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Top 10% of American adults consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week
- seanflyon 12y agoTitle is incorrect. Should be 15 drinks per week, not per day.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- therealdrag0 12y agoOr: Top 10 % drink 10 drinks a day :/
- lisper 12y agoActually, by strict adherence to HN rules the headline should be "Think you drink a lot? This chart will tell you." (Which IMO is a perfect illustration of why this is a stupid rule.)
- dang 12y agoThat's not true. The rule calls for changing the headline when it is misleading or linkbait. "Think you drink a lot? This chart will tell you" is arguably bait because it uses the "you" trick and the "this" trick.
- diminoten 12y agoYeah but shouldn't it be "top 10% of American people", not drinkers? Seems a little misleading, as the population of drinkers is only 70% of the actual population.
- dang 12y agoAh, good point. The article says "adults" not "drinkers". Thanks!
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoThe rule is not followed well, then, since clear, descriptive headlines are often replaced with original headlines that make no sense out of context.
- dang 12y agoOften? I'd have to see examples. We certainly don't claim to apply the rule correctly all the time. We are, however, happy to be corrected. The best way to complain about a title on HN is to suggest a better one.
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoI haven't been keeping a list, unfortunately. I mostly become aware of it when a poster mentions that their original title was changed from <something descriptive> to <something else>. Is there a way to direct that to someone who can do something about it without coming off as a pest?
- dang 12y agoThe way to ask questions about HN moderation is to email hn@ycombinator.com.
- sliverstorm 12y agoWhere do you get that? I'm more than a little confused. The top 10 percent of American drinkers - 24 million adults over age 18 - consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week. Title at the time of this comment: Top 10% of American drinkers consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week
- yodsanklai 12y agoHow to explain it? is it an addiction that grows slowly, or is it a consequence of people being dissatisfied with their lives. I also wonder if cannabis, when fully legalized, will replace alcohol as our "drug of choice".
- martin1975 12y agoIt's a spiritual disease. You are correct in speculating that one addiction can be switched with another - cannabis, pornography/hookers/affairs, heavier drugs. The bad part is, unless one surrenders, if a person is a bona fide addict, their full blown illness will drive them to depression, unmanageability, prison... possibly suicide. The good news is, if one surrenders, he or she can suspend the progress of the disease.
- Igglyboo 12y agoI really don't think a cannabis addiction can be classed as the same life ruining addiction that alcohol is. Maybe because of it's legality it can ruin lives but the parent was specifically talking about after it became legalized.
- moggflunkies 12y agoWoah, that's a bold statement. Cannibis can easily be as debilitating as alcohol.
- diltonm 12y agoThe following is a troublesome statement to me about pot that I didn't know until now: "Smoking marijuana is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes, experts say. The tar in joints contains a much higher concentration of the chemicals linked to lung cancer compared with tobacco tar. And smoking marijuana deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking an equivalent amount of tobacco, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse." http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/health/marijuana-versus-alcohol/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/health/marijuana-versus-alcoho...
- JohnBooty 12y agoI'm not sure about this conclusion with regards to alcohol: > The Pareto Law states that "the top 20 percent of > buyers for most any consumer product account for > fully 80 percent of sales," according to Cook. The > rule can be applied to everything from hair care > products to X-Boxes... > ...But the consequences of the Pareto Law are different > when it comes to industries like alcohol, tobacco, and > now marijuana. If you consume 10+ drinks per day, for > instance, you almost certainly have a drinking problem. > But the beverage industry is heavily dependent on you > for their profits. If you're having ten drinks per day you're almost certainly going to be drinking the cheap stuff, not the high-profit-margin luxury alcohol brands. There's probably more profit in a single bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue than an entire month's supply of the cheapo local beer that's chugged by an alcoholic.
- thu 12y agoI have times when I drink every day two or three drinks per day (mainly cocktails and I don't think I will ever be alcoholic), have only normal brands at home, but I don't think I would switch to cheaper brands if I ever increase my consumption.
