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It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live.

• root_axis 5y ago
  Nice comment. I also want to emphasize that your point about regional variance is true in Europe as well, this without even mentioning several well known European drinker stereotypes.
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• bradleyjg 5y ago
  That’s a great (surprising) reference. Intellectually I know functional alcoholics exist but it’s still tough to come to grips with that many people drinking that much alcohol. I’m curious what it looks by age, geography, and household income.
  • notdeadofdrink 5y ago
    I'm in the top decile of that posted chart. Some weeks I'll be higher, some weeks I'll be lower. Usually lower, but always above the ninth. Posting on a throwaway for what should be pretty obvious reasons. In the past week I've had about three bottles of gin in various cocktails, assorted craft beers of the IPA or imperial stout variety, a couple of whiskeys, and an aperitif most days. I've been drinking mostly while sitting in front of my TV with my iPad out, doing some light programming, working on photo editing, or playing games. Normally I'd spend more time at bars with friends, but it's not exactly a great time for that. I don't drink before or during work hours, but most hours after work I've either got a drink or I'm making one. I'm 30ish, I make decent money doing devops, and I like to think the quality of my work exceeds that of most of my peers -- I've certainly gotten feedback saying as much from line managers. I don't want to be too specific about anything, but I am happy to answer questions, if anyone has any.
    • bradleyjg 5y ago
      I appreciate the response. Mostly I hate throwaways but this is an appropriate use. As I’ve gotten older (I’m 40ish) hangovers have gotten worse and worse. It’s now to the point if I have 4-5 medium beers on Friday night I can write off Saturday. Has your subjective experience of hangovers gotten easier over time?
      • notdeadofdrink 5y ago
        I've have never had much in the way of hangovers in my life, with the exception of the few times that I have gotten nearly blackout drunk and spent the next day curled up around a toilet bowl. I tend to drink more on Friday and Saturday nights, and I will wake up the next morning feeling seedy and in need of a big greasy breakfast. Weekday mornings, if I have had more than usual (by my own standards) to drink the previous night, I will wake up feeling like I slept poorly, but no more than that. It'll take me an hour to get up to speed, and then I'm likely to go to bed earlier than usual that night. None of this has changed noticeably over the past decade. It may or may not make a difference that I am meticulous about getting 8.5 hours in bed each night, I don't know, and it may make a difference that I've always had a fairly high tolerance for alcohol's effects.
      • myrandomcomment 5y ago
        In my 20s-30s, a few beers or cocktails before dinner. Then a few bottles of wine (with friend, co-workers). Then scotch, or the like. At late 40s, I could write off the next day. Now, a cocktail (lockdown has turned my wife in to master bartender). Glass of wine with dinner. Maybe a whiskey after. All good. Have friends over, turns into a bit to much and write off next morning.
      • 6foot4_82iq 5y ago
        If you drink 4-5 medium beers everyday, you'd need to drink at least 10 to induce a hangover.
        • rkk3 5y ago
          hangover's get worse when you are older, or when you are older you drink less regularly so you get a worse hangover?
  • adonovan 5y ago
    I learned recently that the booze industry would go bankrupt overnight if it weren't for the heaviest drinkers, those who consume the best part of a fifth of whiskey every day. See e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/americas-heaviest-drinkers-consume-almost-60-all-alcohol-sold-1520284 https://www.newsweek.com/americas-heaviest-drinkers-consume-... Makes you realize the hypocrisy of "drink responsibly".
    • ekianjo 5y ago
      Drink responsibly is just for legal purposes. Every company owner wants their end users to consume more of what they make.
• spoonjim 5y ago
  I think the US is a land of "extreme" personalities so I would guess that across a broad range of metrics (alcohol consumption, wealth, number of text messages sent per month), the ratio of the Top 1% to the median is probably higher in the US than in most other countries that the US considers "peers" (i.e. Western Europe, Australia, and Canada).
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    Statistics as detailed as "alcohol consumption by percentile" are hard to come by, but the data doesn't point to armchair just-so psychology like this. Using some proxies for level of extreme drinking: The US isn't in the top 15 for binge drinking and is below the OECD average[1], and is ranked 50th globally for alcohol deaths (with far fewer than all 3 of OP's mentioned countries). This is despite a healthcare system with more gaps _and_ much higher risks from drunk driving due to being sparse and more car-oriented. [1] www.statista.com/chart/amp/5357/the-worlds-worst-countries-for-binge-drinking/
• thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > Note that the median US alcohol drinker consumes less than 1 drink per week. The article says something else: >> the median consumption among those who do drink is just three beverages per week. You might get less than 1 / week by including non-drinkers, who are (according to the article) at least 30% of American adults. But they're 0% of American alcohol drinkers.
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• tolbish 5y ago
  And yet one year later we learn that 18% of Americans are binge drinkers: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/americans-are-drinking-more-lot-more-n347126 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/americans-are-dri...
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    If approximately one in five people are doing it then either it needs to lose the stigma or the definition needs to change.
    • bart_spoon 5y ago
      Stigma doesn’t exist simply based on how many people do something.
