Alcohol use disorder: When is drinking a problem?

Over the past few months, a conversation about alcohol use has been center stage in the national news. Stories about underage drinking, blacking out, and harmful behavior associated with alcohol use are quite common in many families around the world. The rise of the opioid epidemic in the US has rightly caught our attention, but overshadowed a much more common problem. In the United States, from 2006 to 2010 alcohol-associated deaths accounted for 88,000 deaths annually, or almost 10% of all US deaths. While many people are becoming aware that medication assisted therapy can help treat opioid use disorder, very few know that medication and counseling can significantly reduce alcohol use compared with trying to cut back on your own. What is an alcohol problem, anyway? In the US, 6.6% of adult population reported heavy alcohol use, and one in four people reported at least one episode of binge drinking. Binge drinking is defined as four or more drinks in a day for a woman and five or more drinks in a day for a man. I bet you probably know someone who binge drinks — if not daily, then at least on weekends. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) and other substance use problems are considered diseases like any other, but are stigmatized as moral failure by many. The cause of AUD is a complex interaction between genes and environment, with a strong association with other health problems. In one study, 77% of the individuals with AUD carried another medical problem, either cancer, liver disea...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Source Type: blogs