6 ms·

> His assertion the 70% of all drug users including alcohol and prescription users aren't addicted if anything seems extremely low to me. I'd say the vast major

by SamBam 6y ago

> His assertion the 70% of all drug users including alcohol and prescription users aren't addicted if anything seems extremely low to me. I'd say the vast majority of my friends drink alcohol and are more than likely on prescription drugs but I don't think any of them are addicts Actually, I'm not sure. 30% of alcohol drinkers being addicted might be roughly right (though surprising to me as well). In the US, 50% of Americans hardly drink at all (under 0.15 drinks/week). But 10% of Americans drink a staggering 75 drinks a week, or over ten drinks a day every day (where a drink is a can of beer, glass of wine, or equivalent). [1] Of course you can't determine from that alone whether those people are clinically addicted, but it sound reasonable to me that most are. Further, probably some proportion of people in the other groups are also addicted, but not drinking nearly as much. So that's 10%, and only 50% of Americans are drinking at all, so that's 20% of drinkers are drinking 10+ drinks a day, and some unknown proportion have alcohol problems while drinking less. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...

ChrisRR 6y ago
I'll admit that is an insane amount that I wasn't expecting, but something about those numbers just feels off. Like 10 drinks a day? Many people don't even drink that much water Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from the UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the beer is, it seems so unexpected to me that 1/10 of people are opening a new drink every 90 minutes and somehow managing to hold down a job to be able to afford such a habit.
- flatiron 6y ago
  if someone drinks from 5pm-10pm one can of beer every 30 minutes thats 10 drinks. they could easily wake up at 7am, hold down a job and rinse and repeat. a 30 rack of miller light (my beer of choice) is $22 which is 73 cents a beer so thats ~$7.50 a day on beer. obviously there are cheaper routes (buying $10 handles of vodka for instance). so at least in america, price really isn't a factor here. and holding down a job most likely isn't a factor since they are stone cold sober from when they wake until 5pm. i assume a lot of people silently live like this sadly
  - ChrisRR 6y ago
    Even if you ignore the price and how fast drinking once every half hour for 5 hours straight seems, that's 13.86 units of alcohol every day. So 10% of the population are in a state of being permanently hungover? It just seems odd that in the UK, binge drinking is considered to be an issue, and yet a significant percentage of the US population is drinking the equivalent of a night out on a daily basis.
    - jboog 6y ago
      When you're a high-functioning alcohol like we're talking you get to the point you can down a 12 pack of beer in a night and feel relatively fine the next morning. Maybe a slight headache or mild hangover but nothing like the bender hangovers non-alcoholics have where they are bedridden most of the day. I've since cut back a lot but in my worst post-college days I could drink the equivalent of 8-10 drinks in a night and feel perfectly fine the next morning as long as I got a decent amount of sleep.
      - lisper 6y ago
        I was a teetotaler until my late 20s when I decided to try to develop a taste for wine for social reasons. Fast-forward 30 years and today my wife and I have a cocktail and a glass of wine most nights. That sounds like two drinks, but one day I started measuring how much alcohol I was actually putting in to the cocktails and they turned out to be triples. So technically we're having 4 drinks a day. We get a slight buzz, but never feel impaired, never drink before dinner time, and never have hangovers. When we travel we will often go a few days without drinking at all and it's no problem. A few years ago I bought a blood-alcohol meter and have never registered above the legal limit, even immediately when I feel buzzed. The highest I've ever registered is 0.04. And over the years I've used three difference BAC meters with consistent results. I think the conclusion to draw here is not that having 4-5 drinks a day is no big deal, but that different people react to alcohol and other drugs differently. For some people, like me, it turns out to be no big deal. For others I'm pretty sure it would be a very big deal. A one-size-fits-all drug policy is never going to work.
- n4r9 6y ago
  I'm also in the UK but I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of people's liquid intake is more from alcoholic drinks than non-alcoholic ones. I'm thinking of the office worker who might have a glass of orange juice, 2-3 cups of tea/coffee, then 2 pints after work most days.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  I don't have any evidence one way or the other but the tale of the functioning alcohol addict is one that shows up frequently in popular culture: dramatic films and novels. The narrative is only advanced by a conflict that results in some kind of climax resulting in redemption or doom. But in real life people probably just plod on.
- kemayo 6y ago
  On the subject of affording it, you don't have to spend that much to drink 10 drink-equivalents a day. Buying low-end beer like PBR / Bud Light / Rolling Rock can be around $0.40-$0.60 per can, at which point your 10 drinks of the day is costing you around what a Starbucks latte does. Cheap hard liquor is even more cost-effective. You can get a big bottle of awful vodka for around $0.25 a "drink". That is to say, you don't have to be able to hold down a particularly good job to afford this. I assume that as you drink more your tolerance would increase? As an occasional light drinker, I'm pretty sure I'd be physically incapable of getting through that much alcohol in a day with enough time left to also attend a job.
- Nbox9 6y ago
  It’s definitely possible while holding down a job, especially if you consider its 75 drinks a week, which allows for heavier drinking on the weekend then during the middle of the week.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  > Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from the UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the beer is [laughs in Belgian Trappiste at the English ales] Is beer in the US still as bad as it was 10 years ago? I understood it now has a huge craft-/micro brewery scene with some very drinkable APA/IPA's? Or is this just a tiny fraction of the market still?
  - ChrisRR 6y ago
    The perception from the UK is despite what seems like a growing trend in microbreweries, Americans still don't venture out much further than IPAs Edit: And as a lover of belgian beers I can only agree. I wonder why people even drink so many IPAs when there's so many different and delicious varieties of beers around.
