People may drink more than they realize

(Reuters Health) – People’s estimates of how much they drink are much higher when they include weekends and holidays, according to a new survey from the UK.

In England, surveys measuring everyday alcohol consumption account for only 60 per cent of the total alcohol sold in stores, the researchers write in BMC Medicine.

By only focusing on typical drinking patterns, surveys miss a lot of alcohol consumption that happens on special occasions like weddings, holidays, and sporting events, according to Mark Bellis, the lead author on the study.

“We wanted to better understand drinking patterns to better inform people about the risks and improve public health responses to drinking,” said Bellis, the director of policy, research and development for Public Health Wales.

The researchers conducted a phone survey of over 6,000 people over the age of 16 in England to assess the amount of special occasion drinking that may not be picked up by other surveys.

Respondents were asked about their alcohol consumption on days where they drank more than usual. This included less typical days such as Friday nights, as well as their average number of drinks during holidays and events.

Overall, 4,604 of the survey subjects said they were “current drinkers.”

Responses from these individuals showed that on atypical and special occasions, people drank an extra 120 million units of alcohol per week in England, or the equivalent of 12 million bottles of wine.The researchers defined one unit of alcohol as 8 grams of pure alcohol, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defined a standard drink as having 14 grams.

The greatest increase in drinking was among the 25-34 year-olds who had the highest everyday drinking rates. For this group, special occasion drinking added 18 units per week for both men and women.

Overall, when including atypical drinking, 25- to 34-year-old men reported the highest weekly consumption of alcohol.

In general, men added a higher number of drinks on special occasions, but women had the greatest increases relative to how much they generally drank.