How much alcohol you drink depends a lot on where you live. A new study finds more than a third of adults in some areas drinking at dangerous levels but "huge variations" in rates of heavy and binge drinking across the USA.
The study of adults ages 21 and up, published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, finds nationwide levels of heavy and binge drinking on the rise, led by increases among women — although women still drink much less than men do.
The nationwide increases have been reported previously. The new study is the first, though, to take a comprehensive, county-by-county look at where problem drinking is worst and growing fastest.
"The percentage of people who drink is not changing much, but among drinkers, we are seeing more heavy drinking and more binge drinking," says Ali Mokdad, a lead author of the study who is a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. "We're going in the wrong direction."
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Heavy drinking, defined as more than two drinks a day for men and more than one drink a day for women, is linked to heart disease, cancer, liver damage and many other health problems. Binge drinking, defined as at least five drinks on one occasion for men and at least four drinks for women, is linked to car crashes, injuries and alcohol poisoning.
Leading the nation in binge drinkers: Wisconsin's Menominee County, home of the Menominee Indian Reservation, where 36% of drinking-age adults binge-drink. Least likely to binge: heavily Mormon Madison County, Idaho, where just 5.9% do.
Leading in heavy drinking: sparsely populated Esmeralda County in Nevada, where 22.4% drink that much. Least likely to drink heavily: Hancock County, in Tennessee's Appalachian Mountains, where the rate is 2.4%.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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