As a class, people who don’t drink at all have a higher
mortality risk than light drinkers. But nondrinkers are a diverse bunch, and
the reasons people have for abstaining affects their individual mortality risk,
in some cases lowering it on par with the risk for light drinkers, according to
a University of Colorado study.
Multiple studies have shown that the likelihood of dying for
people who drink increases as they consume more alcohol. Those same studies
have shown that a person’s mortality risk also increases at the other end of
the spectrum — among people who choose not to drink at all — though the risk is
still much less than for heavy drinkers.