    - anonAndOn 6y ago
      Because the easiest way to sell a crappy beer in the US is to dump a bunch of hops in it and call it an IPA? I jest there are 47 varieties of Pale Ale and 3 of something else at the supermarket these days, but it's not far from the truth.
  - pdovy 6y ago
    Good quality domestic craft beer and imports are typically very easy to find in most populated areas in the US in my experience. Granted I'm in a big city (Chicago) but the "big box" liquor store here has a whole aisle of Belgian imports, for example. That said, a quick googling shows that 2/3 of the American beer market is still dominated by non-craft domestics (AKA your cheap, watery lagers like Bud/Miller). Even amongst the craft segment it's definitely the case as another commenter pointed out that IPAs are overrepresented for whatever reason. I think where we're still really lagging behind is quality of beers at your average bar. If you know where to go you can find great selection but the average bar probably still has just a handful of decent non-domestic-lager offerings, likely in cans/bottles. In comparison to when I lived in the UK and it seemed like any corner pub would have a couple great draft ales .. it's not the same.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ta11a 6y ago
  I can't verify the 10%, but I can say 10 drinks a day is well below what I was doing in the height of my madness. That's one pint of vodka. And when I landed in a rehab center, 10+ drinks a day was more common than not when listening to the stories. A fair amount of the 10+ drinks isn't to "feel good" or "get drunk" once you're hooked. It's to stop the shaking and be able to minimally function.
- 40four 6y ago
  "... how weak the beer is" Funny, I've never heard someone take a jab at the strength of American beer. I'm curious what is the ABV of a normal beer you're used to in the UK? The 'commercial grade' American domestics tend to be about 5% maybe 4.5%. In the last decade though, 'craft'/ micro breweries have exploded so it's very easy to find stronger at any bar. In almost any convenience/ grocery store, there are plenty of 7%-9% IPAs and the like. I'll admit I like strong beer :) A lot of bars around my area will have some exotic options of 10% or more. I had one recently that was 13%! That's as much as a glass of wine. That being said, the large majority of folks are drinking beer that's 4-5%. As far as alcohol addicts go, I learned from a friend who had to take some court ordered 'rehab' classes, that (at least in the USA) something like 90% of all alcohol is consumed by only 10% of the drinking population. That means the dirty little secret they don't want you to know is basically the entire alcohol industry is propped up by addicts. Edit: I just clicked the WaPo story you guys were talking about, and that lines up with what I heard previously. Most people drink very moderately, but the top 10% are the cash cows for the industry.
  - arpinum 6y ago
    Its more a comment on how popular your light beers are, and they seem to be in the low 4% range. We also say your cars can't go around turns, don't take it too literally.
    - 40four 6y ago
      You’re right I took it too literally :) All that light beer crap is like water!
- moron4hire 6y ago
  I don't know. A lot of my "working-class" childhood acquaintances and extended family goes through at least 2 six-packs of Miller Light in a night. Now, in the case of my particular family members, I wouldn't exactly say they don't have a problem. Most of them live on the edge of poverty, which would be much less of a problem if they didn't drink and smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day. But most of these folks who drink massive amounts of the sort of beers-I-wouldn't-touch-with-a-ten-foot-pole are mostly functional in society. By that, I mean, they don't have a monopoly on family and money problems. Shockingly few people have their shit together in the way that we talk about when we talk about the dangers of addiction. Like I said, I don't know. It's not very clear/cut-and-dried to me.
- frakkingcylons 6y ago
  To your second point, high functioning alcoholics are real. The bad effects take longer to manifest, but long term alcohol abuse makes up half of the 95,000 annual alcohol related deaths in the US. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  Is the beer weaker in the US than the UK? Most of the UK beer I've heard of is at a similar level or lower to US macro brews.
jboog 6y ago
Jesus, I thought I drank too much but it's still hard to believe 10% of Americans drink the equivalent of 10 drinks EVERY DAY. On my worst weeks when I think "i need to cut back" I might average ~3 drinks a day, maybe 5 on a holiday bender.
- slfnflctd 6y ago
  From direct personal experience totaling well over a decade, 10 drinks is not hard to get to, especially for a larger person. 2-3 to get things going, and 1 an hour after that, for up to 7 hours. On weekends, I split it up; 3-4 in the morning & before lunch, then eat/sleep, then 6-7 through the afternoon & evening. Beer usually seems to be easier on the system than anything else, but that may vary by physiology. Once the habit is ingrained and you become reliant on it to control your moods, 'cutting back' is a whole different proposition. My triglycerides are terrible, but other than that I seem to be ok, so why not just keep going? It's the easiest path, inexpensive, and most importantly, a LOT less hassle than dealing with the minefield of incompetence you encounter when seeking mental health treatment. I haven't given up completely on 'doing better'. But on the other hand, maybe that's not for everybody. We only have so much time here, how do we want to spend it? Stumbling over ourselves in an impossible quest for imaginary perfection, until we die anyway? Or enjoying ourselves the best we can given the dire circumstances?
  - nouveaux 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing. "I haven't given up completely on 'doing better'. But on the other hand, maybe that's not for everybody. We only have so much time here, how do we want to spend it? Stumbling over ourselves in an impossible quest for imaginary perfection, until we die anyway? Or enjoying ourselves the best we can given the dire circumstances?" I hope you do arrive at "doing better". It is likely you will enjoy yourself a lot more.
  - red0point 6y ago
    Consider doing absolute abstinency for at least 6 weeks every few years. Really, not a single drink or sip. That way your liver has time to heal itself again, lest it will develop a cirrhosis, which will signifanctly decrease your quality and expectancy of life. If you have a cirrhosis of the liver, it's too late, you're going to die in at most 5 years, and it won't be pleasant until then, either. That's got nothing to do with "doing better", "perfection" or whatever, just hard facts.

