What is alcohol abuse and excessive drinking?

To begin with, excessive drinking or alcohol abuse (Alcohol Use Disorder) includes binge drinking, heavy drinking, and any drinking by pregnant women or people younger than age 21.   Binge drinking, the most common form of excessive drinking, is defined as consuming:

For women, 4 or more drinks during a single occasion

For men, 5 or more drinks during a single occasion

Heavy drinking is defined as consuming:

For women, 8 or more drinks per week

For men, 15 or more drinks per week

What is considered a standard "drink"? In the United States, a standard drink contains 0.6 ounces (14.0 grams or 1.2 tablespoons) of pure alcohol. Generally, this amount of pure alcohol can be found in:

12 ounces of beer (5% alcohol content)

8-9 ounces of malt liquor (7% alcohol content)

5 ounces of wine (12% alcohol content)

1.5 ounces of 80-proof (40% alcohol content) distilled spirits or liquor (e.g., gin, rum, vodka, whiskey)

Statistics

Excessive alcohol use is responsible for about 88,000 deaths a year in the United States, including 1 in 10 total deaths among working-age adults aged 20 to 64 years. To illustrate, in 2010, excessive alcohol use cost the US economy $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.

Binge drinking and alcohol abuse are responsible for over half the deaths and three-quarters of the costs due to excessive alcohol use. According to the CDC, estimates suggest that 37 million US adults-or 1 in 6-binge drink about once a week, consuming an average of 7 drinks per binge. As a result, US adults consume about 17 billion binge drinks annually or about 470 binge drinks per binge drinker.