Alcohol and Drug Abuse Statistics Facts About Addiction

And while alcohol purchasing seemed to slow down a bit in 2023, sales of “ready-to-drink” cocktails continued to increase — more than doubling since 2019, up to $10.7 billion. When zooming out to alcohol consumption in the past year, over 60% of U.S. adults said they drank, according to the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. And nearly 80% of people over age 11 reported having drunk at some point in their lives. It’s crucial to address both substance use and mental health needs, as they often go hand-in-hand. Many of the risk factors for alcohol dependency are similar to those of overall drug use disorders (including illicit drug disorders).

Alcohol consumption

This report presents overall and sex-specific trends in alcohol-induced death rates from 2000 to 2020, and then focuses on the rates for 2019 and 2020 by sex, age group, and underlying cause of death. Adult women on the whole drink less alcohol than men and have lower rates of alcohol-related disease and death. However, studies show women’s rates of drinking and binge drinking have increased over time, narrowing the gap between the sexes.

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Statistics (Facts About Addiction)

• Still, there are some widely agreed-upon guidelines — drinking thresholds above which a person’s risk of developing a disease or shaving time off their life significantly increases, according to the data.
• Both are measured in terms of pure alcohol/ethanol intake rather than the total quantity of the beverage.
• Evidence-based alcohol policies (e.g., reducing the number and concentration of places selling alcohol and increasing alcohol taxes) could help reverse increasing alcohol-attributable death rates.
• National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) examines the health of children, with emphasis on wellbeing.
• National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) contains vital statistics from the official records of live births, deaths, causes of death, marriages, divorces, and annulments recorded by states and independent registration areas.
• Per capita ethanol consumption from spirits by region, United States, 1977–2021.

By gender, men reported being bigger drinkers than women, based on their relative share in the “high risk” category (19.3 percent versus 11.1 percent). By age, the biggest drinkers are those years, with 17.4 percent consuming at least one drink per day. Alcohol’s pleasurable effects are also indubitably valuable to many people’s lives. But many of alcohol’s negative impacts can be altered by personal genetics, underlying disease and other factors, which makes tailoring drinking recommendations to individual people really difficult.

• Nearly 20% of laryngeal cancers, 15% of colorectal cancers, and over 7% of both breast and pancreatic cancers were pinned on drinking.
• This article will explore the prevalence, economic costs, and trends of alcohol abuse and alcoholism in the United States.
• When Americans do drink, they typically consume more alcohol than is recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggest a maximum of one drink per day for women and two for men.
• With the data in hand, it seems obvious which numbers were withheld and why.
• Statistics indicate Iowa is one of the nation’s leaders in chronic abuse among its alcohol-related deaths.

In 2020, the rate of alcohol-induced deaths was highest for those aged 55–64 for both males and females.

• But in combination with alcohol, which also lowers inhibitions, it can result in impaired judgment.
• Addiction, which is diagnosed as a substance use disorder (SUD), is relatively common among Veterans.
• New Mexico has the third-highest number of alcohol-related deaths per capita among all the states; it’s 23.4% higher than Alaska’s per capita death rate, which is the nation’s second-highest.
• In France in the 1920s, the average was 22.1 liters of pure alcohol per person per year.

Wine contains around 12% pure alcohol per volume, so that one liter of wine contains 0.12 liters of pure alcohol. Beer contains around 5% of pure alcohol per volume1 so that one liter of beer contains 0.05 liters of pure alcohol. Heavy episodic drinking is defined as the proportion of adult drinkers who have had at least 60 grams or more of pure alcohol on at least one occasion in the past 30 days. An intake of 60 grams of pure alcohol is approximately equal to 6 standard alcoholic drinks. When we look at gender differences, we see that in all countries, men have a higher alcohol consumption than women.

Quitting alcohol — or even drinking less — reduces risk of oral cavity and esophageal cancer, per new analysis

Alcohol sales per capita went up more from 2019 to 2021 than in any two-year period since 1969, according to estimates from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Deaths from excessive alcohol use are also rising, as are deaths where the underlying cause of death was alcohol-related. Alcohol has been linked with over 200 conditions, impacting basically every single organ system. Over the years, the rates of alcohol abuse and alcoholism in the US have shown significant changes. Alcoholism, also known as Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), is a chronic disease where you have a difficult time controlling or stopping drinking despite its negative impact. In the chart, we see data across some countries on the share of people with an alcohol use disorder who received treatment.

List of Figures

Another measured factor is smartphone dependence, or people who depend on their cell phones for the internet and, by extension, information gain. In fact, most people’s greatest connection to the internet is via their cell phones. With the internet such a prominent part of people’s daily lives, this use can become problematic or even addictive. And with the average American child now receiving a phone at the age of 12, this adds up to years of their life spent using a cell phone. The average American spends 4 hours and 37 minutes daily on their phone. This adds up to about 1 day per week, 6 days per month, and 70 days alcoholism stats per year of phone time for the average person.

Over the period, the largest overall annual increase occurred between 2019 and 2020, where the rate increased 26%, from 10.4 per 100,000 standard population to 13.1. During this 2019–2020 period, males and females each had their largest year-to-year percentage increase over the study period, at 26% and 27%, respectively. For both males and females, rates rose with increasing age and peaked for those aged 55–64 before declining for all age groups 65 and over. Increases in rates from 2019 to 2020 occurred across nearly all age groups. Rates for males were two to four times higher than those for females across all age groups.