Maybe we're getting a very different view of the US from the UK, but despite all of America's flaws and how weak the beer is, it seems so unexpected to me that 1/10 of people are opening a new drink every 90 minutes and somehow managing to hold down a job to be able to afford such a habit.
It just seems odd that in the UK, binge drinking is considered to be an issue, and yet a significant percentage of the US population is drinking the equivalent of a night out on a daily basis.
I've since cut back a lot but in my worst post-college days I could drink the equivalent of 8-10 drinks in a night and feel perfectly fine the next morning as long as I got a decent amount of sleep.
I think the conclusion to draw here is not that having 4-5 drinks a day is no big deal, but that different people react to alcohol and other drugs differently. For some people, like me, it turns out to be no big deal. For others I'm pretty sure it would be a very big deal. A one-size-fits-all drug policy is never going to work.
the-east-end.co.uk/the-gin-craze
The bulk of my customers drink 5-7 nights per week. We call them "regulars." They come every night when their shift ends, and most of them stay until close (although they are primarily service industry, so this is 5-7 hours per day). If they have a day off, they often show up earlier.
For these people, I think that one drink every half hour is an understatement. They're having a beer/cocktail every half hour or so, and mixing in shots, jello shots, etc. If they have limited time, they will up their rate of consumption. They're after a specific result.
I have no idea what percentage of the population they represent.
We have a lot of other customers who we see maybe once a week, every other week. Some folks come in to eat our food special and just have a couple beers and go. Stuff like that.
I think that you are probably in the latter group (or the non-drinking group) and so you don't see the former group. I very much agree that the heavy drinkers are not living normal lives; they ARE in fact permanently hungover (or should be--they learn to deal with it in various ways). It's a continuing problem with my own staff, actually.
Anyway, they're out there, they're holding jobs and making children, and they undeniably have a problem with alcohol. But again, I have no idea what percentage of the population they make up. Maybe I'm seeing the worst of the problems--but I don't actually believe that.
It's really, really prevalent in some industries. I've hired concrete finishers before (multiple times), and I've never NOT had a bunch of empty cans crushed up and hidden somewhere random on the worksite afterwords, even if it's only for a couple hours. When I worked with some writers years ago, they kept bottles of cheap scotch and 2 buck chuck in their desks, and had to replenish them regularly.
The go to drug selection in tech skews our perception a bit (weed being incredibly pervasive, but lsd,shrooms,stimulatns far from absent).
The bars are open until at least 2, you know.
A fair amount of the 10+ drinks isn't to "feel good" or "get drunk" once you're hooked. It's to stop the shaking and be able to minimally function.
Cheap hard liquor is even more cost-effective. You can get a big bottle of awful vodka for around $0.25 a "drink".
That is to say, you don't have to be able to hold down a particularly good job to afford this.
I assume that as you drink more your tolerance would increase? As an occasional light drinker, I'm pretty sure I'd be physically incapable of getting through that much alcohol in a day with enough time left to also attend a job.
Funny, I've never heard someone take a jab at the strength of American beer. I'm curious what is the ABV of a normal beer you're used to in the UK? The 'commercial grade' American domestics tend to be about 5% maybe 4.5%. In the last decade though, 'craft'/ micro breweries have exploded so it's very easy to find stronger at any bar. In almost any convenience/ grocery store, there are plenty of 7%-9% IPAs and the like. I'll admit I like strong beer :) A lot of bars around my area will have some exotic options of 10% or more. I had one recently that was 13%! That's as much as a glass of wine. That being said, the large majority of folks are drinking beer that's 4-5%.
As far as alcohol addicts go, I learned from a friend who had to take some court ordered 'rehab' classes, that (at least in the USA) something like 90% of all alcohol is consumed by only 10% of the drinking population. That means the dirty little secret they don't want you to know is basically the entire alcohol industry is propped up by addicts.
Edit: I just clicked the WaPo story you guys were talking about, and that lines up with what I heard previously. Most people drink very moderately, but the top 10% are the cash cows for the industry.
Now, in the case of my particular family members, I wouldn't exactly say they don't have a problem. Most of them live on the edge of poverty, which would be much less of a problem if they didn't drink and smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day.
But most of these folks who drink massive amounts of the sort of beers-I-wouldn't-touch-with-a-ten-foot-pole are mostly functional in society. By that, I mean, they don't have a monopoly on family and money problems. Shockingly few people have their shit together in the way that we talk about when we talk about the dangers of addiction.
Like I said, I don't know. It's not very clear/cut-and-dried to me.
I'm thinking of the office worker who might have a glass of orange juice, 2-3 cups of tea/coffee, then 2 pints after work most days.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death...
[laughs in Belgian Trappiste at the English ales]
Is beer in the US still as bad as it was 10 years ago? I understood it now has a huge craft-/micro brewery scene with some very drinkable APA/IPA's? Or is this just a tiny fraction of the market still?
Edit: And as a lover of belgian beers I can only agree. I wonder why people even drink so many IPAs when there's so many different and delicious varieties of beers around.
That said, a quick googling shows that 2/3 of the American beer market is still dominated by non-craft domestics (AKA your cheap, watery lagers like Bud/Miller). Even amongst the craft segment it's definitely the case as another commenter pointed out that IPAs are overrepresented for whatever reason.
I think where we're still really lagging behind is quality of beers at your average bar. If you know where to go you can find great selection but the average bar probably still has just a handful of decent non-domestic-lager offerings, likely in cans/bottles. In comparison to when I lived in the UK and it seemed like any corner pub would have a couple great draft ales .. it's not the same.
Most of the UK beer I've heard of is at a similar level or lower to US macro brews.