This drinking habit is more dangerous than binge drinking – San Diego Union-Tribune

By Cristina Carón

The New York Times

The holidays offer an excuse to gather with loved ones, relax, and treat yourself—plates full of comfort foods. Nap without regrets. The whole cake.

And, for some, a lot of alcohol.

But excessive alcohol consumption is not limited to the holiday season. It’s not primarily the pastime of college students, either.

Overall rates of binge drinking are now equivalent among young and middle-aged adults. This is because young people, especially young men, binge drink less, while middle-aged adults drink more alcohol in a single sitting than before.

We have long been warned about the risks of excessive alcohol consumption, generally defined as having four or five drinks within a two-hour period. And now researchers are increasingly focusing on a more dangerous pattern of drinking that they call high-intensity drinking: consuming eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men.

Drinking at high intensity It’s even riskier than excessive drinking and is on the rise among certain segments of the population.

How is heavy drinking different from binge drinking?

The definition of excessive alcohol consumption arises from the work of Henry Wechsler, a social psychologist at Harvard University who in 1993 alcohol consumption tracked among college students across the country. It found that young women who reported consuming at least four drinks in one night and men who had at least five experienced the most alcohol-related problems.

But other researchers noted that some of the worst consequences associated with heavy drinking, such as blackouts and alcohol poisoning, tended to occur when people had much more than four or five drinks.

Over the years, experts have referred to higher levels of binge drinking in different ways, including “extreme drinking” and the much less catchy “Extreme ritualistic consumption of alcohol.” In the last few years, They decided on “high intensity drinking.”

Who consumes eight or 10 drinks in a row?

Binge drinking has long been associated with youth, but trends are changing.

Since 2005, the Monitoring the Future survey, which tracks the behavior of American teenagers into adulthood, has asked people ages 19 to 30 how often they have engaged in heavy drinking over the previous two weeks.

The survey found that high-intensity alcohol consumption decreased to 8.5% of study subjects in 2023, from about 11% in 2013.

But “while prevalence is declining, it remains high,” particularly among those in their 20s, said George F. Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Almost 1 in 8 people aged 27 and 28 regularly consume 10 or more drinks in one night, according to the latest data from 2023.

The National Alcohol Survey series, which collects data from the general population, defines heavy drinking as the consumption of at least eight drinks in a row by any person, male or female, during the previous 12 months.

The latest analysis of the survey, which does not include data beyond 2020, also showed a decline in high-intensity alcohol use among young adults overall. But its frequency among men aged 30 and older and women aged 18 to 64 has increased, said Camillia Lui, a scientist at the Alcohol Research Group who analyzed the data.

What problems are associated with excessive alcohol consumption?

Experts who study the effects of alcohol said it’s worth distinguishing between binge drinking and heavy drinking because the latter has more serious consequences.

Consuming eight or 10 drinks in a short period of time can produce a blood alcohol concentration, or BAC, greater than 0.2%, “significantly increasing the risk of injury, overdose and death,” Koob said. In comparison, a regular binge (four or five drinks) typically results in a BAC of around 0.08%.

Heavy drinkers are also more likely to experience a “complete blackout,” with no memory of what happened, or to end up in the emergency room, “severely intoxicated and a danger to themselves and others,” Keith Humphreys said. , an addiction specialist. Expert and psychologist from Stanford University. When people drink that much, “the risk of harm increases dramatically,” he added.

Additionally, a greater number of drinks per occasion is associated with a higher likelihood of developing an alcohol use disorder, Koob said.

And “high-intensity drinking doesn’t just harm the drinker,” Lui said. It can lead to physical assaults, drunk driving accidents, property damage and relationship problems, he added.

Why do people drink so much?

There are many reasons why someone might abuse alcohol, from genetic disposition to self-medication.

But when it comes to high intensity drinking, studies have found that young people were motivated largely by the expectation that this would make them more sociable and help them have fun with their friends. And that, for them, outweighed any possible negative consequences.

The National Alcohol Survey has shown that middle-aged and older adults also drink during social events, but they also reported using drinking as a way to cope with stress, Lui said.

More research is needed to understand why some age groups are gravitating toward this more extreme form of binge eating. Because while five drinks is risky, it’s not the same as 10, Humphreys said.

“The dose produces the poison,” he added.