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
      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.