- thenmar 12y agoI assume the book goes into more detail about the actual economics behind the ideas. It would be silly to turn discussion about this hype piece into a pseudo-intellectual argument over methodology we haven't read.
- honestfeedback 12y agoRich people can be alcoholics, too – and in fact they can often conceal and maintain it better. A well-off white collar worker is unlikely to spend a significant percentage of their income on alcohol, even if they're drinking to excess; they also are likely to have flexible work hours, sick time, and other mechanisms to cover for their binges and hangovers. There are even (up to a point) social and professional benefits that come from drinking with colleagues. Alcohol is a huge part of many companies' culture, and people can easily hit the 80th percentile (>15 drinks per week) simply by accepting a reasonable fraction of the offers to share a drink with their peers in a given work week. Some normal signs in tech companies: * Company-stocked beer fridges * Hosted weekly (or more often) happy hours * Personal bottles of expensive whiskey on desks * Expense reports for "team dinners" that are 60-70% booze
- throwitaway1234 12y agoI fit into the 10% category for years while building my first start-up age ~22 - 30. I realized at some point it was out of control and I couldn't stop. The details are as ugly as anybodys addiction story but to most everybody else I managed to externally look "fine". I am the biggest contrarian and skeptic in the world, eventually sought out medical help and was referred to AA which I was very leery of. But I did it and recently celebrated year 2 of sobriety along with a way to address the stress, fear, loneliness of startup life. Not trying to hijack a data-thread into self-help but when I was out drinking I loved consuming these articles to feel like I wasn't the only one. Having spent some time in AA there are are a LOT of developers, entrepreneurs, hackers that are working the program too, if you're struggling with the alcohol monkey like I was it's a safe thing to at least check out.
- niix 12y agoCongrats! I often question my incline of drinking between 1 and 2 glasses of beer, wine or whisky a night. At this point I've become so used to it that I feel like it's part of my normal routine, which is a bit scary.
- jarin 12y agoThat's actually the recommended amount of alcohol intake though. Clearly, alcoholics shouldn't be drinking, but for non-alcoholics there are significant health benefits to having a couple of drinks every day (to the point where NOT drinking is actually considered a risk factor for heart disease). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC28294/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC28294/
- redthrowaway 12y agoAlcohol's also very good at preventing dementia later in life. If you can't drink, then don't, but if you can then moderate drinking is far better for you than not drinking at all.
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- nicpottier 12y agoGraph is for everyone, not just drinkers. So headline is more than a little off as the bottom 3 deciles drink 0 and are therefore not "drinkers".
- pessimizer 12y agoIs zero a number? edit: If they removed a third of people, the average for the top 10% of the nonzero drinkers would probably be a lot more.
- delecti 12y agoI'm curious about the specific questions asked. For a few years I drank so infrequently that across a year my weekly average would be below 0.25 drinks/week, but I wasn't a "never" drinker. There might be a difference between people who literally never drink (recovering alcoholics, lifelong teetotalers) and those who do drink, but who do so so infrequently that their average would round down to 0 depending on the question asked.
- integraton 12y agoInteresting that junk food isn't mentioned. I bet that we could find quite a few examples of where the top consumers of classes of food products are having their health damaged more than the top consumers of marijuana.
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- maxerickson 12y agoThere's some amount of alcohol consumption that does not have much impact on health (especially short term). Also, bars are only central to the social lives of Americans that go to bars. I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure the number of people who socialize at and around church is at least comparable to the drinking scene.
- ritchiea 12y agoI can't imagine what social life would be like in New York City without bars, no one has room for guests in their apartments.
- mattnewport 12y agoWhy is the idea that alcohol and red meat are harmful so ingrained in society that even years of scientific evidence to the contrary are ignored? For alcohol: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/ http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wo...
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- ninjakeyboard 12y agoAlchohol is a known carcinogen. 3.5% of cancer deaths world wide are actually attributed to alcohol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer
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- dneronique 12y agoDo I drink 10 drink every day? Naw. But I drink 1-2 every week night and 6-15 on the weekends. So yea, I can see this averaging out awkwardly...