    • recursive 5y ago
      Honest question: Why? Isn't that up to those who hold the stigma? I'd have a stigma against dog walkers who left their dog crap at the park, even if I found it was most dog walkers. (I don't think it is)
      • bigfudge 5y ago
        I think the difference there is that even if most people left dog crap we might still have a consensus that that was a bad thing and that people shouldn’t do it.
      • taneq 5y ago
        It’s because the stigma is based on the “binge drinker” label and its implication of irresponsible levels of drinking, while the official definition of the label itself specifies a level of drinking that many would otherwise not deem an issue. eg. three restaurant-pour glasses of wine during a three course meal.
    • flyingfences 5y ago
      Would you say the same about cigarettes? Or about drunk driving?
• quadyeast 5y ago
  that chart does not make sense to me unless >10% of Americans are AA. I can't think of anyone, besides non-drinking Alcoholics, that have less than 1 drink/wk
  • Wohlf 5y ago
    Is it really that hard to imagine some people just don't have much of a desire to drink? I go pretty long stretches without drinking.
  • barry-cotter 5y ago
    I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them. Quoted by Israel Shenker, "Critics Here Focus on Films As Language Conference Opens," The New York Times (1972-12-28) Often quoted as "How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him"; referring to George McGovern's loss to Richard Nixon in in the 1972 presidential election.
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > I can't think of anyone, besides non-drinking Alcoholics, that have less than 1 drink/wk Most people I associate with don’t drink anything on an average week. It’s likely that you’re in a bit of a bubble if you can’t think of anyone who doesn’t drink in an average week.
    • buu700 5y ago
      Yeah, that's an odd statement to me. I don't not drink, but I also don't go out of my way to drink that often. Even considering the mean rather than median, I'm pretty sure that I fall short of 52 drinks/year. I wouldn't necessarily assume that I'm in the majority, but it's not as though my behavior in this area is particularly abnormal.
      • Marsymars 5y ago
        I get how one could pretty easily fall into a group of people who drink on a weekly (or more frequent) basis. That being said, of people I'm close to, my parents are a good counter-example. They split one beer every month or so.
• pedrosorio 5y ago
  > It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. This is also true of Europe. What the parent said about France/Croatia/Germany does not reflect the drinking culture in other places.
• jnathsf 5y ago
  Many have gone California sober [0] - moving away from alcohol to cannabis and psychedlics as a way to be more healthy and sustainable [0] https://www.addictionresource.net/blog/california-sober/ https://www.addictionresource.net/blog/california-sober/
  • kenneth 5y ago
    Cannabis is in no way healthier than alcohol. It's hard to quantify the damages done by one vs. the other; but there are very serious social and psychological downsides to regular cannabis use.
    • jasondigitized 5y ago
      Pretty sure alcohol is way harder on your body than edibles or vaping cannabis. Alcoholism has a huge blast radius.
      • kenneth 5y ago
        I feel like it's likely a larger proportion of weed-users have it affect their productivity and motivation to grow in life than the proportion of drinkers who become dangerous alcoholics or end up with cirrhosis. I don't have data to back this up though. I've seen more lives around me hampered by marijuana than by alcohol, despite having a very large amount of heavy drinkers in my circles.
        • mythrwy 5y ago
          I agree and I've seen the same. However as far as actual physical health (rather then mental or social) I believe cannabis to be far less detrimental. It might demotivate a person but it doesn't flat out kill them.
        • bigfudge 5y ago
          Is it also possible that alcohol is the lubricant for a society with dysfunctional social and environmental principles? Perhaps what we sometimes describe as motivation or personal growth isn’t actually that valuable when directed at goals that destroy the planet and isolate us from other humans.
• draw_down 5y ago
  I think that’s a silly way to respond to this. If someone were to say “America has an opioid problem”, would we really sit around and play this game of pretending like that statement is incorrect, just because it’s possible to identify groups where that is not the case? No. Something can be a problem in America without being a problem in every single instance. The point is not every single American culture is full of drunks, the point is that this is a problem that America is having.
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• redisman 5y ago
  Europe is exactly the same though. Majority of the countries/people don’t drink fancy wines for dinner but binge drink to party and forget about their troubles. Upper middle class in a few wine producing countries does not create a continental monoculture. Anyone from Northern/Eastern Europe or UK will be shocked by US drinking culture in the opposite direction. My experience of Germany was also certainly not “wine for dinner” type of behavior
  • estaseuropano 5y ago
    As for the US it depends on the social group. Definitely lower socioeconomic classes have quite different approaches and in some places a beer with lunch and then more beer in the evening to cope with hard labour is not unusual. And countries differ quite a bit, e.g. UK's binge drinking culture is very unusual in the rest of Europe. The Scandinavians and anything close to russia are known for hard liquor. Etc etc
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    > binge drink to party and forget about their troubles Party, yes. Forget their troubles? Not in the context I’ve seen it happen in. Drinking was always a strictly enjoyable activity in itself, not something you did to forget your troubles.
