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Health

Alcohol Gives You Cancer So I'm Not Going to Bother with Anything Anymore

Again: Fuck you, 2016.
People giving themselves cancer. Photo via Pixabay

Is anyone else just really tired at the moment? Every day I wake up I feel like someone has filled my skin with boulders and soldered my eyelids shut. I just don't want to do anything anymore. I want to play Rocket League and eat burritos. I don't want to walk around and get on buses and type shit and think. I'm losing it, guys.

You'd think the sweet nectar that is our old friend alcohol would be a relatively safe release from this trundling malaise, but no—you'd be wrong, friend, because guess what? Oh yeah, that's right, baby: Alcohol gives you fucking cancer now. Seven different types of cancer, in fact. You don't even need to drink a lot of it, and you're still at risk of dying from the world's saddest disease. Good god.

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"There is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others," says Jennie Connor, a preventative-medicine doctor at New Zealand's Otago University. Much of the research up to this point only establishes a correlation between drinking and cancer, but Connor suggests that the evidence is strong enough to suggest causation. "The epidemiological evidence can support the judgment that alcohol causes cancer of the oropharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and breast."

So your throat, asshole, and tits—all things you use regularly, depending on your lifestyle, are at risk of getting encancered just because you want one last white-wine spritzer in the sun. Just because you want a fifth beer at your friend's barbecue. Just because you want to do a few shots in a row at a wedding because, somehow, through some arcane witchcraft, you're not pissed enough even after drinking for literally six hours solid.

This is all according to a review published in a friendly sounding journal called Addiction, which, not gonna lie, sounds a little biased. Members of Cancer Research and Drinkaware have all obviously chimed in as well, saying there should be greater awareness about the links between cancer and the drink, with warnings added to labels.

Well, let me tell you something, Cancer Research UK: I love drinking, and I do it every day, and I'm not going stop now. What else is there to help me through the relentless barrage of shit that is 2016? The Nice attack, Trump, the cop in America who shot that black guy with his hands in the air but was apparently actually trying to shoot an autistic man holding a toy car, the car bombing in Iraq, Brexit, the Orlando attack, all the celebrities I like dying, ISIS, my carpal tunnel, my phone bill, my overdraft charges, my overdraft in itself as something that exists, the lack of lunch options near my office, the price of plane tickets, my brain-aching laziness. And now this.

Fuck you, 2016.

Read: Dear 2016, Fuck You