Cartoon – The Gamut Lounge
Americans drink far less today than our predecessors did. In 1830, the average American drank the equivalent of 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per year. In 2013, by comparison, the average American drank the equivalent of 2.34 gallons of pure alcohol.
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A scary new trend among college students combines starvation with binge drinking, says TheAtlantic.com. Researchers say “drunkorexia” now affects as many as one in four college students, who diet all day so that they can drink at night without gaining weight. In one recent study of 22,000 students at 40 universities, those who reported working out or dieting to shed […]
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“Trainwreck” hilariously depicts some sobering news: Alcohol consumption is on the rise among educated professional women. And in a high-pressure culture where workdays can end in rounds of drinks, collegial boozing is creating some tricky situations. For the young creatives at one Washington, D.C.-based marketing agency, grabbing a beer together is as typical as a group coffee run. And on […]
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■ An Australian groom showed up so drunk for his wedding that a minister refused to perform the ceremony and his furious fiancee broke up with him. When Jacob Brookes, 41, allegedly stumbled into the church still drunk from his bachelor party, the reverend tried to walk out—prompting a scuffle that led to Brookes’s arrest. Brookes denied being intoxicated. “I […]
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The two deadliest drugs in America are both legal. Tobacco kills more than 500,000 Americans a year. Alcohol is linked to 88,000 deaths a year (including those caused by drunk driving and violent behavior) and more than 4.6 million emergency room visits.
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Santa Barbara, Calif. More than 100 people were arrested and dozens—including six police officers—injured last week when a large spring break party near the University of California, Santa Barbara, deteriorated into a riot. An estimated 15,000 people were at the all-day annual “Deltopia” party at the beach community of Isla Vista, near the Santa Barbara campus. Fighting broke out when […]
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By the mid-1920s, the American government was at its wit’s end. The era’s strict Prohibition laws had proved futile. Americans were still drinking; they were just doing so on the sly, frequenting speakeasies and buying alcohol from crime syndicates. Gangs would steal large quantities of industrial alcohol—used for everything from fueling machines to sterilizing instruments— then redistill the hooch to […]
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