohol-related cancer risk.
Occasional/light drinking = small additional risk.
Regular/heavier drinking = progressively greater risk.
For example, the National Cancer Institute notes that women who average one alcoholic drink per day have a higher breast-cancer risk than women who drink less than one drink per week. The magnitude of risk depends heavily on how much and how often a person drinks.
IARC classified alcoholic beverages as a Group 1 carcinogen in the late 1980s.
