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The statistics about alcohol consumption are so stunning that I often wonder how accurate they are. If these numbers are correct, the top 10% of alcohol drinke

The statistics about alcohol consumption are so stunning that I often wonder how accurate they are. If these numbers are correct, the top 10% of alcohol drinkers consume the equivalent of 10 drinks per day: 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... The unit for a single drink is a fixed measurement, so someone pouring a tall glass of wine or a very stiff drink could be consuming 2-5 “drinks” in a single glass, but regardless the consumption is extremely high.

jhickok 5y ago
It sounds like a lot but I know lots of people in rural areas with extreme poverty (grew up in one of the poorest counties in the midwest) where this sort of drinking was commonplace. They drink as soon as they wake up and don't stop until they fall asleep. Anecdotal I know but certainly believable for me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- s5300 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm from the poorest county in my state and 10+ beers a day is honestly absolutely nothing to quite a decent part of the population out here.
  - astrange 5y ago
    In the US drinking actually goes up with income and poorer people tend to not drink at all - but more of the ones who do are alcoholics. This is possibly the reason why studies say "moderate drinking can be healthy".
mywittyname 5y ago
The average of the top 10% of anything is going to be absurd compared to the population average; probably around 2 standard deviations over the mean. If you looked at the average caloric consumption at the top 10% of people, you'd probably find the amount similarly unbelievable. Ten drinks isn't that much hard liquor: it's about 450ml. That's a little more than a can (392ml).
- hervature 5y ago
  > Ten drinks isn't that much hard liquor: it's about 450ml. That's a little more than a can (392ml). Sure, the volume isn't unfathomable. But most people drinking a Mickey (13 ounces ~ 9 drinks) would render them useless.
  - soperj 5y ago
    Not if you regularly drink much more than that.
    - hervature 5y ago
      Yes, obviously weight also plays a big role in my previous statement. But the statement is still true: given that over half the population doesn't drink daily, if they decide to drink 10 drinks, it will have drastic physical effects. For what it's worth, the modern day description of "tolerance" is merely the individual's ability to mask their inebriation. There is a big difference of not being affected by something (being tolerant) and fooling others that you are unaffected.
      - ragona 5y ago
        I think you’re incorrect about a few things. First, tolerance to substances is more physiological than simply learning to hide it. Second, consider one drink an hour ten eight hours. You’d barely be inebriated. It wouldn’t be particularly drastic.
        hervature 5y ago
        Again, the modern view on alcohol tolerance is that people develop masking abilities. Their BAC and physiological effects remain relatively constant from [1]: > Functional tolerance refers to a phenomenon where a person can ingest significant amounts of alcohol – either at once or slowly over time – and not appear to be intoxicated. A person who has developed a functional tolerance to alcohol may be under the influence of alcohol without it being noticeable, thus allowing them to participate in certain daily activities in a manner that appears normal to others. This is also what TIPS, the training given to bartenders, teaches [2]. Finally, to the point about spreading out the drinks. Yes, this is how people consume large amounts of alcohol daily. I maintain that someone who barely drinks or never drinks will be incapable of doing their job after 4 hours, even after spreading out the drinks. They certainly shouldn't drive a vehicle. [1] - https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/the-functioning-addict https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/th... [2] - https://www.tipscertified.com/ https://www.tipscertified.com/
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
