CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking

An anonymous reader writes: According to new research from the CDC, 9.8% of deaths in working-age adults (22-64 years old) in the U.S. from 2006 to 2010 were "attributable to excessive drinking." This makes excessive drinking the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. The study included deaths from medical conditions, such as liver disease and alcohol-induced strokes, as well as deaths from alcohol-related events, like car accidents, homicides, and fall injuries. However, it did not account for cases where excessive alcohol consumption was a factor in contracting conditions like AIDS, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, so the count may actually be higher. Many western states with low population spread out over a large area showed the highest alcohol-related death rates, while states from the east coast and the midwest tended to be on the lower end of the spectrum. The study also tracked years of life lost, which is higher for alcohol-related deaths than for most other types of death. Researcher Robert Brewer said, "One of the issues with alcohol that is particularly tragic is the extent to which it gets people in the prime of their lives."

Comments

So....far more than guns

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess we better reinstate prohibition. Oh and it must cause health problems, so it needs banning like soda too. Oh yeah, lets not forget "for the children"

Re:So....far more than guns

[Anonymous Coward]

False. The majority of gun deaths in the US are suicide. Didn't you know that? Seriously?

Re:So....far more than guns

[i kan reed]

Whoa. Hold your horses there pal. They are most likely to be the gun owner(and their immediate family). It gets pretty extreme in some specific measurable cases. People like to frame it in terms of murder, since that appeals to more peoples' moral systems more directly. But suicide is the single biggest measurable concern vis-a-vis firearms.

For example: for the first year after purchasing your first handgun, that's the single most likely cause of death in your life, approaching almost 50% of deaths.

I feel like it would be extraordinarily intellectually dishonest of me to accept handguns as public health issue, and not alcohol. They are both serious concerns and need to be acknowledged as they are, not stewed in pots of rhetoric.

Re:So....far more than guns

[Dan East]

For example: for the first year after purchasing your first handgun, that's the single most likely cause of death in your life, approaching almost 50% of deaths.

...which indicates that the gun was bought specifically for that purpose in those 50% of handgun suicide deaths. It wasn't the other way around - people didn't die because they happened to have bought a handgun, which is the way you phrased it. They wanted to die, so they bought a handgun. I've owned my handgun for over 20 years, and I've not wanted to die, hence I'm not dead by it.

Re:So....far more than guns

[causality]

I am not making any statement on gun control (not derailing an article about drinking deaths) other than that there isn't a comparison that's both simple and reasonable between gun control and prohibition.

The one thing they both have absolutely in common: the implicit assumption that inanimate objects are the cause of social problems, and the belief that controlling those inanimate objects will magically make social problems go away. Perhaps you can see how childish this viewpoint is?

The way I see it, the underlying cause of the social problems is a form of energy. It doesn't ever really go away, it just changes form. Guns and booze happen to be powerful, readily available tools allowing this energy to express itself. It can't be done, but if you somehow could make absolutely 100% of all guns and booze disappear overnight, you would find that this energy will move on to the next most convenient methods of expressing itself. Perhaps stabbings and abuse of some other drug would rise. Perhaps some other, unforeseen methods would emerge.

What no one really seems interested in doing is really understanding the underlying causes for why people want to abuse alcohol instead of using it responsibly, why people want to shoot either themselves or others absent provocation, and what can be done to transform this energy into something better. Actually understanding and beginning to change this would start with a complete restructuring of governments, corporations, educational institutions, and other institutions to make them adhere to their true purposes and to treat people like human beings rather than automatons. Where it would end, I couldn't tell you.

The real obstacle is that no one with the power to move in that direction has any incentive to do it: the current model is too profitable for them. But blaming our problems on objects that have no volition and no desire of their own certainly makes for a great distraction! It lets us waste time debating frivolous non-solutions with no hope of convincing "the opposition" of anything, meanwhile we avoid all these uncomfortable questions about the way we live, whom that serves, and precisely how we were taught to live that way.

Re:So....far more than guns

[i kan reed]

Let's reinforce this with some related data:

here we go

Re:So....far more than guns

[drinkypoo]

You're so right, states with the highest rates of gun ownership have 60% more suicides total and 4-10x the gun suicide rate. Interesting data, I was really not aware.

Yeah, but now look at the states in question and tell me what else they have in common. Seems to me like people who live in those states also want to kill themselves more often. And I can see why.

Re:So....far more than guns

[drinkypoo]

If you buy a gun for self defense then be aware that statistics show the gun is more likely to harm a friend than a foe

It's always tempting to assume that statistics apply to everyone equally, but they just don't.

and that anyone in the home may be tempted to abuse it when not "thinking straight". And if you don't think that the last bit applies to you and your family then you're so utterly immature that you shouldn't be allowed to boil water, let alone wave a hand gun around.

So your basic premise is that no one is qualified to own a gun because they might misuse it, but if they don't believe that they will misuse it, they're not qualified to own a gun? This idea could be applied to literally everything, making you the ultimate arbiter (in your mind) of what it is reasonable to have. In the meantime, I suggest you remove the oven and all the knives from your house, because you might abuse them when not "thinking straight". Sell your car, as well. And then finally, your computer, because you might use Slashdot without thinking at all.

