April is Alcohol Awareness Month, which feels a bit ironic, doesn’t it? Raising awareness of alcohol? We all know it's there. Instead, we should be raising awareness of alcohol normalization and the public health consequences we all suffer because of it.
As an example—we're all very aware of the opioid epidemic. It's such a key issue that it's been directly addressed in the State of the Union Address annually for the past decade. Yet, if someone used the phrase “alcohol epidemic,” eyebrows would most certainly rise, despite the fact that the magnitude of alcohol-related death in the United States is almost double that for opioids. And, similar to opioids, alcohol-related deaths spiked by nearly 30 percent over the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve been suffering with this death toll for decades—and it's projected to increase over the next 20 years. It’s undeniably one of the greatest public health challenges facing the world today.
Alcohol is surprisingly destructive for something so ubiquitous. It’s the seventh leading cause of preventable death globally, not to mention that in the United States alone it is involved in more than 50 percent of sexual assaults, 40 percent of domestic violence incidents, 31 percent of driving fatalities, and 21 percent of suicides. In 2021, it was calculated that 4.9 percent of all deaths in the United States could have been prevented by removing alcohol. Excessive alcohol use costs the United States $249 billion each year—to put in perspective, this is about half the cost of treating heart disease, which is the number-one cause of death for Americans.
Despite the extreme costs, both literal and figurative, alcohol remains a fixture of our culture. And not just an occasional drink—excessive drinking has been glorified and communally embraced as “normal.” Take sporting events, for example. A 2023 survey found that fans consume an average of 3.7 drinks per person while watching sports—typically more if they are attending the sporting event live (versus watching from home). On average, 51 percent of those surveyed reported regular binge drinking while watching sports. Attendees at sporting events reportedly spend, on average, $50 to $70 per person on alcohol. And championship games are windfalls for the alcohol industry. Just recently, it was reported that 325 million gallons of beer were consumed on Super Bowl Sunday alone.
Beyond sporting events, alcohol is woven into most of our social experiences: happy hours, cocktail parties, holiday gatherings, or even a casual dinner with friends. Alcohol is gifted in celebration when buying a house or getting a promotion—anytime we want to “toast” a happy occasion. And alcohol is a fixture of formal events, like weddings, galas, and fundraisers, where an “open bar” is customary.
We don’t do this with any other drugs. We don’t see heroin booths at black tie events. Cocaine is not sold in the stands at football games. Oxycodone is not available for purchase in cute little bottles on airplanes or stocked in hotel rooms. Yet alcohol is found in all these contexts—and more—despite causing more deaths and taxing our health care system more severely than all these other substances combined.
Culturally, we have a permissive attitude toward alcohol that is unlike any other substance—even tobacco. This mindset not only feeds into alcohol dependence—a condition that currently impacts more than 10 percent of the population—but also promotes the health consequences of even so-called “casual” alcohol consumption. For example, a recent study found that drinking two to three drinks per day is related to an increase in all-cause mortality. Another study found that one drink per day is enough to raise the risk of heart disease for women. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links more than a dozen long-term chronic illnesses to regular alcohol consumption, including high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, liver disease, dementia, and a weakened immune system.
We can’t afford to turn a blind eye to this compounding evidence; we must change our mentality about the normalization of alcohol use.
While we can’t expect to cognitively restructure deeply embedded cultural norms overnight, there are some things that we can do to increase our awareness of the issue and small adjustments we can make that, cumulatively, can have a larger impact over time:
Just these steps alone—bringing awareness to your habits and the reasons behind them—can impact your behaviors such that you’re making informed choices instead of following routines or social expectations.
This April—and all year long—“alcohol awareness” can take the form of self-reflection and changing the way we consider our cultural norms. If we don’t just accept things because “That’s the way they are” but we turn it into a question: “Why are things the way they are?” or, more importantly, “Should they be this way?” then we are no longer blind to the issue. And that, by itself, is a powerful step in the right direction.
References
Caren Chesler. More than one alcoholic drink a day raises heart disease risk for women. Washington Post. March 28, 2024.
Alcohol: Challenging Dangerous Cultural Norms
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16.04.2024
April is Alcohol Awareness Month, which feels a bit ironic, doesn’t it? Raising awareness of alcohol? We all know it's there. Instead, we should be raising awareness of alcohol normalization and the public health consequences we all suffer because of it.
As an example—we're all very aware of the opioid epidemic. It's such a key issue that it's been directly addressed in the State of the Union Address annually for the past decade. Yet, if someone used the phrase “alcohol epidemic,” eyebrows would most certainly rise, despite the fact that the magnitude of alcohol-related death in the United States is almost double that for opioids. And, similar to opioids, alcohol-related deaths spiked by nearly 30 percent over the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve been suffering with this death toll for decades—and it's projected to increase over the next 20 years. It’s undeniably one of the greatest public health challenges facing the world today.
Alcohol is surprisingly destructive for something so ubiquitous. It’s the seventh leading cause of preventable death globally, not to mention that in the United States alone it is involved in more than 50 percent of sexual assaults, 40 percent of domestic violence incidents, 31 percent of driving fatalities, and 21 percent of suicides. In 2021, it was calculated........
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