Posted on 08/08/2014 4:47:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Dear Mona, I am 24 years old and have never drunk alcohol. What percent of people in my cohort do not drink?
Tyler, 24, North Carolina
Dear Tyler,
Your probability of having experienced a hangover: zero.
aAFXz7a
There’s an abundance of statistics on binge drinking and the costs of alcohol consumption, but looking at the people behind the zeros is more challenging. To understand abstention trends, we can’t do much better than the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Its latest data is based on 68,309 interviews conducted across the United States in 2012. The survey asked Americans whether they had consumed various drugs in the past month, in the past year or in their lifetime.
So, I can give you a very clear answer to your very clear question: When asked whether they had ever drunk alcohol in their lives, 8 percent of 24-year-olds said no. Here’s how that percentage would have been different if you weren’t 24:
chalabi-datalab-booze-one
Among everyone 12 and older (it’s a strange age bracket, but it’s how the gender data comes), 14.9 percent of men said they had never drunk alcohol compared to 20.4 percent of women. The racial differences are even larger: For example, Asian-Americans are three times as likely to have never drunk alcohol as non-Hispanic whites.
Alcohol abstinence rates don’t just vary by demographic traits; they vary by geography, too. In the Midwest, 15 percent of respondents said they had never drunk alcohol compared to 19.3 percent in the West. Residents of midlevel counties — those considered neither rural nor completely urbanized — were the least likely to have consumed alcohol.
Alcohol consumption varies between countries as well as within America. The World Health Organization (WHO) keeps an eye on who’s drinking, and according to a WHO report from 2014, “because abstention is highly prevalent throughout the world, any diminution in abstention levels could have a significant impact on the global burden of disease caused by the harmful use of alcohol.”
And when it says prevalent, it means prevalent: In 2010, 48 percent of the world’s population age 15 and older had never consumed alcohol (the gender difference exists globally, too; in every region the WHO looked at, women were more likely to be lifetime abstainers than men).
The WHO found that countries in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and South Asia had the highest rates of abstention. In its 2011 report, it said those regions with low alcohol consumption “represent large populations of the Islamic faith, which have very high rates of abstention.”
Is religion an explanation for trends in the United States, too? When I replied to you and asked why you hadn’t drunk alcohol, you said it’s because you’re Mormon. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health doesn’t ask respondents why they consume or don’t consume certain drugs, so it’s difficult to know the exact role religion plays in national trends. But focusing on just lifetime rates (as opposed to past year or past month, when factors such as addiction, ill health or even “Drynuary” could affect the results), it’s probably safe to conclude that religion plays a big role for many who choose to abstain from alcohol.
More important to your question, there are roughly 2.5 million Americans ages 20 to 24 who say they have never drunk alcohol. So, Tyler, you’re clearly not alone.
Hope the numbers help,
Mona
Its been 10 years or more for me.
I don’t drink
I drink every day.
33 years here.
.
Cheers to that. And I believe happy hour starts in 3 minutes.
I respect people who have never consumed alcohol, but I don’t enjoy hanging out with them so much. I have even more respect for people who don’t consume alcohol because they used to overuse and they realized it’s not for them, and I do enjoy hanging out with them.
At age six, while camping with my dad, he gave me a 8 oz Miller Lite pony.
I love beer and especially Jack Daniels but as a responsible 47 year old adult once or twice a month.
In college,my beer intake put the the boys from Animal House to shame.....
How do you view people who consider it a threat to vocal health?
I might have a beer on a hot day...or a glass of wine on a hot date.
You mean liquid loud mouth?
Enjoying my Friday g&t right now.
My parents gave me my first drink, wine at thanksgiving and Christmas. I was probably eight or nine. First drink on my own was sharing a beer with my brother, in Mexico. Which we bought and paid for. I think I was eleven.
No, sober loud mouth. La la la la...
My wife grew up a teetotal Baptist in a dry county. the only alcohol she has ever drunk is communion wine and Nyquil.
Dear Tyler,
I got ya covered!!!
Opie
I have known teetotalers who think one drink makes you a potential drunkard. I guess that’s true for a small minority. But to equate a beer with a hit of heroin is a stretch.
Mr D and I don’t drink either. His father was what I call a binge drinker. He would get drunk a few times a year and couldn’t stop until he was so sick he thought he was dying. All of his uncles were alcoholics too so it was just an ugly scene MrD wanted to avoid.
Alcohol makes me sick, I have never liked it. I am sorry about that too, drinkers always are having so much fun.
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