Surprise! Binge Drinking is Very Common Among Adults According to CDC

Guess what? Grown-ups like to drink. A lot. According to the CDC, roughly one-in-six adults binges on alcohol regularly. By regularly, we mean at least once a week, to the tune of at least eight drinks in a sitting.

Binge drinking is normally defined as four drinks in a sitting for women, five drinks in a sitting for men. The price-tag on this type of behavior is a steep one. It accounts for half of an estimated 80,000 annual deaths, and 3/4ths of the $223 billion in economic costs tied to excessive alcohol use.

What’s more, it increases the risk for a host of other serious problems like car accidents, violence, suicide, hypertension, acute MI, STDs, unwanted pregnancy, fetal alcohol syndrome, and sudden infant death syndrome to name a few.

According to the authors of the study, back in 2005 the Community Preventive Services Task Force recommended several strategies to reduce binge drinking these included limiting the density of stores that sell alcohol, hold vendors responsible for minors and intoxicated partons, maintain limits on when alcohol can be sold, increase the price of alcohol, avoid privatization of alcohol sales, push government or contracted sales.

Oh, proliferation! We’ve never tried that before, I’m sure that’ll do the trick!

The data: the analysis included responses from approx. 450k adults in 48 states, surveyed by landline or cell phone. 23% of men and 11% of women admitted to binge drinking within the last 30 days. The rate of binge drinking was highest among 18-to-24 year olds (28%) and drinks consumed were also the highest (9.3). Uniquely however, the frequency of binge drinking was the highest among those 65 and older (5.5 episodes per month).

So what say you, dear reader? Is this a surprise to you?

Also, are you going out tonight?