Our Love of Getting Trashed Is Costing the US $250 Billion Every Year

A rough night out has a lot of personal costs. Your wallet might be missing, some incriminating photos are now floating around and the loss of dignity can be hard to swallow. That is, if you're able to keep anything down in the morning. But know that your personal loss is a drop in the bucket of the nearly quarter of a trillion dollars America is losing by getting totally wasted all the time.

Our proclivity for throwing back cold ones and powering down shots in large quantities is costing the US nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars every year, according to a new study from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The study calculated its total from factors such as the cost of healthcare, car crashes, crime, and alcohol-related deaths. The study does not account for mysterious bruises and intense feelings of shame and guilt.

Hangovers are the biggest culprit, and result in roughly $77 billion in lost productivity at work (surprising literally no one in this office)

The CDC says the findings are cause for concern—the economic costs of heavy drinking are up significantly over the four-year period from 2006 to 2010, the target year of the study, when drinking accounted for 88,000 deaths. Keep it up, America. One in ten deaths of working-age Americans is alcohol-related, and binge drinking—which the CDC defines as drinking a measly five or more drinks on one occasion for a man, or just four or more for a woman—accounts for 77 percent, or $191 billion, of the economic hit.

Overall, in 2006, the cost of drinking on the US economy was $223.5 billion, or $1.90 per drink. At $249 billion in 2010, the cost per drink had risen to $2.05, outpacing inflation. Consider this: At a cost of $2, that's more than the price of a beer in a six-pack, meaning theoretically it's costing the economy more to deal with your drinking than you're paying to drink, in some cases. Call it American exceptionalism, there's a thesis in there.

"The increase in the costs of excessive drinking from 2006 to 2010 is concerning, particularly given the severe economic recession that occurred during these years," Robert Brewer, the head of the CDC's Alcohol Program said.

The bills are often paid by governments, which paid out $100 billion, or 40%, of drinking related costs, so don't say the government didn't ever do anything for you. Fittingly, the governmental HQ pit of despair, Washington, D.C., had the highest cost on the U.S. economy per person, resulting in a $1,526 hit per person compared to an average of $807 nationally. New Mexico had the highest cost per drink at $2.77. California expectedly had the highest overall cost at $35 billion, but they also had the fourth highest per drink cost at $2.44. If you look at the data, you can come to some interesting conclusions about alcohol consumption on a state-by-state level, two of them being that people in D.C. drink a ton and New Mexico can't handle its booze.

That said, CDC researchers believe these numbers actually underestimate the real cost of drinking on the economy. Information about alcohol is often underreported, they say, and the study doesn't address issues or conditions that might be aggravated by drinking. The list of alcohol-related intangibles are too many for our best and brightest. As anyone who's ever woken up with a less than clear head and missing wallet can attest, the full extent of the fallout from heavy drinking can be a bit fuzzy.