- jrs99 12y agothat averages out awkwardly to what? 6 drinks? 10 seems like another level no matter how you distribute it.
- BadassFractal 12y agoBeen happily consuming up to 1 alcoholic drink per week for years now, still manage to go out and have a great time in bars and clubs, don't have to deal with being useless the next day or destroying my health.
- mjb 12y agoFrom a linked article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/28/the-wonkblog-guide-to-efficient-drinking/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/03/28/t... > After Prohibition, beer makers were actually forbidden from putting alcohol content information on their labels. They finally sued for the right to do so in 1987. That's amazing. I come from a country where content labeling is mandatory. When I'm in the US I tend to prefer beer that is labelled for its content (or styles I know are closer to 5% than 9%), because I like to know how much I'm drinking. It seems strange to me that the conclusion about labeling is "people will use labels to buy more alcohol for the same money" and not "people will use labels to help them make responsible decisions".
- ZanyProgrammer 12y agoI agree, its hard to find decent non cheap beer (PBR, Coors, Bud, etc) that has lower alcohol content, it seems. Even on the West Coast, where we have tons of microbrews available in seemingly every store.
- buckbova 12y agoTry the Stone Go To IPA. It has all the flavor of an IPA at 4.5% alcohol. Good drink on a hot day. http://www.stonebrewing.com/gotoipa/ http://www.stonebrewing.com/gotoipa/
- seany 12y agoThey're around. http://www.ratebeer.com/beerstyles/session-ipa/121/ http://www.ratebeer.com/beerstyles/session-ipa/121/ I can't comment on how they taste though, my style preferences tend to keep me in the 8-12% range for beer.
- alxndr 12y agoAs the other two comments have pointed out, craft brewers are starting to make "session" brews that are lower alcohol in general, including "session IPAs" which are hoppier than normal low-alcohol beers but are still closer to 5% than 9%.
- bmm6o 12y ago
- ninjakeyboard 12y agoI'm in the top 15% probably. Maybe top 10 actually. Aren't all developers? It's the Balmer peak I try for.
- buckbova 12y agoAgreed. I probably hit the 20-25 drinks a week mark with one to two 22 ounce craft beers a night during the week and maybe 3 on a Saturday. I stock my beverage fridge like a Dr Dre video, but with good beer. I love a good double/triple IPA. Having one makes me want another. Of course on strong beer alone I could never hit 75 drinks. I'd be in the bathroom the whole time. In my distant past I had a buddy that would drink a twelver of bud light nearly every night. No thanks.
- DanBC 12y agoThis article doesn't define what a "drink" is. It also says: > Do you drink a glass of wine with dinner every night? That puts you in the top 30 percent of American adults in terms of per-capita alcohol consumption. If you drink two glasses, that would put you in the top 20 percent. Which, in context, is weakly linking "glass of wine equals one drink". England talks about alcohol units. One unit is, for example, 125 ml of wine with an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 8%. Even though wine is recently getting weaker it's tricky to find wine as weak as 8%. 13% is more typical. If someone poured you 125 ml of wine at a meal you might think they'd made a mistake. Try it yourself now to see how small it is. 175 ml or 200 ml are more normal serving sizes. 200 ml at 13% is 2.6 units. Two of those is 5.2 units. So, really, people need to learn how much alcohol they're drinking. You get the health benefits from alcohol when you drink one unit per day; risks start to rise after that. Being teetotal appears to be as harmful as drinking maybe 5 to 6 units per day, even when corrected for people who are teetotal because of health history.
- goodcanadian 12y agoIn North America, a drink usually refers to a standard 12oz (355mL) bottle of beer at 5% ABV. This is about 1.775 times your "unit."