Honestly, as someone who has 2-3 drinks per day, I've always been more surprised by the amount of people who basically don't drink at all. In that chart it's over half of Americans. Travel a bit, any you'll quickly discover that a couple drinks in the evening is basically normal in much of the world. I'm not arguing that it's healthy (it's not), but the median American really doesn't drink much - our Puritan values run deep.
- ksd482 5y ago
  I just grew up hating alcohol by looking at grown ups acting stupid and mistreating their wives and children. That's why I never developed a taste for alcohol. I sometimes drink socially but that is very rare: 3-4 times a year, 1 or 2 drinks each time. That's about it.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    > mistreating their wives and children ...and husbands. Not all people who drink alcohol to excess are male.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Statistically it is far more men than women; and since this account is from an anecdotal point of view, it’s entirely possible female abuse of alcohol wasn’t witnessed.
      - muskox2 5y ago
        Source on the statistics? I'm curious.
        epicureanideal 5y ago
        The honest statistics show that it’s about 50/50 male and female initiated violence. See Murray Strauss’s 30 Years Denying the Evidence. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233717660_Thirty_Years_of_Denying_the_Evidence_on_Gender_Symmetry_in_Partner_Violence_Implications_for_Prevention_and_Treatment https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233717660_Thirty_Ye... It’s just that some groups find the honest research inconvenient so they try, largely successfully, to suppress it. The suppression behavior on certain sides of issues has been discussed by plenty of reputable people, including Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate. These days in order to believe the results of any research paper I need to read it for myself with an incredibly skeptical eye for what is being left out, how questions were asked, etc.
sjg007 5y ago
Like everything alcohol consumption is a power law.
- munificent 5y ago
  Many things are power laws, but many things are not. It's really easy to overfit your intuition here and assume it's all power laws, but that's an overcorrection from everyone previously assuming everything was a normal distribution. The reality is that some stuff is power laws, some stuff is normal, some stuff is bimodal, etc. The more useful mental exercise is to try to learn what the actual distribution for something is, instead of assuming, and then try to dig in a bit more to figure out what causes might lead to that. Power laws tend to arise when you have some amount of network effect and an iterative positive feedback loop. That shows up in popularity, wealth, etc. But things like, you know, height, are not a power law distribution. Alcohol consumption does have some steep curve to that, but it's not clear if it's actually a power law. I assume its driven by both addiction times tolerance. In other words, if you couldn't build up a tolerance to alcohol, I'd expect something like a linear distribution reflecting levels of a addiction. But the more you drink, the higher your tolerance, so the more you need to drink, which leads to something more like quadratic or higher.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    The top 10% of drinkers drink more that double the drinks of the remaining 90% of drinkers.
    - munificent 5y ago
      Right, so the interesting question to ask here is, around the biology of alcohol tolerance. How much alcohol does someone have to consume tolerance level X, and in turn how much more alcohol does someone at tolerance level X need to consume to reach the same level of inebriation as before?
      - sjg007 5y ago
        At some point people become chemically dependent on alcohol so it's not necessarily an issue of inebriation. There's an upper limit based on blood alcohol concentration. Within the top 10% there are probably even more extreme drinkers than the average of 71 drinks a week. The irony here is that these folks consume 60% of all alcoholic beverages. These are the whales of the industry. Makes you want to rethink the adult drinks market.
soperj 5y ago
