12 Vital Alcohol Statistics to Know in 2019

Do you suspect that a loved one is engaging in excessive drinking? Excessive drinking can lead to social withdrawal, serious health problems, and even death. You need to act quickly to help your loved one find a path to recovery.

Excessive drinking might be even more dangerous than you think. As these statistics demonstrate, reckless drinking has consequences for every part of life. These numbers will reveal to you the threat to drinkers, students, and the road.

First up, drinkers are still the first to suffer from their excessive use.

The Threat to Drinkers

Excessive drinking is well-studied at this point, but it’s still not under control. There are millions of people who are struggling with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). Without a strong support system to help them build new behaviors, these drinkers could become part of the following statistics.

More than 15 million people struggle with alcohol use disorder in the United States. Less than 8% of them receive treatment (Centers for Disease Control)

This is perhaps the most worrying alcohol statistic of the whole set. Millions of people are trapped by AUD, but a small minority of them are currently seeking treatment. This may be because they don’t realize all the flexible treatment options that are out there.

Long-term alcohol use can cause serious health complications affecting every organ in your body, including your brain. Additionally, it can damage your emotional stability, finances, career, impact your family, friends and the people you work with. (NCAAD)

This is why it is so important that people choose to seek treatment for these issues. Over time, excessive alcohol usage will damage everything. It will be associated with deadly health complications and debilitating neurological symptoms. It can chew away at relationships the same way it chews away at organs.

Teen alcohol use disorder kills 4,700 people each year. That’s more than all illegal drugs combined (Centers for Disease Control)

The legal status of alcohol means that it is tragically underestimated by young people who are trying it for the first time. Thousands of teens die every year because they don’t know how to moderate their alcohol consumption, and how close they can get to a fatal amount. Statistics like these are a reminder that alcohol education needs to start as early as possible.

The Threat to Students

College students are under high risk of developing an alcohol use disorder. Binge drinking happens often and openly on college campuses. Young people tend to believe that they are somehow resistant to developing addictions. The pride can lead to a lot of tragedy, as these statistics on college students will demonstrate.

488,000 youths between the ages of 12 and 17 had an alcohol use disorder in 2016.

This alcohol statistic can help us understand the scope of the problem that we are facing. Nearly half a million youths were dealing with an alcohol use disorder as recently as 2016. It’s not easy for young people to identify an AUD. Thanks to how quickly young bodies can recover, they may not experience hangovers and other warning signs that they’re drinking too much.

Almost 2,000 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from unintentional alcohol-related injuries, including motor vehicle crashes. (Zebra Survey)

Fatal accidents do not even require binge drinking. Moderate drinking can still result in impaired driving or impaired stunts that lead to fatal accidents. In recent years, colleges have made more of an effort to limit binge drinking on campus. As these statistics reveal, there is still some room to improve.

Annually, 696,000 college students are assaulted by another student who has been drinking.

Assaults are another risk that comes with campus drinking. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people who are merely in the vicinity of binge drinking experience violence because of it. Unfortunately, there’s not much they can change their habits to avoid being a target.

The Threat to the Road

Alcohol is one of the most dangerous factors on the road. Drinking and driving is statistically widespread. Some of the people who drive impaired can do so for a long time without being caught. This is not because they’re safe drivers, but more likely because they have a safe route where their reflexes are not tested.

As these statistics reveal, impaired driving is always dangerous.

Alcohol-impaired driving accounts for more than 30 percent of all driving fatalities each year. (Centers for Disease Control)

1/3rd of people who die on the road do so because of a drunk driver. Drunk driving can lead to catastrophic accidents with serious injuries. These accidents can result in millions of dollars in medical expenses. The impaired driver themselves can very easily be one of the driving fatalities.

37.4% of college-age respondents believed they were fit to drive after 3 or 4 drinks

The confidence of college-age young adults behind the wheel can be a serious problem, as this alcohol statistic demonstrates. More than one-third of college-age adults don’t believe that their driving ability is seriously impaired by as many as 4 drinks. 4 drinks are just under the threshold for binge drinking. Anyone at this level is impaired.

In 2017, nearly 2,000 people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents in which the driver was less-impaired than the established blood-alcohol content limit

You may believe that the legal limit keeps impaired drivers off the road under the threat of prison. The truth is that drivers who aren’t drunk enough to be over the limit are still involved in thousands of fatal incidents. The legal limit may need adjustment to keep impaired drivers off the road.