Health & Fitness

Here's How Drunk Tennessee Gets From Binge Drinking

Americans don't just drink to excess on St. Patrick's Day, but many of you already knew that

NASHVILLE, TN - St. Patrick's Day has come and gone — though some hangovers surely still linger in Nashville — and millions of Americans participated in the unofficial binge-drink fest across the country. But a new study by the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention might give some binge-drinkers pause before they crack open that next can of booze.

The study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that Tennessee ranked 15th highest in the country for binge drinking levels in 2015. Binge drinkers in Tennessee averaged about 7 drinks per episode and chose to drink excessively an average of almost 64 times per year, the study said.

Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Hawaii and Alaska ranked 1-5, respectively, while Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York, Washington state and Oregon had the lowest binge-drinking rates.

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Women who consume at least four drinks and men who consume at least five on a single occasion are defined as binge drinkers in the study. About 17 percent of American adults said they binge drank about once a week and consumed an average of seven drinks while doing so, the CDC found.

In all, Americans consumed 17.5 billion binge drinks in 2015 — 467 per binge drinker — the study said.

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Excessive alcohol consumption claims 88,000 lives in America, the agency said. Binge drinking accounted for half of those deaths.

Binge drinking typically results in acute impairment, the authors said, and is a risk factor for a number of health and social problems, including unintentional injuries, interpersonal violence, suicide, alcohol poisoning, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, cancer, liver disease, and severe alcohol use disorder, the study said.

“This study shows that binge drinkers are consuming a huge number of drinks per year, greatly increasing their chances of harming themselves and others,” Robert Brewer, co-author and lead researcher in the CDC’s alcohol program, said in a statement. “The findings also show the importance of taking a comprehensive approach to prevent binge drinking, focusing on reducing both the number of times people binge drink and the amount they drink when they binge.”

The study found that binge drinking was more common among adults between 18 and 34, but said half of all binge drinks were consumed by adults 35 and older.

Men were much more likely to binge drink than women. The prevalence of binge drinking among men (22.2 percent) was about twice that of women (12.1 percent), the study found. Men also accounted for nearly three out of every four binge-drinking episodes.

Binge drinking was “substantially higher” among those with lower educational levels and household incomes than those with higher education and household income, the study found, and was significantly higher among non-Hispanic whites (19.2 percent) and American Indians/Alaska Natives (17.9 percent) compared to other race and ethnicity groups. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 73 percent of the total binge drinks consumed.

The study used responses from a random phone survey of U.S. adults.The survey, known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, included four questions on alcohol consumption over the past month or so.

Click here to read the whole study.

Patch national reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Scott Barbour/Getty Images


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