- dntrkv 12y ago125ml is actually about how much wine you should be pouring into a glass at a time. Random image I found illustrating this: http://i.imgur.com/27971Kr.jpg http://i.imgur.com/27971Kr.jpg
- ZanyProgrammer 12y agoI can see a daily drink or two (realizing that the 'or two' does make a difference) as what should be a normal high end, but the top 10%? Wow, I'd imagine that drinking a dozen or so drinks a day would quickly ruin your health-obesity, liver problems, run ins with the law, etc. It seems like in the US there really isn't that much of a nationwide culture of moderate drinking-drinking being the thing you're only supposed to do on non work nights or for celebratory occasions. I think controlled moderate drinking (the glass or two of booze a night) tends to be looked down upon as being one step away from being in the gutter. But that's just my own opinion, bashing our somewhat prudish society.
- DanielBMarkham 12y agoI was reading a book yesterday where one character offers another one a drink. He declines, and the guy says something like "Come on, the sun's over the yardarm somewhere." This struck me as a very odd phrase, so I looked it up. The yardarm is the horizontal beam on a sailing boat. Back in the day, once the sun rose above the yardarm, the Royal Navy would start issuing the first of the rum rations for the day. There were several throughout the day. This was about 11am. The U.S. Navy had similar rules. George Washington's army pounded back quite a bit as part of their daily rations. The first major uprising in the U.S. was due to alcohol production. Foreigners traveling to the states were always impressed at the amount of booze the colonists could put away. Even folks who mostly teetotaled kept a cider barrel and took a good-sized cup to get the day going. Some anthropologists believe that the natural state of man up until a hundred years or so ago was intoxication, it just wasn't spelled out as clearly in the literature, mainly because it wasn't unusual. In fact, some believe that civilization itself started with the fermentation of grain. I'm still trying to absorb those numbers, which I feel are inflated. But I note that excessive consumption in the states is certainly not a new thing. So who knows? Maybe the stats are true. I note that another commenter is pointing out that addicts will enjoy these articles because it tells them they are normal. Beats me what normal is. Are we supposed to all agree on a definition here? Is it okay to bring up what some of the stats and historians are saying about alcohol consumption in a non-judgmental way without either having to endorse or condemn it?
- aaronbrethorst 12y agoSome anthropologists believe that the natural state of man up until a hundred years or so ago was intoxication, it just wasn't spelled out as clearly in the literature, mainly because it wasn't unusual. There's quite a bit of literature out there about this. What I haven't seen a lot of—and would be interested in learning more about—is the seemingly simultaneous occurrence of the proliferation of coffee houses and the Enlightenment in Europe. It would make a ton of sense to me that trading in a constant state of inebriation for a caffeine buzz might make for better productivity.
- DanielBMarkham 12y ago
- pkaye 12y agoI have a drink maybe once in three months. I though I was unusual given so many people around me drive much more. Now I realize I'm closer to the medium.
- durbin 12y agoSomeone needs to get the NYTimes data visualization team to clean this up. Doesn't do the enormity of the number justice by folding the last column into four columns when the rest are a single column.
- menssen 12y agoI'm a heavy drinker who runs in a crowd of heavy drinkers. I am typing this at a bar. I should probably drink less. I cannot imagine drinking an average of 10 drinks a day. Even playing with the numbers a little bit: if you were to have five drinks every weeknight (which seems doable, but still high), it would take more than 20 each night of the weekend to hit an average of 10, which seems unreasonable. So, three questions: 1. Anecdotally, is anybody else having this reaction? 2. Has anybody found the raw data? The linked summary of the original study is not very helpful. I'd like to look at the area of this data that spans the 20%-10% range more closely. The jump between the two categories is huge, and it seems to me that about halfway between (so, say, 35 drinks a week) fits where I would expect there to be a band of heavy-drinking culture. Is there demographic or age data in the study? 3. Given that this is a summary of the way a book that is trying to make a political argument represents these data, has anybody seen a different analysis of the same study?
- Tloewald 12y agoAre you an alcoholic? Because alcoholics can build up quite a tolerance and also maintain the minimal amount of functionality to get by. This is from a Yahoo answer to how much alcoholics drink: "I'm a small woman, 115 lbs and on a typical day I would have anywhere from 8 to 15 shots. On occasion I would go much higher but this was typical." A normal healthy adult can metabolise about one standard drink per hour, and there are 24 in a day IIRC. Also see http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-con... 7% are alcoholics according to NIH. They'd be enough to account for the statistics in the article.
