Women also were more likely to be heavy drinkers, with 6.45% reporting as such, compared with 6.1% of men. White Americans had the highest change in being heavy drinkers, with roughly 7.3% claiming to be heavy drinkers, an increase from about 5.7% in 2018 and 7.1% in 2020. Additionally, the percentage of heavy drinkers rose to almost 6.3% of those surveyed in 2022, up from 6.13% in 2020 and 5.1% in 2018. Now, as women approach parity in drinking habits, scientists are uncovering more about the unequal damage that alcohol causes to their bodies. “It’s not only that we’re seeing women drinking more, but that they’re really being affected by this physically and mental health-wise,” says Dawn Sugarman, a research psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, who has studied addiction in women. Overall alcohol-related mortality trends in the US were stable from 1999 to 2007 (APC, 0.0; 95% CI, −0.6 to 0.6) but increased by 3.0% per year (95% CI, 2.6%-3.5%) from 2007 to 2018 and, more recently, by 14.1% per year (95% CI, 8.2%-20.3%) from 2018 to 2020.

Off-label treatment for alcohol use disorder is linked to slower liver decline, study suggests

By 12th grade, the differences were quite large and remained so throughout adulthood. These gender differences are disappearing and have reversed for some measures. According to data from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study, in 1991, 46% of males and 40% of females in 10th grade reported drinking in the past month. By 2018, levels declined significantly for both and the gender gap reversed, with 22% of females reporting alcohol use in the past month compared to 17% of males.22 Among 12th graders, in 1991, 58% of males and 49% of females drank in the month before the survey. In 2018, past-month alcohol use was equally prevalent among males (30%) and females (30%). Gender differences in self-reported past-month drunkenness among 12th graders also narrowed considerably between 1991 (37% males, 25% females) and 2018 (19% males, 16% females), as shown in Figure 2.

Alcohol consumption by sex

Your GP will ask you questions about your alcohol intake and consider if any tests are required, for example a blood test. Initially, excessive drinking leads to a build of fat in the liver, this is called alcohol-related fatty liver. Your liver works hard to break down alcohol, but some of the by-products are toxic and damaging to the liver. At this stage, the damage is often reversible if you stop drinking alcohol. A key part of our Love Your Liver campaign, the Love Your Liver roadshow brings our mobile scanning unit to locations across the country, offering free liver scans to help people assess their risk of liver disease. In some ways, Hazel felt incredibly unlucky to receive such a diagnosis at such a young age.

Alcohol, crime, and road deaths

When you drink, your liver is the first organ to process alcohol and the first to be susceptible to the effects of drinking. The increase in drinking was seen among both men and women and across all race and ethnic groups. In 2022, 69.3% of Americans reported some alcohol consumption in the previous year, a slight increase from 69% in 2020 and 66.34% in 2018. Research from Sugarman’s colleagues found that women with alcohol use disorder had better outcomes when they were in women-only treatment groups, which included a focus on mental health and trauma, as well as education about gender-specific elements of addiction. Alcohol use also is a risk factor for pancreatitis, gastritis, gastro-esophageal reflux disease and peptic ulcer disease, as well as a potential aggravator of mental and behavioral disorders. More recent research by the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research suggests that in 2022, alcohol was to blame for 9,500 cancer cases and 3,800 cancer deaths in Canada.

• They’re at greater risk for hangovers, blackouts, liver disease, alcohol-induced cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers.
• “That’s when I got scared, when I tried to not drink and only made it two days,” says Cooper, now 30.
• Studies consistently report that alcohol accounts for over 75,000 U.S. cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year.
• She was told that while the damage to her liver was severe, it could be reversed, as long as she stayed alcohol-free.
• Beer contains around 5% of pure alcohol per volume1 so that one liter of beer contains 0.05 liters of pure alcohol.
• In 2022, more than 2,700 women died from alcohol-related liver disease—the highest number on record.

Rethinking Drinking

Given the rates of alcohol-related mortality, it is important to acknowledge the limited knowledge of how current pharmacologic treatments for AUD specifically affect women. As emphasized by McKee and McRae-Clark,36 the development of medications for AUD has often overlooked potential sex and gender differences. Importance  Alcohol consumption rates have been increasing among women in the US, which may affect mortality rates and sex gaps. Therefore, conducting a comprehensive assessment of sex differences in alcohol-related deaths is essential to inform targeted interventions and policies aimed at reducing the burden of alcohol-related harm among the population. The results in Women and Alcoholism the chart show the increased risk of developing alcohol dependency (we show results for illicit drug dependency in our topic page on drug use) for someone with a given mental health disorder (relative to those without). For example, a value of 3.6 for bipolar disorder indicates that illicit drug dependency became more than three times more likely in individuals with bipolar disorder than those without.

Some studies have found that LGBTQ+ people have higher rates of alcohol use, and are at higher risk of developing an alcohol use disorder. Roughly 1 in 9 students, including 10% of females and 13% of males, drop out of school by 12th grade. Compared to teens who stay in school, those who drop out are more likely to drink and/or use other drugs. Finally, when stratified by census region and sex, recent trends in alcohol-related mortality increased among both male and female individuals, but with differences in the rates of increase.