Study details

For the study, which was based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics' National Health Interview Survey and carried out from January to December 2022, researchers asked a total of 26,806 people ages 18 and over about their drinking habits that year.

Overall, the study found alcohol intake increased across all genders, ages, racial and ethnic groups, and geographic regions over the course of the year.

When asked, 69.3% of Americans reported having consumed some alcohol at some point in 2022, up from 69.03% in 2020 and 66.34% in 2018. Most notably, Americans who reported drinking heavily increased to 6.29%, up from 6.13% in 2020 and 5.1% in 2018.

While binge drinking is defined as having four to five drinks in a roughly two-hour period, heavy drinking is classified as at least five drinks per day or at least 15 per week for men and at least four drinks per day or at least eight per week for women.

The study also found that 8.23% of Americans ages 40 to 49 and 7.15% of Americans ages 50 to 64 reported heavy drinking, an increase from 6.49% and 6.95% in 2020, respectively. In addition, the researchers found that 6.45% of all women reported heavy drinking compared to 6.12% of men.

Discussion

In 2021, alcohol-related deaths in the United States rose by nearly 30%. This 2022 study points to an alarming uptick in alcohol use and abuse among Americans, researchers say.

"The pandemic was a really stressful event," said Divya Ayyala-Somayajula, a gastrointestinal and liver disease health clinician at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. "People were at home, there was no child care, and one of the acceptable coping mechanisms is drinking alcohol to deal with stress, anxiety and depression."

According to Brian P. Lee, the study's principal investigator and a hepatologist at the University of Southern California's (USC) Keck Medicine, medical professionals were already seeing "an enormous surge of people coming in to the clinic and the hospital with alcohol-related problems" in the early days of the pandemic.

Despite alcohol being commonly used to relieve stress, limited access to behavioral health resources during the pandemic led many people who were in recovery from alcohol use disorders to relapse, experts said.

"We think that what happened during the pandemic was that there were a large number of people who were already in a high-risk zone," said Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at USC's Institute for Addiction Science. "[T]he pandemic pushed them over the brink into severe illness and death."

And despite alcohol's social acceptance, heavy, prolonged drinking damages the liver, which could lead to alcoholic hepatitis and/or cirrhosis. It can also cause arrhythmias, strokes and high blood pressure, pancreatitis, weaken the immune system, and has even been linked with an increased risk of cancer in the head, neck, esophagus, liver, breast, and the colorectum.

And while the negative effects of heavy drinking take years to materialize, experts have expressed worry about people who began drinking heavily during the pandemic and haven't stopped.

"[O]ur results highlight an alarming public health issue that may require a combination of policy changes," the researchers wrote.

"We know that alcohol use begins as a silent disease and only rears its head years later in terms of chronic disease," Lee said. "What this will unveil for the future is what worries me."