I don’t need psychotherapy to know why I’ve never worn a pair of flip-flops.

It’s because of a question I asked my father at the swimming pool when I was four years old. I know I was four because just before I asked it, the radio DJ introduced “Satisfaction,” which became the summer song of 1965, as the “groovy” new tune by the Rolling Stones.

How’s that for a bitchin’ memory?

Anyway, I was sitting on a blanket when a man wearing Ray-Ban’s and an unbuttoned aloha shirt, carrying two beach chairs and way too much belly, walked past me. Across the tops of what looked to be bare feet was a V-shaped piece of plastic.

The plastic was attached to a shoe sole, though, so I asked my dad what sort of a shoe it was. He said, “One that a real man never wears.”

Now little Kevy wanted to be just like daddy, so I nearly wigged out in a Kmart a week or so later when a Bluelight Special lead mom to ask if I wanted a pair. While I never actually did flip my wig, I made myself quite clear.

I would never, ever, regardless of circumstance, wear flip-flops. Or any other type of sandal for that matter.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m peppering the retelling of the story with far-out phrases and words (far outdated, that is) from the decade when the fuzz were so uptight that they freaked out on anyone who wasn’t a square and had grody long hair. What connection could there be to doing that and the health matter to be addressed today?

That there’s no need to freak out —or even peace out — when you read about health-related flip-flops. Because they’re not really bad — unless you’re using the word as it was back when you didn’t need to be an excavator to be asked, “Can you dig it?”

Health flip-flops are good because they’re proof of doubt, and, as any former hippie or current psychotherapist will tell you, doubt can be a good thing. And during the approximate time it took 60s sexpot Goldie Hawn to go from the goofy girl on “Laugh In” to a major movie star and finally to a potential guest star on “The Golden Girls,” new research has emerged and created such doubt that the medicos have done a 180 about drinking alcohol in moderation.

They no longer believe it benefits your health.

While an organization or two might have flip-flopped before the World Heart Federation, they did so in 2022. “Contrary to popular opinion” the WHF declaration read “alcohol is not good for the heart.”

In the January 2023 Time magazine article, “Is There Really No Safe Mount of Drinking?,” Jamie Ducharme explains one of the reasons why the WHF and other organizations have changed their stance. A reexamination of the initial studies that found health benefits in moderate drinking discovered many of them did not account for why the subjects did or did not drink alcohol.

Such an omission devalues the research by creating a phenomenon called “abstainer bias.”

To understand why, consider this simplified scenario. Researchers recruit 100 people — 50 who drink alcohol moderately and 50 who don’t drink at all — assess their overall health, and find the moderate drinkers’ health to be superior.

But, if the research never takes into account that 25 of the 50 who don’t drink don’t drink because they’re ailing and using a medication that keeps them from alcohol, the results don’t mean much. What does, however, is that newer studies have not only taken this into account but also linked moderate drinking to the acceleration of genetic aging, shrinkage of the brain, and the increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Ducharme also notes the World Health Organization’s flip-flop in 2023 focuses on the carcinogenicity of alcohol, mentioning that half of all alcohol-related cancers diagnosed in Europe are caused by light or moderate drinking.

Moreover, the doctor giving WHO’s statement, Dr. Carina Ferreira-Borges, added, “We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink — the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage.”

Despite these declarations, health organizations in the U.S. have not yet followed suit. It’s not for lack of evidence, though, according to John Callaci, a researcher with Loyola University Chicago’s Alcohol Research Program.

It’s more likely a result of the alcohol industry’s tremendous political clout, he tells Ducharme, along with the fact that the U.S. isn’t as proactive as many other countries when it comes to public-health issues. But personal-health proactivity should not be affected by nationality.

Which means you need to be well aware of what the most recent research suggests and is nicely summarized by Dr. Denise Hien, director of the Rutgers Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies, in the aforementioned Time magazine article.

That while moderate drinking may not harm health, no one should do so to enhance it.