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Scientists Have Figured Out How Normal Your Booze Problem Is

Researchers in the UK crunched some numbers to determine what age average alcohol consumption peaks, and the numbers will not surprise you.
Photo via Flickr user r..m

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Science has figured out just how average your alcohol consumption is. Did you wake up in a small, sour patch of your own sick today? That could be normal, depending on your age. Did you have a warm tin of lager in a bubble-less bath? That could also be entirely normal. Just you, a bottle of port, and some Celine Dion songs? Could that ever be OK? Let's find out, via science.

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The BioMed Central (BMC) journal published new research from University College London's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health this month, showing the trajectory of alcohol consumption over the average UK lifetime. The key findings were this: For men, alcohol consumption peaks at the age of 25, with around 13 units per week, while for women it was much lower: Their peak weekly alcohol consumption was only four drinks.

If you are confused because you are a young drunk woman and you have more than four drinks directly in front of you right now, be chill. The data for this study was collected from a series of cross-sectional surveys and industry data, so that means it encompasses all those people who don't drink for religious or health reasons, who don't drink because otherwise they have nothing to talk about on Facebook during Lent, everyone who takes drugs instead of drinking, and all those people who had a bad can of cider when they were 15 and ended up ruining all the floor mats in their dad's Volvo. Four drinks per week is just the peak average out of that.

But hey, if you're past 25 and you're worried that your best drinking days are behind you: Do not be worried about that thing. While drug and alcohol consumption tends to peak in the mid 20s (this is not an astonishing trend), the study did find more regular consumption in early 30s to middle age—so instead of going out on a Friday and waking up on a Sunday in a McDonald's parking lot with a suspiciously bitter taste in your mouth, you tend to spread your drinking out over the week.

"Frequent drinking (daily or most days of the week) became more common during mid to older age, most notably among men," the study's authors write. And going teetotal becomes more of a thing with age, too, although the numbers are still low: "Non-drinkers were uncommon, particularly among men, where the proportion remained under 10 percent until old age, when it rose to above 20 percent among those aged over 90," the research said.

If you think about it, your life's story is told by your drinking habits. The malt liquor and Smirnoff Ice binges of irresponsible, inexperienced youth fade into the macrobrews-by-the-case weekends of higher education, followed by a slide into a series of blurry, vaguely desperate mid-twenties nights during which your self-medication routine becomes more rote, the venues you inhabit less likely to be pumping in aggressive dance music. Your appetite for performatively excessive drinking wanes, or maybe your appetite for drinking, period, goes away.

Then it's just you, a couple friends, and a six-pack of IPAs or a bottle of wine—the taste of which, you realize, you can actually describe and comment on. Drinking becomes something you do, not something that happens to you. By that time you don't have the constitution for long nights that turn into early mornings, and you're doing cardio and watching your carbs. You have a couple beers when the NFL is on, maybe, or a glass of decent red wine after the kids go to sleep. And then they flee the nest, and you are free—free at last—retired and ready to live, waking up at 6 AM in that way old people do and waiting around until you can crack out the pale cream sherry and the ruby port. Granddad dying with a whiskey in his hand. Anyway: happy drinking!

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