My uncles were 2 bottles of rye a day guys. 10 drinks seems low honestly.
ska 5y ago
> but regardless the consumption is extremely high. It's high, but not even close to some of the historic records. In early 1800s the per capita consumption was roughly equivalent 90 bottles of whisky per year. And that counts a lot of non drinkers in the denominator.
- willis936 5y ago
  For those curious: 1.5 ounces per drink 1.75 L per bottle (assuming a handle) 33.814 ounces per liter 59.175 ounces per bottle 39.450 drinks per bottle 3550.5 drinks per year 9.720 drinks per day
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ip26 5y ago
It’s easy to understand when you realize that certain types of alcoholics can’t bear to be sober. That is to say, they are drinking around the clock. An all-day buzz would take ~16 drinks a day to maintain. One of the “tells” of this class of alcoholic is drinks stashed all over the place to facilitate this round the clock buzz.
- akiselev 5y ago
  Even those are at the extreme end of the extreme. It doesn't take long to develop a tolerance that allows one to function the next morning with 10-15 drinks/night, which is two to three wine bottles. I've seen several people fall into that trap out of desperation due to insomnia, since the never-ending hangover can be preferable to chronic extreme sleep deprivation. That's easily 3500+ drinks a year and all it takes is one of those per 9 teetotalers to get 1 drink/day average.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swiley 5y ago
10 drinks of 100 proof vodka is ~200 ml (less than two thirds of a coffee mug.) That sounds like what I did pretty often in college (I remember saying I liked college at the time, in retrospect I may have been lying.)
ufmace 5y ago
FWIW, there definitely are people who drink 10+ drinks a day every day. The top few percent of drinkers in the country drink an epic shitload.
BatteryMountain 5y ago
In my head the greatest drunks are USA, South Africa, Russia, Sweden, England. The numbers involved in these countries are mind boggling. Not purely based on country-wide numbers, but based on binge drinking behaviours, quantities involved at parties, and destruction that follows. The problem I have with it all, drunk people tend to affect other things: destroying public property, drunk driving (destruction of private property and death (sometimes death of sober people at wrong place, wrong time)) fights and injury (go check what an EC/ER looks like on a Friday night for hospitals in these countries), domestic violence, rape, animal abuse, emotional drunk spirals (can lead to suicide or relationship damage), financial destruction (lemme buy all you fine oaks 100 shots on my tab)..the list goes on. Nah, skip alcohol if you can. I makes small men feel like strong men, and strong men feel like small men and creates a vicious cycle to cope with those false emotions, resulting erratic/impulsive/dangerous behaviours. Rather meditate, go to bed early, use cannabis (not daily) and make sandwich.. I've not seen a single instance where alcohol has improved someones life, mentally or physically. Alcohol is a false remedy that fills your hearts and minds with a false view of the world. Step away for a while. Same goes for streaming/internet consumption, tv/news, caffeine, nicotine, porn, fast foods, religion, politics. All those things blend into a horrible mindset. Step away, introspect and modify your own behaviour/culture, reflect about who/what you are. It's a worthwhile experiment and costs nothing (in fact, it will save you time and money).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CivBase 5y ago
> The top 10 percent of American drinkers - 24 million adults over age 18 - consume, on average, [...] 10 drinks per day. What counts as an "American drinker"? Apparently only 24M of our 330M population. That's 7% of the population. So the average of the top 0.7% Americans consume 10 drinks per day. Since averages are heavily affected by the outliers at the top, you're looking at probably between 2-3 per 1000. I absolutely believe that many Americans consume the equivalent of 10+ light beers per day. What's more surprising to me is that only 24M Americans count as "drinkers". Our college population alone is 17M.

