Anecdotally, I know people that have a couple drinks after work each day. Two 5% beers x 5 days x 52 weeks is already 2.4gal of ethanol a year and that's not co

Anecdotally, I know people that have a couple drinks after work each day. Two 5% beers x 5 days x 52 weeks is already 2.4gal of ethanol a year and that's not counting what they drink on the weekends. A friend's mother drinks like half a bottle of wine a night, that's 2.6gal/ year. Granted, most people don't drink like that but that's the kind of habitual drinking that most people probably wouldn't consider a drinking problem. People that only drink socially and not to excess won't get close to 2.3gal a year but habitual drinkers and alcoholics will easily surpass that. I'm sure the median is a lot lower. Even just a fifth of liquor a week puts you at 4.8gal/year and real alcoholics are drinking a lot more than that.