I'll....

[Danzigism]

Drink to that.

Re:I'll....

[CanHasDIY]

I wonder if the study included drunken fatal events/stunts that started with the phrase "Hey y'all, check this out"

No, no, no.

It's "hold my beer and watch this!"

So What

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care if you drink yourself to an early grave.
I don't care if you smoke yourself to an early grave.
I don't care if you eat yourself to an early grave.

This is all about more gov control, taxes, regulation to protect us from ourselves.

Re:So What

[gnick]

"I don't care if you live or die" is fundamentally different than "I won't try to force my perception of healthy living on you".

Reinstate the Prohibition

[WormholeFiend]

It works so well with currently illegal drugs.

Re:Reinstate the Prohibition

[TheGratefulNet]

the articles on pot will be biased beyond all belief. the US won't admit that they were wrong, all along. never admit you were wrong: that's the government's motto. plus, there is too much money involved in arresting people, jailing them (for-profit jails!) and stealing their assets in immoral property grabs.

there will be more car crashes due to mothers yelling at their kids in the back seat, cell phone use and inattentive drivers (not stoned) than pot users, but I do expect lots of SPIN trying to convince us of how evil the devil weed is.

just don't believe it. its all lies.

1 in 10 adult deaths

[XanC]

1 in 10 deaths, huh? That's a bold statement considering the huge qualifications on it:
* 22-64 years old
* preventable

So the actual number is much less than 1 in 10, not much more as the summary says.

Re:1 in 10 adult deaths

[pr0fessor]

I once told a professor that he should change the title of his statistics course to "lying with numbers made fun".

Often times people will cut down a sample or leave out important information in a summary just to promote a point, it's disingenuous.

Self Medication

[Virtucon]

Having had an alcoholic step dad and grandfather I can say there's many reasons that people drink. Mostly it's one because they want to and if they don't have alcohol they'll use something else smoking, drugs whatever may be available. Alcohol allows people to self medicate and avoid things in life or help to forget things in life, like the fact that their lives didn't turn out as planned. For others it's just an activity because others are doing it around them and they can't stop because they get addicted to it.

Re:Self Medication

[bluefoxlucid]

Self-medication with alcohol can be useful, though. I found out a long while back that consuming 1 ounce of liquor (rum, whiskey, brandy) every 2-3 days fixed my clinical depression. I took to occasionally sipping a shot of whiskey out of a sniffer over 3-4 hours, or drinking a beer or two now and then. Didn't need to booze out on it, and it really did last days.

The baseline behavior was a severe downward spiral of emotion in reaction to any negative emotion stemming from a failed expectation or a trivial mistake. The corrected behavior was minor upset bounded to the degree of the original stimulus, with no avalanche effect. I decided 2-3 beers a week was probably safer than Zoloft or such, so did that for a while.

article headline sucks ass

[epine]

CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking

This does not deserve to live on Oprah, much less Slashdot. Not on Fox News, not on Rush Limbaugh, not on Howard Stern, not on Jerry Springer. On its own, exactly as it stands, it would set a new standard for outright stupidity in any legal jurisdiction that has yet to legislate pi = 3.

Oh, but wait, there's a footnote: preventable deaths among working-aged adult Americans. THAT'S NOT FUCKING FINE PRINT. My credibility circuit assigned six zeros (0.00000% chance of being true) before I managed to read the next line.

In all the many long years I've been here, I can not recall a single story headline that revolts me to this degree. I was reading recently Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics by Michael Ignatieff. At some point during his election campaign he said something stupid about the Middle East. His campaign manager pulled him aside and explained to him: "Politicians have nine lives. You just burned eight."

I have a finite amount of all-caps to expend on Slashdot outrage. I just burned 80% of my lifetime supply. Next time I resort to all-caps, I'll never post here again.

The root cause for slashdotters.

[nimbius]

The high mortality rate due to drinking amongst slashdotters can be directly attributed to physical and emotional abuse. Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP have ushered millions of nerds into an early grave from alcohol poisoning alone. the longterm effects of say, A peoplesoft migration however are much more destructive as theyre often worsened by the invisible culprit of change management. Taking a look at the youth of today, gateways like SCRUM and devops mean that not only are our future hackers drinking more at an early age, theyre forced to undergo gruelling "stand up" meetings that require then to concentrate all their effort into their creamy, underdeveloped legs to keep them aloft. the agony of being away from their natural habitat, the herman miller chair, coupled with the verbal and emotional abuse from phrases like swim-lanes and synergy amount to nothing short of an epidemic in IT.

but you can take action to stop this. IT workers thrive in an environment of nerf, far away from their natural predator the project manager. warmed slices of pizza pie and refreshing caffeinated nectars are what can keep this endangered species of young codelings healthy and free from substance abuse. The presence of the rare git-push neckbeard, or in some collectives a majestic greyhair vax longbeard have confirmed that excessive drinking is in fact no longer a problem in many dimly lit, cool climate colonies.

Sure, but . . .

[SaroDarksbane]

But how many births are caused by excessive drinking?