by SamBam 6y ago

ChrisRR 6y ago

I'll admit that is an insane amount that I wasn't expecting, but something about those numbers just feels off. Like 10 drinks a day? Many people don't even drink that much water Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from the UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the beer is, it seems so unexpected to me that 1/10 of people are opening a new drink every 90 minutes and somehow managing to hold down a job to be able to afford such a habit.

flatiron 6y ago
if someone drinks from 5pm-10pm one can of beer every 30 minutes thats 10 drinks. they could easily wake up at 7am, hold down a job and rinse and repeat. a 30 rack of miller light (my beer of choice) is $22 which is 73 cents a beer so thats ~$7.50 a day on beer. obviously there are cheaper routes (buying $10 handles of vodka for instance). so at least in america, price really isn't a factor here. and holding down a job most likely isn't a factor since they are stone cold sober from when they wake until 5pm. i assume a lot of people silently live like this sadly
- ChrisRR 6y ago
  Even if you ignore the price and how fast drinking once every half hour for 5 hours straight seems, that's 13.86 units of alcohol every day. So 10% of the population are in a state of being permanently hungover? It just seems odd that in the UK, binge drinking is considered to be an issue, and yet a significant percentage of the US population is drinking the equivalent of a night out on a daily basis.
  - jboog 6y ago
    When you're a high-functioning alcohol like we're talking you get to the point you can down a 12 pack of beer in a night and feel relatively fine the next morning. Maybe a slight headache or mild hangover but nothing like the bender hangovers non-alcoholics have where they are bedridden most of the day. I've since cut back a lot but in my worst post-college days I could drink the equivalent of 8-10 drinks in a night and feel perfectly fine the next morning as long as I got a decent amount of sleep.
    - lisper 6y ago
      I was a teetotaler until my late 20s when I decided to try to develop a taste for wine for social reasons. Fast-forward 30 years and today my wife and I have a cocktail and a glass of wine most nights. That sounds like two drinks, but one day I started measuring how much alcohol I was actually putting in to the cocktails and they turned out to be triples. So technically we're having 4 drinks a day. We get a slight buzz, but never feel impaired, never drink before dinner time, and never have hangovers. When we travel we will often go a few days without drinking at all and it's no problem. A few years ago I bought a blood-alcohol meter and have never registered above the legal limit, even immediately when I feel buzzed. The highest I've ever registered is 0.04. And over the years I've used three difference BAC meters with consistent results. I think the conclusion to draw here is not that having 4-5 drinks a day is no big deal, but that different people react to alcohol and other drugs differently. For some people, like me, it turns out to be no big deal. For others I'm pretty sure it would be a very big deal. A one-size-fits-all drug policy is never going to work.
n4r9 6y ago
I'm also in the UK but I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of people's liquid intake is more from alcoholic drinks than non-alcoholic ones. I'm thinking of the office worker who might have a glass of orange juice, 2-3 cups of tea/coffee, then 2 pints after work most days.
wyldfire 6y ago
I don't have any evidence one way or the other but the tale of the functioning alcohol addict is one that shows up frequently in popular culture: dramatic films and novels. The narrative is only advanced by a conflict that results in some kind of climax resulting in redemption or doom. But in real life people probably just plod on.
kemayo 6y ago
On the subject of affording it, you don't have to spend that much to drink 10 drink-equivalents a day. Buying low-end beer like PBR / Bud Light / Rolling Rock can be around $0.40-$0.60 per can, at which point your 10 drinks of the day is costing you around what a Starbucks latte does. Cheap hard liquor is even more cost-effective. You can get a big bottle of awful vodka for around $0.25 a "drink". That is to say, you don't have to be able to hold down a particularly good job to afford this. I assume that as you drink more your tolerance would increase? As an occasional light drinker, I'm pretty sure I'd be physically incapable of getting through that much alcohol in a day with enough time left to also attend a job.
Nbox9 6y ago
It’s definitely possible while holding down a job, especially if you consider its 75 drinks a week, which allows for heavier drinking on the weekend then during the middle of the week.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from the UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the beer is [laughs in Belgian Trappiste at the English ales] Is beer in the US still as bad as it was 10 years ago? I understood it now has a huge craft-/micro brewery scene with some very drinkable APA/IPA's? Or is this just a tiny fraction of the market still?
