As the holiday season wraps up and resolutions are set, a common goal for many Americans is to drink less in the new year. Whether you’re doing Dry January or trying out zebra striping for the first time, choosing to moderate consumption is never a bad idea.

Overconsumption has long been a topic of concern, with experts warning about the dangers of binge drinking since the ‘90s. Defined as having four or more drinks (for women) or five or more drinks (for men) in about two hours, binge drinking is a practice most often associated with younger age groups, namely college students, as these individuals overindulged most often when the term first rose to prominence. However, in recent years, specialists have turned their attention to an older demographic: midlife adults.

According to data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), alcohol use among adults aged 35-50 has been steadily increasing over the past 10 years, with the binge drinking rate hitting its highest-ever level in 2022. In 2012, just 23 percent of adults in the cohort reported binge drinking at least once. By 2022, that number had jumped to 29 percent. The trend continued into 2023, with the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealing that 60.4 million adults over the age of 18 (23.5 percent) binge drank in the month before they filled out the survey.

Given the uptick, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) identified a key emerging trend of “high-intensity drinking” that has many experts sounding the alarm. Described as “worse than binge drinking,” high-intensity drinking has the potential to lead to riskier decision-making and health issues more severe than those risked while binging.

But what is high-intensity drinking, and how exactly does it differ from binge drinking? VinePair spoke with Dr. Megan E. Patrick, a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, to find out more.

“We typically define high-intensity drinking as twice the amount of alcohol consumed in a binge drinking episode,” Dr. Patrick explains. “Typically, that will be 10 or more drinks in a row or sex-specific cutoffs of eight or more for women and 10 or more for men.”

In comparison to binge drinking, which typically occurs in approximately two-hour time frames, Dr. Patrick explains that high-intensity drinking periods are often extended over much longer periods. However, those engaging in the behavior often don’t slow down the rate at which they’re drinking to accommodate this lengthier window, likely because multiple drinks are consumed in multiple locations throughout a single night.

“On days when people engage in high-intensity drinking, not only do they consume a high number of drinks, but they also tend to drink for longer periods of time at a much faster pace,” she says. “That is, they have more drinks in a short period, which leads to a high level of intoxication.”

Similarly to binge drinking, high-intensity drinking is often associated with younger generations, with the habit typically starting in teens and later peaking around 21-22 for men and 25-26 for women. However, despite the tendency to connect the practice with the demographic, the prevalence of high-intensity consumption is actually declining among individuals aged 19-30.

According to an ongoing study and annual report co-authored by Dr. Patrick for Monitoring the Future, 11.1 percent of adults in that age group reported high-intensity drinking in a singular two-week period in 2013. In that same two-week period in 2023, just 8.5 percent of those 19-30 engaged in high-intensity drinking.

Moreover, an individual’s sex correlates with how likely they are to engage in high-intensity drinking as an adult. Women who reported binge drinking at 18 are three times more likely to take part in high-intensity consumption than women who did not, while men are twice as likely to high-intensity drink as adults if they binged alcohol in high school.

According to Dr. Patrick, more research and nationwide data are needed as experts continue to study high-intensity drinking. In the interim, if you choose to consume alcohol, as ever, please do so responsibly.

*Image retrieved from Pixel-Shot via stock.adobe.com

The article Ask a Medical Pro: What Is ‘High-Intensity Drinking’? appeared first on VinePair.