Women Are Now Boozing Harder Than Men For The First Time In American History

women playing beer pong and drinking

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For the first time in American history, US women are binge drinking more than men.

Dr. George F. Koob is the Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and has been following the data to uncover a gender role reversal when it comes to binge drinking.

The guidelines for Binge Drinking and High-Intensity Drinking were recently laid out by Dr. Koob in a recent article published by the Washington Examiner.

In the article, he discussed the dangers of binge drinking as well as the recent demographic changes and contributing factors.

Dr. Koob warned “”You can kill yourself basically. Individuals who engage in binge drinking, high-intensity drinking — 8 drinks for females, 10 drinks for males — you’re approaching danger levels for your life.”

Speaking about post-2020 levels of drinking he said “there has been an uptick, particularly among women. Now it turns out on college campuses women are actually binge drinking more than men, for the first time in history.”

That is, in fact, surprising given that men have been binge drinking more than women for all of American history up to this point.

Following the global ‘isolation period’ that occurred in 2020/21, there was a sharp uptick in binge drinking. Dr. Koob explained that as the ‘alcohol deprivation effect’.

“It’s what we call the alcohol deprivation effect. People tend to really rebound in drinking after a period of not drinking. We are a little concerned that this spring and spring break is going to be a return to a good amount of binge drinking. I just want to caution everyone that when you start hitting the binge drinking level you start doing really bad things to your body.”

Dr. Koob believes that social media trends on TikTok are the primary drivers of binge drinking. Drinking challenges going viral on TikTok make this type of behavior seem innocuous but that couldn’t be further from the truth

Dr. Koob believes that abstaining from alcohol isn’t the solution to limiting binge drinking. Rather, he believes “staying within the dietary guidelines” is necessary in order to drink socially and healthily.