- ChrisRR 6y ago
  The perception from the UK is despite what seems like a growing trend in microbreweries, Americans still don't venture out much further than IPAs Edit: And as a lover of belgian beers I can only agree. I wonder why people even drink so many IPAs when there's so many different and delicious varieties of beers around.
  - anonAndOn 6y ago
    Because the easiest way to sell a crappy beer in the US is to dump a bunch of hops in it and call it an IPA? I jest there are 47 varieties of Pale Ale and 3 of something else at the supermarket these days, but it's not far from the truth.
- pdovy 6y ago
  Good quality domestic craft beer and imports are typically very easy to find in most populated areas in the US in my experience. Granted I'm in a big city (Chicago) but the "big box" liquor store here has a whole aisle of Belgian imports, for example. That said, a quick googling shows that 2/3 of the American beer market is still dominated by non-craft domestics (AKA your cheap, watery lagers like Bud/Miller). Even amongst the craft segment it's definitely the case as another commenter pointed out that IPAs are overrepresented for whatever reason. I think where we're still really lagging behind is quality of beers at your average bar. If you know where to go you can find great selection but the average bar probably still has just a handful of decent non-domestic-lager offerings, likely in cans/bottles. In comparison to when I lived in the UK and it seemed like any corner pub would have a couple great draft ales .. it's not the same.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ta11a 6y ago
I can't verify the 10%, but I can say 10 drinks a day is well below what I was doing in the height of my madness. That's one pint of vodka. And when I landed in a rehab center, 10+ drinks a day was more common than not when listening to the stories. A fair amount of the 10+ drinks isn't to "feel good" or "get drunk" once you're hooked. It's to stop the shaking and be able to minimally function.
40four 6y ago
"... how weak the beer is" Funny, I've never heard someone take a jab at the strength of American beer. I'm curious what is the ABV of a normal beer you're used to in the UK? The 'commercial grade' American domestics tend to be about 5% maybe 4.5%. In the last decade though, 'craft'/ micro breweries have exploded so it's very easy to find stronger at any bar. In almost any convenience/ grocery store, there are plenty of 7%-9% IPAs and the like. I'll admit I like strong beer :) A lot of bars around my area will have some exotic options of 10% or more. I had one recently that was 13%! That's as much as a glass of wine. That being said, the large majority of folks are drinking beer that's 4-5%. As far as alcohol addicts go, I learned from a friend who had to take some court ordered 'rehab' classes, that (at least in the USA) something like 90% of all alcohol is consumed by only 10% of the drinking population. That means the dirty little secret they don't want you to know is basically the entire alcohol industry is propped up by addicts. Edit: I just clicked the WaPo story you guys were talking about, and that lines up with what I heard previously. Most people drink very moderately, but the top 10% are the cash cows for the industry.
- arpinum 6y ago
  Its more a comment on how popular your light beers are, and they seem to be in the low 4% range. We also say your cars can't go around turns, don't take it too literally.
  - 40four 6y ago
    You’re right I took it too literally :) All that light beer crap is like water!
moron4hire 6y ago
I don't know. A lot of my "working-class" childhood acquaintances and extended family goes through at least 2 six-packs of Miller Light in a night. Now, in the case of my particular family members, I wouldn't exactly say they don't have a problem. Most of them live on the edge of poverty, which would be much less of a problem if they didn't drink and smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day. But most of these folks who drink massive amounts of the sort of beers-I-wouldn't-touch-with-a-ten-foot-pole are mostly functional in society. By that, I mean, they don't have a monopoly on family and money problems. Shockingly few people have their shit together in the way that we talk about when we talk about the dangers of addiction. Like I said, I don't know. It's not very clear/cut-and-dried to me.
frakkingcylons 6y ago
To your second point, high functioning alcoholics are real. The bad effects take longer to manifest, but long term alcohol abuse makes up half of the 95,000 annual alcohol related deaths in the US. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...
RandallBrown 6y ago
Is the beer weaker in the US than the UK? Most of the UK beer I've heard of is at a similar level or lower to US macro brews.

