A new government survey has found that most people who drink for the purpose of getting wasted are not alcoholics at all … they're just normal people trying to forget what their uncles did to them! Phew! Guess there'll be no more free A.A. donuts for us …
A new government survey has found that most people who drink for the purpose of getting wasted are not alcoholics at all … they're just normal people trying to forget what their uncles did to them! Phew! Guess there'll be no more free A.A. donuts for us …
The finding comes from a survey of 138,100 American adults, and goes agasint your parent's belief that blacking out and waking up with a sharpie penis on your eyebrow constitutes alcoholism. Instead, the results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health show that nine out of 10 people who drink too much are not addicts in the slightest, and can change their behavior with hardly any effort anytime they feel like it. Power to the pina colada.
“Many people tend to equate excessive drinking with alcohol dependence,’’ said Dr. Robert Brewer, who leads the alcohol program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We need to think about other strategies to address these people who are drinking too much but who are not addicted to alcohol.”
Although excessive drinking isn't actually an addiction, it still kills about 88,000 people a year, either by alcohol poisoning, liver disease, or car accidents. Clearly it's not exactly an innocent hobby … but let's just say your grandma's offer to put you in a $3,000 per month rehab facility in Malibu is a little premature.
However, an important point for your scrutinizing eyes: The definition of excessive drinking is, of course, extremely light. For men, it's having five or more drinks in one setting, and for women, it's four. That's a pretty adorable underestimate of what we think constitutes "excessive" drinking, is it not?
That's possibly why this study came up with the finding that "excessive" boozing isn't alcoholism. Of course it's not. According to that logic, if you have a vagina and you have two double-shot vodka sodas in a "setting" or four beers, you're out of control and headed for a lifetime of cirrhosis.
It's not surprising then, that 29 percent of the population meets the standard for excessive drinkers, but 90 percent of them aren't alcoholics.
But what is surprising, is how relieving that news is to everyone who thought that blacking out and decorating their living room with pizza meant they had some sort of problem. Au contraire; that just means you're fun, and should work in our office. We could use someone like you.
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