- DanBC 12y agoIn England medically assisted withdrawal is available if you drink over forty units per day. One unit is 10 ml pure alcohol. To find the unit qty you multiply the serving size in litres by the alcohol by volume figure. One litre of spirits at 40% abv is 40 units.
- kelnos 12y agoI don't think you can pin "alcoholic" to number of drinks, even if you control for weight/sex/etc. I drink reasonably heavily, but variably, on the order of 15-35 drinks per week. I wouldn't consider myself an alcoholic, mainly because I can -- and do -- stop whenever I want.
- pesenti 12y agoThe article is misleading. You don't need to drink 74 drinks per week to be in the top 10 percentile. 74 drinks is the average of all those in the top 10 percentile and not the lower boundary.
- nirmel 12y agoI don't think it says that. The author points out that upon entering the top 10 percentile, "you'd still be below-average among those top 10 percenters." PS. Send my regards to Watson!
- pesenti 12y agoThe article says: "But in order to break into the top 10 percent of American drinkers, you would need to drink more than two bottles of wine with every dinner." And according to Watson that's 10 drinks ;-) (http://www.rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov/default_wine.asp http://www.rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov/default_wine.asp)
- rco8786 12y agoRight. so two bottles of wine is 70 per week. and you would need to drink MORE than that(let's say, by about 40% of a bottle/week) to crack the top 10 :)
- pesenti 12y agoNo that's wrong. If 74/week is the average for the top 10 percentile, most likely half of that, a bottle a day, gets you in the top 10.
- DMac87 12y agoBasic statistics: just because the average in the top decile is 74, that doesn't mean everyone in the top decile drinks 74. The top 5%/1%/0.1% who drink way more than 74/week (15/day? 20/day?) can counter-balance the 5-8/day crowd. To give another example: the average top decile Facebook employee has a net worth over $33 Million. That seems high, but that's because that net worth is highly skewed - in fact, I assumed only Mark Zuckerberg's wealth was distributed equally among FB's ~10k employees, and that everyone else has $0. The figure $33 Million is meaningless.
- Centigonal 12y agoThat's sound statistics, but consider that that average value figures to over 10 drinks a day every day, and there's probably an upper limit on how much alcohol you can drink, even with an alcoholic's level of tolerance. Salaries at Facebook are probably exponentially distributed, but if drinks per week were distributed that way, then the top 5%/1%/0.1% would become very dead, very quickly.
- cowsandmilk 12y agofor those who want the raw data: https://web.archive.org/web/20040623191611/http://niaaa.census.gov/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040623191611/http://niaaa.cens... On the data tab, the zip files unzip into a text file that is column based. The SAS convert program gives codes for those columns. Codes can be converted to questions using the code book tab.
- mpg33 12y agoJesus...even when I used to get absurdly hammered on the weekends in my late teens/early 20's at max I'd say that it worked out to 20-25 drinks (fri+sat night)...these guys are basically sustaining that rate through the entire week?
- funkyy 12y agoMany Startup owners and entrepreneurs will be slightly scared about them getting in to alcoholism. But lets get things straight. I am "heavy" drinker in my opinion drinking on average 1,5 litre of whiskey a week. Is it a lot in statistics? No. Do I think its a lot? Yes. Do I have a problem? No. I can stop for a month without trying (doing a test every 3-4 months for 2 weeks just in case). Alcohol helps to release stress. As old saying says - the very first time you will taste the vodka and you think its tasty - you have a problem pal. Serious problem. Same with Whiskey or Gin. Any strong alcohol will do actually. Just use it as relaxing method, not substitute to happiness, and you will be good. Dont feel bad if you drink more alcohol than Yahoo statistics say. Just use common sense - anything in excess is harmful.
- dalore 12y agoIs this self reported? How many people lie and say they don't consume any? Especially if they are religious and there religion forbids it. I know quite a few people who say they don't drink but I've seen them drink. They would even lie to themselves that they don't drink.