I wanted to see how other Americans felt about this article claiming 1/5 deaths of those 20-49 in the US are attributed to excessive drinking (1/8 for 20-64). I’m generally very pro alcohol, but this number is staggering to me and I wanted to see what other Americans thought about it. A quote from the article I found particularly poignant:
“I’m not surprised at the numbers,” said David Jernigan, a professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University. “This is a conservative estimate.”
Jernigan was not involved in the study.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/01/health/drinking-deaths-us-study-wellness/index.html
6 comments
The fact that drinking excessively causes health problems is not new. Granted, the definition of “alcohol-related” that they used in the article is pretty loose and I’d like to see their actual data. But really, it didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know even if we can’t quantify it. Drinking excessively is bad for you.
I don’t “feel” much at all. I’ve lost numerous close people in my life to alcohol, it’s a fact of life.
Alcohol has been killing huge amounts of people since it was discovered. People like it, it’s addictive, it’s very harmful to your health, and it causes many accidents that would not otherwise occur.
How do *you* “feel” about this information?
It doesn’t say there are a massive number of deaths. It says that of the deaths in the 20 – 49 age range, 1 of 5 can be attributed to alcohol. The actual mortality rates for that age range are less than 1 in 1000 and nearly 40% of deaths in that age range are attributed to accidental injuries.
I think this is an important distinction to make because one way implies that people are drinking themselves to death in staggeringly high amounts. The other way implies that young to middle aged adults need to drink less because it negatively affects health.
People 20 to 49 are very rarely going to die without something serious and external going on.
It’s not at all surprising that alcohol is a factor in many of those deaths. Health effects from even moderate drinking accumulate and being even mildly drunk makes you more prone to dying from trauma (drunk driving accidents and falls, for instance).
It’s a bit surprising it isn’t higher, but as the article said, it’s not exactly easy to know a death was alcohol related once you get away from directly caused deaths.
Best friend and long time drinking buddy died from an esophageal varices that ruptured causing him to bleed out. Our drinking habits were similar. I’ve been sober since 2019 and don’t miss drinking at all. So much time, money, and life wasted.
Alcohol causes an enormous number of medical and social problems, and we have trouble accepting the scale and persistence of the issue.