Alcohol Use in the United States: Age Groups and Demographic Characteristics | National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
www.niaaa.nih.gov
Prevalence of Lifetime DrinkingPeople Ages 12 and OlderAccording to the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 228.4 million people ages 12 and older (79.2% in this age group) reported that they drank alcohol at some point in their lifetime.1,2 This includes:

NIAAA defines heavy alcohol use as follows:

For men, consuming five or more drinks on any day or 15 or more per week

For women, consuming four or more drinks on any day or eight or more per week

According to the 2024 NSDUH, 14.4 million adults ages 18 and older (5.5% in this age group) reported heavy alcohol use in the past month

Five drinks for me would be a good date night dinner at home (cocktail hour, plus two glasses of wine with dinner). Hardly a bacchanal, but apparently America is slacking as of late.

  • jonathan7luke@lemmy.zipEnglish
    211·
    2 days ago

    I’ve seen this stat a lot, and anecdotally there’s no way it can be accurate. It really makes me wonder about the methodology of data collection. First, it seems like the heavier of a drinker or drug user you are, the less likely you are to set aside time to participate in a long survey. Second, regardless of the assurances of confidentiality, I’m not sure people would always be honest about the extent of their drinking. In AA, one of the most important steps is admitting you have a problem…

    For anyone interested, here’s the paper that explains the survey methodology: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt47098/Methodological Summary and Definitions/2023-nsduh-method-summary-defs.pdf

    And here’s an FAQ: https://nsduhweb.rti.org/respweb/faq.html#q6

    A few interesting notes:

    • Among people who were selected for the interview but did not complete it, the most common reasons for not responding were (1) refusal to participate by the respondent or by the parent or adult guardian of the adolescent respondent (26.1 percent) and (2) did not participate because the residents were not available, never at home, or did not respond to the web survey (18.9 percent)
    • For both data collection procedures, communications with potential respondents stressed confidentiality. Consequently, respondents’ names were not collected with the interview data. For web-based data collection, the website’s https encryption provided sufficient security for information entered from compatible devices via any Internet connection
    • The interview questions will take about an hour to complete
    • Interview respondents who completed the interview received a $30 incentive
      • jonathan7luke@lemmy.zipEnglish
        122·
        1 day ago

        4 drinks (for women) isn’t a lot. That can be as little as two martinis or three margaritas.

        5 (for men) isn’t really a lot either. That’s less than a 6 pack of beer. Or like 3 cocktails depending on how strong they are.

        Most people I know will likely have at least one day a month where they drink this much. A birthday party, a holiday celebration, a wedding, a big game, etc. I wouldn’t think twice about a couple drinking this much on a date night. Heck, I’ve been to stuffy work functions that gave me 3 “drink tickets” (which would have put me over the limit). Throw in populations like alcoholics, college kids, service industry workers, etc, and I find it really hard to believe that’s only 5% of the population.

        • ExistingConsumingSpace@midwest.socialEnglish
          2·
          13 hours ago

          It’s also probably higher than reported due to people not understanding what constitutes “a drink.” People are naturally not accurate at judging volumes/weight (even if they know the amounts) and probably aren’t measuring. Many more think “a drink” is “whatever is in my glass/bottle/can.” It’s further complicated by the wide variation in alcohol content among drinks within the same category.

      • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubOPEnglish
        6·
        1 day ago

        I can’t believe there’s supposedly such a wide spectrum of drinking in the population below “heavy” as defined in the OP. Anything less than that seems like a waste of time and calories. They defined “binge drinking” as getting your BAC up to 0.08%, otherwise known as “starting to catch a buzz,” and supposedly like 70 million Americans drink, but not up to that level. Bullshit.

    • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, I’m skeptical too. I live in a supposedly Mormon town, and probably half the people here drink at least as much as I do.