jhickok 5y ago

It sounds like a lot but I know lots of people in rural areas with extreme poverty (grew up in one of the poorest counties in the midwest) where this sort of drinking was commonplace. They drink as soon as they wake up and don't stop until they fall asleep. Anecdotal I know but certainly believable for me.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
s5300 5y ago
Yeah, I'm from the poorest county in my state and 10+ beers a day is honestly absolutely nothing to quite a decent part of the population out here.
- astrange 5y ago
  In the US drinking actually goes up with income and poorer people tend to not drink at all - but more of the ones who do are alcoholics. This is possibly the reason why studies say "moderate drinking can be healthy".

mywittyname 5y ago

The average of the top 10% of anything is going to be absurd compared to the population average; probably around 2 standard deviations over the mean. If you looked at the average caloric consumption at the top 10% of people, you'd probably find the amount similarly unbelievable. Ten drinks isn't that much hard liquor: it's about 450ml. That's a little more than a can (392ml).

hervature 5y ago
> Ten drinks isn't that much hard liquor: it's about 450ml. That's a little more than a can (392ml). Sure, the volume isn't unfathomable. But most people drinking a Mickey (13 ounces ~ 9 drinks) would render them useless.
- soperj 5y ago
  Not if you regularly drink much more than that.
  - hervature 5y ago
    Yes, obviously weight also plays a big role in my previous statement. But the statement is still true: given that over half the population doesn't drink daily, if they decide to drink 10 drinks, it will have drastic physical effects. For what it's worth, the modern day description of "tolerance" is merely the individual's ability to mask their inebriation. There is a big difference of not being affected by something (being tolerant) and fooling others that you are unaffected.
    - ragona 5y ago
      I think you’re incorrect about a few things. First, tolerance to substances is more physiological than simply learning to hide it. Second, consider one drink an hour ten eight hours. You’d barely be inebriated. It wouldn’t be particularly drastic.
      - hervature 5y ago
        Again, the modern view on alcohol tolerance is that people develop masking abilities. Their BAC and physiological effects remain relatively constant from [1]: > Functional tolerance refers to a phenomenon where a person can ingest significant amounts of alcohol – either at once or slowly over time – and not appear to be intoxicated. A person who has developed a functional tolerance to alcohol may be under the influence of alcohol without it being noticeable, thus allowing them to participate in certain daily activities in a manner that appears normal to others. This is also what TIPS, the training given to bartenders, teaches [2]. Finally, to the point about spreading out the drinks. Yes, this is how people consume large amounts of alcohol daily. I maintain that someone who barely drinks or never drinks will be incapable of doing their job after 4 hours, even after spreading out the drinks. They certainly shouldn't drive a vehicle. [1] - https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/the-functioning-addict https://americanaddictioncenters.org/alcoholism-treatment/th... [2] - https://www.tipscertified.com/ https://www.tipscertified.com/

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

Honestly, as someone who has 2-3 drinks per day, I've always been more surprised by the amount of people who basically don't drink at all. In that chart it's over half of Americans. Travel a bit, any you'll quickly discover that a couple drinks in the evening is basically normal in much of the world. I'm not arguing that it's healthy (it's not), but the median American really doesn't drink much - our Puritan values run deep.

ksd482 5y ago
I just grew up hating alcohol by looking at grown ups acting stupid and mistreating their wives and children. That's why I never developed a taste for alcohol. I sometimes drink socially but that is very rare: 3-4 times a year, 1 or 2 drinks each time. That's about it.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  > mistreating their wives and children ...and husbands. Not all people who drink alcohol to excess are male.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Statistically it is far more men than women; and since this account is from an anecdotal point of view, it’s entirely possible female abuse of alcohol wasn’t witnessed.
    - muskox2 5y ago
      Source on the statistics? I'm curious.
      - epicureanideal 5y ago
        The honest statistics show that it’s about 50/50 male and female initiated violence. See Murray Strauss’s 30 Years Denying the Evidence. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233717660_Thirty_Years_of_Denying_the_Evidence_on_Gender_Symmetry_in_Partner_Violence_Implications_for_Prevention_and_Treatment https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233717660_Thirty_Ye... It’s just that some groups find the honest research inconvenient so they try, largely successfully, to suppress it. The suppression behavior on certain sides of issues has been discussed by plenty of reputable people, including Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate. These days in order to believe the results of any research paper I need to read it for myself with an incredibly skeptical eye for what is being left out, how questions were asked, etc.

sjg007 5y ago

Like everything alcohol consumption is a power law.

munificent 5y ago
Many things are power laws, but many things are not. It's really easy to overfit your intuition here and assume it's all power laws, but that's an overcorrection from everyone previously assuming everything was a normal distribution. The reality is that some stuff is power laws, some stuff is normal, some stuff is bimodal, etc. The more useful mental exercise is to try to learn what the actual distribution for something is, instead of assuming, and then try to dig in a bit more to figure out what causes might lead to that. Power laws tend to arise when you have some amount of network effect and an iterative positive feedback loop. That shows up in popularity, wealth, etc. But things like, you know, height, are not a power law distribution. Alcohol consumption does have some steep curve to that, but it's not clear if it's actually a power law. I assume its driven by both addiction times tolerance. In other words, if you couldn't build up a tolerance to alcohol, I'd expect something like a linear distribution reflecting levels of a addiction. But the more you drink, the higher your tolerance, so the more you need to drink, which leads to something more like quadratic or higher.
- sjg007 5y ago
  The top 10% of drinkers drink more that double the drinks of the remaining 90% of drinkers.
  - munificent 5y ago
    Right, so the interesting question to ask here is, around the biology of alcohol tolerance. How much alcohol does someone have to consume tolerance level X, and in turn how much more alcohol does someone at tolerance level X need to consume to reach the same level of inebriation as before?
    - sjg007 5y ago
      At some point people become chemically dependent on alcohol so it's not necessarily an issue of inebriation. There's an upper limit based on blood alcohol concentration. Within the top 10% there are probably even more extreme drinkers than the average of 71 drinks a week. The irony here is that these folks consume 60% of all alcoholic beverages. These are the whales of the industry. Makes you want to rethink the adult drinks market.

