I saw this the other day and find it incredibly hard to believe. I mean I know there are plenty of functioning alcoholics out there and lots of people who drink to serious excess on the weekend. But can it really be possible that there are 24 million Americans averaging 10 drinks a day?
Iām surprised that as many as 30% of Americans donāt drink. I donāt, and feel like a lot of social situations just arenāt for me because of it.
My father was a pretty serious alcoholic until about 20 years back. He drank a hell of a lot, but I have a hard time picturing even him knocking back 10 hits a day.
The box by the graphic is correct, but the headline isnāt. The 74 drinks is the average of the top decile, so as a level of absolute consumption could conceivably relate to just 1% of the top 10%, or 99% of the top 10%, or a zillion other possibilities.
Correct: āthe top 10%ā¦ consumean average of74 drinks per week, or a little more than 10 drinks a dayā
Incorrect: ā10% of Americans have 10 or more alcoholic drinks every dayā
I saw this a couple of weeks ago.
Seemsā¦odd. 60% of American adults basically donāt drink at all, and the top 10% drink 75% of all alcohol consumed (at a staggering rate)?
(James Bond-esque drinking - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/10515184/James-Bonds-alcohol-intake-leaves-doctors-shaken-and-stirred.html)
I found this for the UK, which doesnāt have this much detail in it, but suggests ~40% donāt drink, but it doesnāt have a rate above āalmost every dayā.
A flat of beer -2 in 24 hrs; tragic, but doesnāt seem surprising, this is the person who only lives to 60 somehow staying successful, or commits suicide by EtOH-liver, or looses the house and goes on to shoplift cheap perfume to drink and dies of DTs when cut off from their gabba replacement in the drunk tank.
The 0 drinks/wk % doesnt seem surprising either, I am bored by open binge drunks and while I like wine and beer if I brew it or am in PDX I mostly use wine for cooking. For some reason the wine gets tasted to be sure it is good enough for cooking, never cook with that you wouldnāt drink.
Ten percent? I just want to know how many I need to consume in order be in the1%ā¦
And what article is linked at the bottom of the original article:
I stopped drinking for a while a few months back. The amount of peer pressure is staggering. Apparently I was no fun.
Hmm.
The histogram is labeled
āAverage number of drinks per capita consumed in the past week, by decile, among adults aged 18 and over.ā
Ask me that question right now? zero
Ask me the week before that? 750 ml of 28 proof wine over three or four days-- 10 units
Ask me the week before thatāprobably five (one drink per day for 14-15 days-- case of newcastle brown. and thatās 4.7% alcohol, 360 ml, 1.6 units each, so 8 units? Is the histogram in units, or drinks?
And before that? Zero.
I realize that āthe past weekā is a data gathering method designed to guard against hazy recollections, but it doesnāt really work all that well for people who drink on a inconsistent basis. Moreover, the British themselves suggest
But also, have 2-3 alcohol-free days a week to allow the liver time to recover after drinking anything but the smallest amount of alcohol
So if one does things correctly, one could conceivably flit between deciles from week to week. I am, however, a misanthropic bachelor, so there is that.
Mormons and various strict Protestant denominations (like Southern Baptists) donāt drink so that probably contributes a fair amount. Although Iām suspicious of self reporting as presumably these figures are. The old joke is never go fishing with a Mormon ā heāll drink all your beer. Go fishing with two Mormons ā theyāll watch each other and your beer will be safe.
Another source of inconsistency in the results is that they seem to rely on the responder not just reporting their drinking correctly, but also converting it into standardised ādrinksā correctly (If this is using U.S. standard drinks, each one is equal to 14g of pure ethanol, or ~1.8 UK standard units).
And confusingly, for this graph, peopleās 10 standard drinks may arrive in far fewer than 10 glasses.
Well, not fun to people who need both a drink and drunk friends to have fun.
I have been part of that metricā¦for years: 10 drinks is and has been the line in the sand: under; can functionā¦mostly
Over the lineā¦itās big problem. Still, a ādrinkā is like a āserving sizeāā¦a surprising amount of calories for less than you want to put in your mouth. When I work, I canāt (Thank God) drink alcoholā¦but when my time is mineā¦cheers.
Today was an average drinking day: A Pliney The Elder and two Big Chicken IPAs during lunch at The Monks Kettle after archery practice. Later I drop wife off at her work, go to my favorite bar and have 2 cocktails: rum, honey, lime, sparkling wineā¦leave, buy dinner and bottle, go home. Watch baseball while drinking sparkling cava and eating tandoori chicken. Later pick up wife from work and have one glass of sweet, strong sakeā¦go home. And everything is A-OKā¦
Did you really write the phrase, āeye-popping statā? Really?
Yes.
I was up in the woods the other day. 9 AM. Saw two gentlemen each opening their second 20 oz Bud ICE of the day.
Walk around for a few blocks near any urban liquor store that sells nips. Then again a few days later. look at all the new nips.
Go to the legion hall. There is one in your town, and itās full by 2pm.
Yes. Sadly, yes.
I am all for letting you choose how you spend your day, so if you fancy that to drink fair enough, but that sounds like you are drink driving which is definitely not cool.
Do you even statistics?
(If you ask enough people the same question, the fact that YOU, personally, had a big week last week is balanced by old Harry Broken Liver over there having a quiet week because this week his mortgage is due. Thatās why itās āan averageā, not āwhat Jerwin drank last week.ā 
)
[quote=āPurplecat, post:11, topic:42550, full:trueā]
Another source of inconsistency in the results is that they seem to rely on the responder not just reporting their drinking correctly, but also converting it into standardised ādrinksā correctly (If this is using U.S. standard drinks, each one is equal to 14g of pure ethanol, or ~1.8 UK standard units). And confusingly, for this graph, peopleās 10 standard drinks may arrive in far fewer than 10 glasses.[/quote]
Do you think itās at all possible that the people conducting the survey just might know what theyāre doing, and so they asked people what they actually drank (three cans of beer, four glasses of wine, two shots of tequila, whatever), and then afterwards - back in the office - converted that to standard drinks so everyone was on the same footing?
Itād also be fairly easy to to a back-correlation cross-check by finding out the total amount of booze produced and/or sold and comparing that to reported consumption to better fit the curve.
It turns out that Americans apparently buy twice as much alcohol as they consume. So everything is multiplied by 1.97-- which assumes that the top heavy distribution is correct, and itās not just consummate waste.
Hold on, you yanks get bigger drinks? Dammit.
