One in Six American Adults is a Binge Drinker

Brain abnormalities (Wernicke-Korsakoff's syndrome or cerebral beriberi) tend to occur when a severe and sudden deficiency of thiamine aggravates a chronic deficiency. For example, this may occur after severe and repeated vomiting or with binge drinking in alcoholics.

http://www.mdguidelines.com/vitamin-b1-deficiency

Five drinks is a binge? With that feeble definition, no wonder 1 in 6 are "binge drinkers."

It's interesting that according to the British media only Britain suffers from binge drinking.

Interestingly is seems that countries with a binge drinking problem are those where alcohol is now or has been previously demonized. Countries where alcohol is celebrated rather than demonized tend to have a much more mature attitude to alcohol.

I am also a little concerned that 5 average US beers would be considered binge drinking.

There used to be a saying here that a man had had too much to drink if he'd had "one over the eight". That is to say he'd drunk more than 8 pints. Or IOW more than an imperial gallon of beer (1.2 US gallons). Of course that was in the days before alcohol was blamed for all society's ills. A few years ago a politician talked about drinking 14 pints a night in his youth and people didn't believe him. Admittedly he was a Yorkshireman and the doubters were southern, but he probably wasn't lying. In my youth two gallons was considered a pretty good night.

Defining as little as five drinks binge drinking is defining your way INTO a problem.

Awesome map: DC is north of Delaware? Makes me question the data.