I agree, and that's why I find prescriptivist approaches like "You should only have 9 drinks a week" frustrating. I wasn't getting whitegirlwasted or shitfaced. I was at a bar hanging out with a ton of people. But if you simply count the number of drinks I had, ohmygod I've got a drinking problem. People seem to assume with drink counts that your drinking is compressed into a shorter period of time. I spent 12 hours at a bar once. God knows how many drinks I had that day, but I had the day off, showed up at noon, and just had a good time hanging out with a ton of people as they came and left. By the end of the night I got slurry but I maintained for a good long time first. By prescriptivist standards I probably had enough drinks for the whole month that day. Never supposed to have more than 3 drinks in one day? More than 3 drinks is "heavy drinking"? What if I have them, as illustrated, over so many hours I never even get drunk? It reminds me of BMI.
And yet I assume no move is being made to assess and potentially update it! Did you read the article about MADD and how they're pushing for a 0.00 legal limit, basically because they need to justify their continued existence now that inebriated driving is regulated/policed and so on? I'll try to find it if you didn't. In addition, I'll note that when I attempt to find out from a government institution how much I should drink a day, what comes up is the "National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism." Seems like an agency with a very clear agenda and bias to me. (The government says one drink a day, by the way. Clearly, the government does not believe in having any fun. Also, what, they don't want my taxes? C'moonnnnn.)
See, I'm pretty sure it was on Reddit and my opinions were flavored by the comments. What I can find that seems about right is this but Reddit claims the link's never been submitted. This is clearly wrong because I was doing a site:reddit.com search on Google. Radley Balko seems to be the loudest voice in this corner. I wish I could find something not by him, but it is what it is. I think the first article is the best if you don't want to waste your time.