Despite the prevalence of TV characters brooding over a glass filled with amber liquid, or the number of dish towels available with “wine mom” graphics, drinking regularly does impact your health.

And when you drink heavily for years, those impacts become very negative, very quickly.

A study that followed close to 90,000 adults for 20 years linked long-term, prolific alcohol consumption with increases in colorectal cancers, particularly rectal cancer. Though evidence has linked long-term alcohol use with cancer in the past, newer evidence suggests the “total” amount of alcohol consumed over a lifetime matters too.

For the purposes of the study, researchers defined heavy drinking as at least 14 drinks a week or more. These folks had a 25% higher risk of colorectal cancer compared with those who had about one drink per week.

The heavy drinkers were also more likely to develop rectal cancer … a 95% higher risk, to be precise.

The study suggests that discontinuing alcohol consumption might be enough to reduce this elevated cancer risk. Those who stopped drinking entirely appeared to have fewer precancerous tumors than even those who only drank about once a week. Though researchers hope to gather even more data on how risk plays out for former drinkers, they were heartened by the study’s results.

It’s never easy to consider changing a routine that is deeply ingrained — even one that is widely known to have negative impacts on our health. But, like study authors emphasize, making the decision to stop drinking even years later can lower your risk of rectal cancer.