I am curious how the 10% breaks down. I classify myself as a heavy drinker and can’t think of many occasions where I would have hit the weekly average of the 10% although I know on occasion, say on holiday I may well have significantly surpassed it. Even if I were inclined to drink like that week in week out I couldn’t afford it. The above average equals about 96 Irish measures (35ml) of Jack Daniels. That would be €132 (US$166) if bought at an off licence or around €432 (US$545) if bought in bars here in Ireland. The whole thing puts the lie to the industry watchword “Please drink responsibly”. If people did the industry’s profits would collapse.
I was a steady, moderate drinker for most of my adult life, and in round numbers I’d say my average, across a narrow variance, was maybe 30 drinks a week. Over double that is well into nonstop drinker - more than 10 a day.
I call bullshit. This is a miscalculated average based on bar, holiday and vacationer consumption.
If I’m doing my math correctly, and prices vary by state, the price of a fifth would be about $16 in New Hampshire, which has no sales tax and is notoriously lower than average. So, $72 for 4.5 bottles.
I spent family week at rehab with my sister. It doesn’t surprise me. Two bottles of wine a day for an alcoholic is really nothing - my sister didn’t believe she had a problem because so many people she knew were going through so much more alcohol than she was - and she was a two bottle of wine/5th of vodka a day drinker.
I’ve done family AA meetings and listened to stories about a 24 pack a day on a weekend - and maintaining a haze the rest of the week that takes a few more 24 packs to maintain.
People who are heavy drinkers are seriously heavy drinkers.
(And its possible to have addiction issues with much lower levels of usage - but when you are talking that much - even if you avoid the addiction issues, you are putting your body through hell. Lesson I learned - when figuring out if you have a drinking problem - comparative analysis is not helpful.)
ETA: As to the expense - a lot of alcoholics are pretty successful people for a long time. My sister had a six figure a year job to finance her wine and vodka. Until she didn’t.
Addressing the question of how the cost adds up, I think the results in the OP are skewed by looking at a name brand and by looking at liquor. If you’re buying a 40-oz malt liquor, you’re getting almost double the alcohol of beer per unit of volume, so that’s 40/12 = 3.3 beers of volume x 2 alcohol content = between 6 and 7 beers worth. All for about $3. At $0.50/drink, you hit your weekly total with a cost of just $36/week.
Even regular beer sometimes drops to as little as $0.50/can, but you’re more often looking at something closer to $1. Still, $72 a week isn’t so bad.
If you’re in the wine category, there’s three-buck-chuck, which is a $3 bottle of wine. So that’s $54/week.
I’m not sure about the generic for Jack Daniels, but you can see from the above examples that there are some dirt-cheap options for getting your booze if that’s all you care about. Here’s an Esquire article listing cheap liquors and you can see that a liter can run you less than $20. The bourbon listed there is $12 for 750 mL, so 4.5 of those runs you a measly $54/week.
It’s based on a large (40k respondants) NIH survey. Like all surveys, its based on self-reporting, and so some scepticism is warranted. But I wouldn’t really expect people to over report their consumption. Most heavy drinkers I’ve known tend to underestimate their drinking.
I’ve known several people that basically go home after work and pound beers while watching TV for several hours until they drink themselves to sleep, and than hit the bars on weekends. I don’t think they’d have any trouble putting away 75 beers over a week.
BevMo has Jack Daniels for $18 or $34/1.75L (sale from $23 and $49). Normally it’s more expensive than that, more expensive than middle bourbons like Jim Beam. That’s before sales tax. California prices, but I find they are generally cheaper than most places in this much cheaper state that is the land of alcohol (cue reference to Homer imagining Germany as the land of chocolate).
But the hardcore alcoholics aren’t drinking this frou frou stuff. Olde English and Wolfschmidt vodka. But if you’re hardcore, you need it now, and might not shop smart by buying in bulk, so I imagine many of these people are paying more than they “should.”
For mixing bourbons I can get Kessler anywhere from $10-$15 per 1.75L normally. Gordon’s is decent for vodka and gin.
If you want to get technical, there is no generic for Jack Daniel’s. There are only two brands in that category (Tennessee whiskey): JD and George Dickel, and the latter tends to be more expensive. Some people lump them in with bourbons but legally and IMHO taste-wise, they aren’t the same.
Nitpick: a fifth of liquor is equivalent to 2 bottles of wine only if the wine is 20%ABV. Most wine is a little less than that. Not that it makes a difference really in the long run
I find if I don’t drink the frou frou stuff I am in worse order the next day, not able to work at optimum capacity, so in real terms the cheapest costs more.
A regular can or bottle of beer is 12 US fl oz/355mL. “Bombers” of specialty beer are either 22 fl oz or 750 mL (two sizes), but probably not what people are buying just to get drunk. Sometimes it’s 16 oz/1 pint, but those are usually canned PBR/Coors/Corona/etc. (or 1 pint draft/draught, but that’s a separate medium).
I love my beer. As to cost, the beer I prefer is more high end; say $6 for 10 to 16 ounce drafts. Last night I met some friends and I had four. The bartender charged me for 3 and I left $25 on the bar.
Meanwhile, there was a line at the take-out register of people buying 12 packs of whatever is currently cheapest. A few of them returned for seconds and their total expense was still below mine.
That is insane. I’m a heavy drinker with binge-drinking tendencies (I don’t do the “two beer buzz”). I get drunk (drunk = more than ten shots of liquor or its equivalent in wine or beer) three or four nights a week on the average. 74 drink equivalents per week would be like doing that every single day.
Do these 10%ers not have jobs? How do they function?!
10% of drinkers take 50% of drinks? Sounds like a variation on the Pareto principle, which says that for many phenomena, 80% of the effects, come from 20% of the causes; YMMV.
I don’t drink every day but when I drink I drink for keeps usually but I have friends who drink a bottle or more of red or white wine every single night while holding down 6 figure jobs.
My first thought was to call bullshit, but the more I think about it I can easily imagine an alcoholic drinking that much in a week. So I guess its just another instance where it is truly astonishing to me how many people there really are in the world. 24 million people seems like an incredible number, and thats only the US!