Heavy drinking is on the rise in many parts of the United States with researchers reporting that it is up by 17 percent since 2005, pushing the amount of alcohol consumed higher than ever before with rates rising faster among women than among men.
However, there is a big difference at the county level. In some counties, more than a third of the residents are binge drinkers and more than 20 percent are heavy drinkers. So what is the hardest drinking county in the United States? That titles goes to Menominee County, Wisconsin.
"In 2012, 8.2 percent of all Americans were considered heavy drinkers and 18.3 percent were binge drinkers," the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation says in a statement.
"Madison County, Idaho, had the lowest levels of binge drinking in 2012 (5.9 percent), while Menominee, Wisconsin, had the highest rates of binge drinking (36 percent among residents). For heavy drinking, Hancock County, Tennessee, had the fewest heavy drinkers (2.4 percent of its population) and Esmeralda County, Nevada, recorded the largest proportion of heavy drinkers (22.4 percent)."
Binge drinking rates spiked by 17.5 percent among women between 2005 and 2012 but only went up by 4.9 percent in men, the statistics showed. These stats confirmed what federal health officials have been seeing.
"It confirms what we have been seeing in a whole other group of metrics," says Dr. George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
"We have seen an increase in the same time period of hospitalizations due to alcohol and emergency room visits due to alcohol," Koob said.
According to Dr. Ali Mokdad, three things explain why the rates have risen so sharply. First, "Socioeconomic factors - people who are educated, people who have the means to enjoy a drink when they come home from work, will drink," he said.
Availability is also a factor. "If you have more outlets selling alcohol and you have more bars next to each other, people tend to go from one to another and have more drinks," Mokdad said.
Finally, social norms are also responsible. If your family and friends have a few drinks to celebrate, you are more likely to drink, also. Binge drinking and heavy drinking go on in both poor and prosperous times, Mokdad said.
At the national level, 18.3 percent of Americans were binge drinkers in 2012, an increase of almost 9 percent since 2005. However, the percentage of drinkers hasn't changed, with 56 percent of Americans saying they drink alcohol.
"When you can map out what's happening county by county, over time, and for men and women separately, that's also when you can really pinpoint specific health needs and challenges - and then tailor health policies and programs accordingly," IHME director Dr. Christopher Murray said in a statement.
