One Less For The Road
In The Atlantic's clever use of Twitter as its own Harper's Index, binge drinking has a recurring role. The latest figure:
54 -- The number of health risks that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including car crashes, sexually transmitted diseases, and liver disease, associates with binge drinking.
Apologies to Frank Sinatra--who popularized the classic "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)" and was never a spokesman for moderation--but what might have been the Rat Pack's lush life is the 21st Century's binge drinking. According to the CDC, the definition of binge drinking is a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent or above. This typically happens when men consume 5 or more drinks, and when women consume 4 or more drinks, in about 2 hours.
The CDC reports that binge drinkers are 14 times more likely to report alcohol-impaired driving than non-binge drinkers. And in iwellville's stab at a Harper's-like index:
Percentage of alcohol consumed by adults in the United States in the form of binge drinks: 75%.
Yikes! Don't binge. And seriously, whatever you do, don't drink and drive!
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