jboog 6y ago

Jesus, I thought I drank too much but it's still hard to believe 10% of Americans drink the equivalent of 10 drinks EVERY DAY. On my worst weeks when I think "i need to cut back" I might average ~3 drinks a day, maybe 5 on a holiday bender.

slfnflctd 6y ago
From direct personal experience totaling well over a decade, 10 drinks is not hard to get to, especially for a larger person. 2-3 to get things going, and 1 an hour after that, for up to 7 hours. On weekends, I split it up; 3-4 in the morning & before lunch, then eat/sleep, then 6-7 through the afternoon & evening. Beer usually seems to be easier on the system than anything else, but that may vary by physiology. Once the habit is ingrained and you become reliant on it to control your moods, 'cutting back' is a whole different proposition. My triglycerides are terrible, but other than that I seem to be ok, so why not just keep going? It's the easiest path, inexpensive, and most importantly, a LOT less hassle than dealing with the minefield of incompetence you encounter when seeking mental health treatment. I haven't given up completely on 'doing better'. But on the other hand, maybe that's not for everybody. We only have so much time here, how do we want to spend it? Stumbling over ourselves in an impossible quest for imaginary perfection, until we die anyway? Or enjoying ourselves the best we can given the dire circumstances?
- nouveaux 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing. "I haven't given up completely on 'doing better'. But on the other hand, maybe that's not for everybody. We only have so much time here, how do we want to spend it? Stumbling over ourselves in an impossible quest for imaginary perfection, until we die anyway? Or enjoying ourselves the best we can given the dire circumstances?" I hope you do arrive at "doing better". It is likely you will enjoy yourself a lot more.
- red0point 6y ago
  Consider doing absolute abstinency for at least 6 weeks every few years. Really, not a single drink or sip. That way your liver has time to heal itself again, lest it will develop a cirrhosis, which will signifanctly decrease your quality and expectancy of life. If you have a cirrhosis of the liver, it's too late, you're going to die in at most 5 years, and it won't be pleasant until then, either. That's got nothing to do with "doing better", "perfection" or whatever, just hard facts.