Being an alcoholic myself I have some personal experience in this area. 1. You're only an alcoholic if you drink alcoholically. 2. Even then only the individual themself can make that determination.

There are statistics that would indicate a correlation with tobacco and/or alcohol consumption as causitive factor in as much as 80% of head & neck cancers and many other forms of cancer as well. Retrospective analysis is fairly straightforward. Is a beer every now and then going to kill you? I think not. Is 3 or more a night going to kill you who knows? I have also seen statistics that would indicate that total abstainers have a higher death rate than moderate drinkers. Go figure that one out.

Annual alcohol related deaths rival the total cancer death rate. Twice as many people die annually from auto accidents involving alcohol than the entire H&N cancer death rate. But now I'm getting off topic with non-cancer drivel!

For those of you who just can't break the habit, I wish to thank you for improving my statistical survival odds.

I went through Cisplatin chemotherapy to improve my survival odds a measly 13%. If quitting drnking will produce a 34-57% improvement - seems like a no brainer to me.

Absolutely none of this is directed at Mark.