soperj 5y ago

My uncles were 2 bottles of rye a day guys. 10 drinks seems low honestly.

ska 5y ago

> but regardless the consumption is extremely high. It's high, but not even close to some of the historic records. In early 1800s the per capita consumption was roughly equivalent 90 bottles of whisky per year. And that counts a lot of non drinkers in the denominator.

willis936 5y ago
For those curious: 1.5 ounces per drink 1.75 L per bottle (assuming a handle) 33.814 ounces per liter 59.175 ounces per bottle 39.450 drinks per bottle 3550.5 drinks per year 9.720 drinks per day

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ip26 5y ago

It’s easy to understand when you realize that certain types of alcoholics can’t bear to be sober. That is to say, they are drinking around the clock. An all-day buzz would take ~16 drinks a day to maintain. One of the “tells” of this class of alcoholic is drinks stashed all over the place to facilitate this round the clock buzz.

akiselev 5y ago
Even those are at the extreme end of the extreme. It doesn't take long to develop a tolerance that allows one to function the next morning with 10-15 drinks/night, which is two to three wine bottles. I've seen several people fall into that trap out of desperation due to insomnia, since the never-ending hangover can be preferable to chronic extreme sleep deprivation. That's easily 3500+ drinks a year and all it takes is one of those per 9 teetotalers to get 1 drink/day average.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

swiley 5y ago

10 drinks of 100 proof vodka is ~200 ml (less than two thirds of a coffee mug.) That sounds like what I did pretty often in college (I remember saying I liked college at the time, in retrospect I may have been lying.)

ufmace 5y ago

FWIW, there definitely are people who drink 10+ drinks a day every day. The top few percent of drinkers in the country drink an epic shitload.

BatteryMountain 5y ago

In my head the greatest drunks are USA, South Africa, Russia, Sweden, England. The numbers involved in these countries are mind boggling. Not purely based on country-wide numbers, but based on binge drinking behaviours, quantities involved at parties, and destruction that follows. The problem I have with it all, drunk people tend to affect other things: destroying public property, drunk driving (destruction of private property and death (sometimes death of sober people at wrong place, wrong time)) fights and injury (go check what an EC/ER looks like on a Friday night for hospitals in these countries), domestic violence, rape, animal abuse, emotional drunk spirals (can lead to suicide or relationship damage), financial destruction (lemme buy all you fine oaks 100 shots on my tab)..the list goes on. Nah, skip alcohol if you can. I makes small men feel like strong men, and strong men feel like small men and creates a vicious cycle to cope with those false emotions, resulting erratic/impulsive/dangerous behaviours. Rather meditate, go to bed early, use cannabis (not daily) and make sandwich.. I've not seen a single instance where alcohol has improved someones life, mentally or physically. Alcohol is a false remedy that fills your hearts and minds with a false view of the world. Step away for a while. Same goes for streaming/internet consumption, tv/news, caffeine, nicotine, porn, fast foods, religion, politics. All those things blend into a horrible mindset. Step away, introspect and modify your own behaviour/culture, reflect about who/what you are. It's a worthwhile experiment and costs nothing (in fact, it will save you time and money).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

CivBase 5y ago

> The top 10 percent of American drinkers - 24 million adults over age 18 - consume, on average, [...] 10 drinks per day. What counts as an "American drinker"? Apparently only 24M of our 330M population. That's 7% of the population. So the average of the top 0.7% Americans consume 10 drinks per day. Since averages are heavily affected by the outliers at the top, you're looking at probably between 2-3 per 1000. I absolutely believe that many Americans consume the equivalent of 10+ light beers per day. What's more surprising to me is that only 24M Americans count as "drinkers". Our college population alone is 17M.