Why We Drink

Uncle Ned was an alcoholic played by Tom Hanks in the 80s sitcom Family Ties stammering through the Keaton family pantry, finding a vanilla extract bottle, exclaiming “if it can’t be Miller time, it can be vanilla time.” To those of us watching the usually funny show turned serious, but talking about alcohol addiction in the ‘80s was taboo.  That has changed, even though addiction recovery remains a crisis - more than 178,000 people died in the US from excessive alcohol use during the years 2020 and 2021, a 29% increase since 2016. New CDC data detected a sharper uptick in alcohol deaths among females, with a 35% spike. According to an Axios poll, 26% of Americans polled ranked opioids and fentanyl as the most significant threat to public health, while 2% ranked alcohol abuse.  So, there’s somewhat of a disconnect at least from this poll in the public’s perception of alcoholism as a threat.

Why we drink has been widely studied but in an interesting poll we are starting with 18-25 year olds, the #1 answer isn’t “to socialize” or “be part of the group” or “because of how it feels, and how it helps me forget my day,” but “because my parents drink.”