Study: Women Are Getting Drunk More These Days

Read: This Guy Is Drunk All the Time Because His Body Produces Its Own Alcohol

A new study from the National Institutes of Health says that women in the US are fast approaching men when it comes to how much alcohol they drink.

Historically, guys drink more than women—that one scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark notwithstanding. And while that's still true, the gender gap has shrunk noticeably. Women are drinking more these days, and men are drinking slightly less.

The NIH researchers sifted through a decade of drinking statistics from between 2002 and 2012, and found that the percentage of women who drank alcohol in the past month leapt from 40 to 48 percent, while the equivalent statistic for men dropped down to 56 percent from the previous 57.4.

Women also drank more frequently during those 30 days—an average of 7.3 days, up from the original 6.8 days—and are drinking a lot more when they're partying.

Binge drinking is pretty ubiquitous for college kids, and the amount of binge drinking for men and women in school has stayed consistent over the years. But college-aged women who aren't in school are drinking way more than they have in the past—whereas guys are drinking a bit less.

While the gap between genders may be narrowing, men are still leading the charge for alcohol-related deaths by a long shot: guys were the victims in two-thirds of the booze-fueled deaths between 2006 and 2010.