6-7 minutes
Americans are drinking themselves to death at ever-increasing rates,
with women in particular hitting the bottle hard, a new study shows.
The rate of alcohol-induced deaths among women increased between 3.1
percent and 3.6 percent a year from 2000 to 2016, while deaths among men
increased 1.4 percent to 1.8 percent each year, according to the
findings.
What's worse, the rates have accelerated in recent years -- the average
annual increase for women was 7.1 percent between 2013 and 2016, and for
men it was 4.2 percent between 2012 and 2016.
"The opioid crisis has generated the most attention in the media, and
certainly in Washington as well, but this study demonstrates that
America has had a serious alcohol problem for decades," said Dr. Timothy
Brennan, director of the Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai West and
Mount Sinai St. Luke's in New York City.
"This study really underlines the ongoing public health menace of
alcohol use disorder and risky and dangerous drinking," added Brennan,
who was not involved with the study.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to drink-related
fatalities. The deaths documented here were solely due to illness caused
by drinking, mainly alcoholic liver disease, said lead researcher Susan
Spillane, a former fellow with the U.S. National Cancer Institute's
Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics.
"We excluded causes known to be alcohol-related but not 100 percent
alcohol-attributable, such as road traffic accidents, alcohol-associated
cancers, and infections and organ system diseases known to be
associated with alcohol use," Spillane explained.
"Rates of alcohol-induced deaths, as documented in our study, are
bellwethers of a far larger public health problem, as these rates
capture only a portion of all alcohol-related deaths and say nothing of
alcohol-related morbidities," she added.
For the study, Spillane and her colleagues examined death certificate
data maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
as well as population statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Breaking it down into subgroups, the largest average increases in
alcohol-induced deaths were observed among American Indian and Alaska
Native men (3.3 percent) and women (4.2 percent), as well as white women
(4.2 percent).
In 2016, alcoholic liver disease accounted for 60 percent of
alcohol-induced deaths in males and 69 percent in females. Deaths due to
alcohol poisoning or alcohol-related mental and behavioral disorders
accounted for 36 percent of deaths in males and 28 percent in females.
"Notably, these increased rates occurred throughout the U.S., including
among urban, rural, wealthier and poorer counties," Spillane said. "Our
findings document an urgent public health crisis calling for concerted
public health action."
The findings were published Feb. 21 in the journal JAMA Network Open.
No one can say for sure why more Americans are dying from drink, but experts have a few theories.
"We know that stress, anxiety and wealth inequality are correlated with
higher drinking levels, especially among women as the gender gap
closes," said Pat Aussem, director of clinical content and development
for the Center on Addiction.
Women are also at higher risk for alcohol poisoning due to their
physiology, according to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism.
On average, women weigh less than men. In addition, alcohol tends to
reside in the body's water, and women pound for pound carry less water
in their bodies than men. That means women will reach higher blood
alcohol levels than men of comparable weight, even though they've drunk
the same amount of alcohol.
"Women and older adults are also more likely to be prescribed
medications that are known to be contraindicated with the consumption of
alcohol, such as benzodiazepines like Xanax and painkillers like
Vicodin and Percocet," Aussem added.
Larger societal shifts also have taken place that makes alcohol more available to people, Brennan said.
"Where one can purchase alcohol has really dramatically increased in the
last few decades," Brennan said. "Many of us grew up in towns where
there might be a liquor store, but you didn't have alcohol for sale in
the grocery store. Now we see a ubiquity of alcohol-purchasing
opportunities.
"We've also seen a whole ton of innovations in the alcohol industry,"
Brennan continued. "You're now able to purchase things far beyond beer,
liquor and wine. There are all sorts of alcohol-based teas and lemonades
and seltzers. As consumers, we're more and more inundated with
different types of alcohol and different opportunities to purchase
alcohol."
Aussem said there are a number of actions that could be taken to stem this trend:
Doctors can regularly screen patients for alcohol use, addiction, mental health disorders or family violence.
The public should be educated on CDC guidelines that limit daily
alcohol consumption to one drink for women and two drinks for men.
The availability of affordable treatment for alcoholism should be supported.
State and local laws can tax alcohol, limit the number of liquor
stores in a community, or hold businesses more accountable for selling
booze to minors or people who are already intoxicated.
The stigma related to alcoholism should be addressed, so people can seek care without being labeled or shamed.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about alcohol and your health.
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