Anyone who enjoys a tipple probably has bookmarked all the health stories that pop up providing "evidence" that a small amount of alcohol makes you live longer.
Whether the stories are citing the resveratrol antioxidant in red wine, the fact that the followers of the Mediterranean diet often drink small amounts of alcohol, or that longevity studies tend to show that those who have a couple of beers a day are more likely to live into their 90s, it's always welcome news for anyone who winds down (or up) with booze.
But unfortunately, as is often the case with health research, the plot thickens.
The problem with longevity studies is that researchers often study big groups of people and can't necessarily drill down into every minute detail of their lives.
That can skew the results, which is particularly true when looking at alcohol consumption.
Professor Tanya Chikritzhs, head of the Alcohol Policy Research Team at Curtin University's National Drug Research Institute, tells Coach that the most common reason for people to forego alcohol is that they used to be heavy drinkers, and have now stopped or developed a health condition that prevents them drinking.
So the research ends up looking like being a teetotaller increases your risk of early death — but it's actually just because the people in the "non-drinker" category are more likely to suffer poor health or used to be heavy drinkers, which puts them at risk of cancer and heart disease.
By default, it looks like those who drink small amounts of alcohol live longer but it's just that they never had a health scare to force them to quit drinking.
"Low-level drinkers are probably showing protection because their underlying health allows them to drink," Chikritzhs explains.
"It's not because alcohol is protecting them … but because they have better underlying health, which enables them to continue drinking."
Earlier this month a large study concluded that if living a long life is your goal, then you'd better cap your alcohol intake under 100g per week, which is 10 standard drinks (of 10g of alcohol each), and therefore even lower than the Australian government guidelines of having no more than two standard drinks a day.
Chikritzhs says researchers are starting to learn about the importance of careful classification of drinkers and non-drinkers, and that a lot of previous research probably needs to be rethought.
"The non-drinker category ends up a mishmash of people who gave up drinking for health reasons, and a very, very small proportion of people who have never drunk in their lifetime," she says.
"Lifetime abstainers are actually very rare. Even people who claim to be lifetime abstainers at the age of 60, if you follow them back to their twenties and earlier, a large proportion were actually at one time heavy drinkers."
Chikritzhs says that people may experience social benefits from consuming alcohol — but ultimately, it does not seem to be associated with helping you live longer.
"Nobody is saying it doesn’t have its benefits in terms of socialising, and a lot of people use it as a stress reliever, but then ultimately it can turn into a crutch that people can’t get by without," she points out.
"It's well-documented that alcohol interferes with sleep and one of the best things you can do for your health and stress relief is get a good night’s sleep."
As for talk of antioxidants in red wine, Professor Chikritzhs says that there are rarely enough antioxidants to counteract the toxic effect of the ethanol in alcohol.
"Ethanol is an oxidant that creates DNA damage. So the wine might contain a certain level of antioxidants, but is the antioxidant enough to offset the known carcinogenic effects?" she says.
"There's an enormous variability between wines in terms of level of antioxidants – it depends on the soil it's grown in, the country, the climate."
So if you want to live a long and healthy life, then no alcohol — or a very, very small amount — is going to be best.
"Our understanding of the relationship between alcohol and cancer and coronary heart disease and stroke has changed, to the point that our assumptions about benefits are now becoming much more conservative," Professor Chikritzhs says.
"We’ve been saying for ages that it’s probably actually less than a standard drink a day [for a protective effect]."