One in Six American Adults is a Binge Drinker

i find it interesting that this "study" doesn't quantify how much alcohol has actually been consumed. they state "five drinks", but they never say exactly how much alcohol each drink contains. is it a pint? is it a shot? and what constitutes those measures?? the only way this could every be considered a scientific test is if they spelled out EXACTLY how much alcohol makes up a "drink"...but they don't. and they also don't specify what a "short amount of time" is.

in science circles, none of this would hold up, because there are NO definitive measurements given, either for the amount of alcohol consumed or the time period in which it should be consumed to be considered "excessive".

here's a good example: i can drink 10-12 beers on Friday and Saturday nights. but those beers are usually from my grocery store, which only sells 3.2% beer. now, the law (here) says that the beer sold by grocery stores can only be "3.2% ABV Maximum", and that doesn't mean that's what i've been drinking is actually that strong (or weak, depending on how you look at it.) so i could very well be drinking something that is 1 or 2% alcohol. oh, and it generally takes me a good 12 hours to finish off a "grocery store" 12-pack...so is THAT binge drinking, or just a slow burn?

i regularly go several days without drinking any alcohol...but does my weekend nights constitute "binge drinking"?? how much alcohol do i consume, and is it a reliably repeatable experiment? and how long do i have to continually consume "x" amount of booze to start having physical problems?

my point is that "studies" like this are useless without concrete, minute data. the amount of liquid in a "drink" is useless: it's the amount of alcohol that's important, and how often (and for how long) it's consumed to be of any importance.

West Virgina, home of moonshining, has the same rate as Utah. Apparently nobody drinks in Tennessee since that state doesn't have a number. Remember, folks, you're the ones paying for these studies and support those who disseminate without questioning them. Perhaps if people began to hold the media who posts these reports as responsible as the people who create them, we might begin to see some real science again.

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

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

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.

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

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