People who quit drinking can lower their risk of getting a variety of cancers, according to researchers from Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

A literature review by CAMH principal investigator Jurgen Rehm and colleagues found that while risk of esophageal cancer rose sharply in the first two years following alcohol cessation, cancer rates decreased rapidly after that. Researchers speculated that this could be due to the fact that many people only stop drinking when they experience disease symptoms.

Head and neck cancer risk also decreased slightly a decade after alcohol-use cessation. But after 20 years, rates of these cancers among former drinkers were about the same as for those who never drank. 

 "Alcohol cessation has very similar effects on risk for head and neck cancers as smoking cessation has on lung cancer," said Rehm. "It takes about two decades before the risk is back to the risk of those who were never drinkers or never smokers."

The research was published in the September 2007 issue of the International Journal of Cancer.