‘moderate’ drinkers may still be at serious risk: new study

People who consider themselves “moderate” drinkers may still be at risk for serious alcohol-related problems, a recent study shows.

Research typically tabulates a person’s drinking over the course of a week, so someone who has a glass of wine with dinner each night is lumped into the same category as another who consumes multiple drinks in a row on a single Saturday night — with both considered “moderate drinkers.”

“This leaves many drinkers mistakenly assuming that a moderate average level of consumption is safe, regardless of drinking pattern,” said one of the latest study’s researchers, Rudolf Moos, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, in a statement.

In reality, “Independent of the average level of drinking, binge drinking was linked with an almost 3 times increase in the number of concurrent alcohol problems and a 40% increase in the number of alcohol problems prospectively 9 years later,” the study found.

Binge drinkers run the risk of “getting hurt, emotional or psychological problems from alcohol, having to use more alcohol to get the same effect, and experiencing effects of alcohol at work, school or caring for children,” said study co-author Charles Holahan, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, in an e-mail to CNN.

“What this means is that an individual whose total consumption is seven drinks on Saturday night presents a greater risk profile than someone whose total consumption is a daily drink with dinner, even though their average drinking level is the same,” Holahan said.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks in two hours for men and four or more drinks in that time frame for women.

Binge-drinking rates among young adults have been decreasing over the past decade but still remain relatively high, according to the NIAAA. Meanwhile, among older adults, binge drinking is on the rise, and more than 10% of adults 65 or older have reported binge drinking in the past month.

The research, which was published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, used data collected by the Midlife Development in the United States study, which has data on a sample of Americans across the country ages 25 to 74 since 1995.