NIAAA defines heavy alcohol use as follows:
For men, consuming five or more drinks on any day or 15 or more per week
For women, consuming four or more drinks on any day or eight or more per week
According to the 2024 NSDUH, 14.4 million adults ages 18 and older (5.5% in this age group) reported heavy alcohol use in the past month
Five drinks for me would be a good date night dinner at home (cocktail hour, plus two glasses of wine with dinner). Hardly a bacchanal, but apparently America is slacking as of late.
Did the people reporting their heavy alcohol use know this was the definition it was being judged by, or did they just report the number of drinks they had? I don’t even drink but that seems like a fairly low bar. 2 a day plus one bonus during the week is heavy use? I don’t think many people would agree with that, but I could be wrong.
Drinking two drinks every single day is a lot of drinks.
Is that two a day 2 8 oz glasses of beer or wine each or 2oz of booze with an oz of liqueur? Because there is a vast difference here.
Measuring by calories can be extremely eye-opening as well. One old fashioned is about 200 calories.
I think when “drinks” are used as a unit, the size varies based on what is being consumed. Like, a bottle of beer, a glass of wine, or a shot glass of whiskey would each be “1 drink”. Again, I could be totally wrong about all this, I don’t drink alcohol.
It is defined:
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/core-resource-on-alcohol/basics-defining-how-much-alcohol-too-much#pub-toc0
The toxic limit for alcohol is half a glass of wine per year. Literally every drink you take is causing some damage. Personally I would legalise all drugs and provide harm reduction but people are delusional about the harm any given substance causes. Most people consider LSD a hard drug because it is scheduled but it doesn’t have a toxic limit and has zero recorded fatalities. It’s actually a known therapeutic for PTSD and other conditions.