  • oblio 5y ago
    Hard liquor consumption is dropping everywhere in Europe and wine and beer are going up, especially in Eastern Europe, famous for hard liquor binging. Only Northern Europe with its dreary weather is the outlier, somewhat. My point being that raw alcohol consumption is going down across Europe.
    • novaRom 5y ago
      Beer consumption in Germany is falling year after year consistently. Wine is growing, especially during Covid-19 time. source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/575106/beer-consumption-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/575106/beer-consumption-...
  • 5y ago
• ABCLAW 5y ago
  >It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. The US had a very particular set of economic conditions in respect of infrastructure quality, volume of arable land for corn production, and corn vs corn mash distillate transport costs. The result? "[In the 1790s], the settlement of the so-called “corn belt” in the Midwest created large new supplies of corn, which was cheaper and more profitable to convert into whiskey than it was to transport great distances without spoiling. Thus, as Rorabaugh notes: “Western farmers could make no profit shipping corn overland to eastern markets, so they distilled corn into ‘liquid assets.’ By the 1820s, whiskey sold for twenty-five cents a gallon, making it cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, or milk.” https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/the-1800s-when-americans-drank-whiskey-like-it-was/#america-s-colonial-thirst- https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/the-1800... Given the price, Americans drank an absurdly, mind-bendingly large amount of booze. While not uniform, the US has a consistently different relationship with alcohol than most other countries as a result of the impact of these events and responses to them upon it's food culture.
  • jdc 5y ago
    This is a very interesting point, however it does stand in contradiction to GP's claim that Europeans broadly drink more than Americans in absolute terms.
  • ekidd 5y ago
    > Given the price, Americans drank an absurdly, mind-bendingly large amount of booze. I once skimmed Prohibition-era academic text that described US drinking culture of the pre-Prohibition period in detail. It was fairly disturbing, as you suggest—whiskey in serving sizes that would work better with beer, and things like that. But even though Prohibition failed to stop people from drinking, it apparently _did_ disrupt the earlier drinking culture in many ways. So I would be careful about using pre-Prohibition behavior to make inferences about post-Prohibition behavior. (I'd love to find that book again, but sadly the library which had it got rid of a substantial number of rarely-used older books at some point.)
    • ABCLAW 5y ago
• lazyamerican 5y ago
  It’s actually very easy to reduce the us to a simple monoculture, compared to other regions of similar size. Compared with the EU or India, us culture is very similar across regions. Same language, same food, same religions, same work culture…
  • Retric 5y ago
    While the US has basically every current religion there are huge regional differences in which religions are common. Mormons for example are still extremely concentrated in Utah. New Jersey has a much larger Jewish community than most of the US etc.
  • stadium 5y ago
    Where are you from, and where have you lived, visited, and worked to come to this conclusion? It's not at all what I've experienced as a US born after living on both coasts, a few different states, and a range of small rural and large urban cities. Food sure, if you only consider culture as the corporate branded chains. That's missing out on a lot though. Language, accents, nomenclatures, sayings, mannerisms, all widely varied. Religions, there are dozens of Christian based sects all with widely varying spectrums of beliefs. Work culture, still many good-ole boys clubs in certain geographies, pick yourself up by the bootstraps types in others, and anything you can imagine in between.
    • cycomanic 5y ago
      The OP specifically said compared to regions of similar size. You only talk about variations in the US, have you lived outside? The variations that you talk about, you can find in Germany alone which is the size of a medium size US state. The variations across Europe (I can't speak for India) are on a completely different level. If you put a random person into two different states in the US and two different countries in Europe for an hour and ask them after which differ more, I would bet serious money they will always pick the two European countries.
      • kortilla 5y ago
• verst 5y ago
  1 standard drink. Did you know that a US standard drink for beer is 12 ounces (a pint is 16) at 5% alcohol by volume? In the PNW Pints Are the standard size and definitely stronger than 5%. Also the German standard drink size for beer is less than 12 fluid ounces. Similar differences exist for other beverage types. These comparisons are not only difficult, but the survey takers vastly underreport their actual consumption (probably unknowingly).
  • yoz-y 5y ago
    I though the standard beer in Europe was always 500ml.
    • OJFord 5y ago
      UK pint is 568ml, a US pint is less than 500ml (because their fl oz are different, and I think even a different number to a 'pint'). Rest of Europe (and Québec) uses 500ml or a litre metric in my experience, yes.
    • sobani 5y ago
      In the Netherlands the standard beer bottle is 330ml. When going to a bar there are several types of glasses available for a beer from the tap ranging from 200ml to 570ml (English pint size). When you order a beer, by default you get a 250ml glass.
    • karlkloss 5y ago
      Nope. In most restaurants and bars, 300ml is the standard size, sometimes even 250ml. 500ml is considered a big beer. 300ml is also the standard size at festivities, concerts and sports games. In Colone, the standard size of the local beer (Kölsch) is 200ml, but 300ml is also common. In the south of Germany, especially bavaria, 500ml is the standard size in restaurants, and 1L at festivities and in bars run by breweries. 500ml is also the standard size of wheat beers nearly everywhere. In shops, you can get beers in bottles of 330ml and 500ml.
      • yoz-y 5y ago