Australia Is the Drunkest Country In the World, Survey Finds (theguardian.com) 108
Australians have been named the heaviest drinkers in the world after spending more time drunk in 2020 than any other nation. The Guardian reports: An international survey (PDF) has found Australians drank to the point of drunkenness an average of 27 times a year, almost double the global average of 15. Almost a quarter of Australians reported feeling regret for becoming intoxicated. The Global Drug Survey asked more than 32,000 people from 22 countries what their drug and alcohol consumption was last year. On average, Australians drank alcohol in line with the global average of two nights a week, and became heavily drunk about once every two weeks. The French topped that metric, drinking around three times a week. Australian participants also tripled the global average on seeking emergency care for their drinking (3.9% compared with the global average of 1.2%). "Global Drug Survey researcher Dr Monica Barratt said Australia's high rate of drunkenness might be related to most of the country avoiding Covid lockdowns in 2020," the report adds. "Bar Victoria, most states and territories only went through short and sharp lockdowns, with relatively few cases or deaths, allowing hospitality venues to remain open and events to continue."
On the opposite end of the spectrum were New Zealanders, who became intoxicated "fewer times than almost any other country in the survey, getting drunk about 10 times a year," reports the Guardian. "Danes and Finns spent the most time drinking to excess after Australians, tied at 23.8 times a year. Americans came in third place, becoming intoxicated an average of 23 times in 2020, followed by the British (22.5 times)."
On the opposite end of the spectrum were New Zealanders, who became intoxicated "fewer times than almost any other country in the survey, getting drunk about 10 times a year," reports the Guardian. "Danes and Finns spent the most time drinking to excess after Australians, tied at 23.8 times a year. Americans came in third place, becoming intoxicated an average of 23 times in 2020, followed by the British (22.5 times)."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You're going to have to ration those mod points or buy more from slashdot. Even the traditional shills are starting to wake up. The tide is turning.
"Trevor Noah Questions Impartiality Of Moderna CEO, Gets Called an 'Anti-Vaxxer' By His Own Fans"
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Australians have been named the heaviest drinkers in the world after spending more time drunk in 2020 than any other nation.
Nice one, (high school) senior editor. A nation cannot be drunk. A populace can be drunk. You're a purebred zoomer moron.
I do enjoy the pedantry on /., especially when the pedant has things completely wrong. You must have had some self-awareness for clicking that AC button, so why post at all? I guess you couldn't let some minor thing like being incorrect get in your way of shitting on the editors.
Your engineer-brain attempt to make grammar prescriptive is cute, though. Next time you think, "gotcha," keep in mind that grammar is not math.
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He tried though, bless his heart.
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Thank you for this.
Why do Americans consistently confuse "pissed" ( i.e. drunk ) with "pissed off" ( angry ) ?
It means "pissed" for "drunk" is dying out ( also in the UK ).
And I'm pissed off.
Re: BeerHD must be drunk or stupid (Score:2)
Maybe we are less likely to piss ourselves.
Re: BeerHD must be drunk or stupid (Score:2)
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> Sloshed is a better description than pissed.
No need to choose one over another:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Meh...this is a post Baron's world... (Score:2)
A Kings Cross (Sydney) staple back in the day. The current crop of youngsters are amateurs. :)
Russia Excluded (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the report, the country I thought most likely to challenge Australia for the title wasn't included. No Russia. Only 22 countries were studied. It's pretty much Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, with many Eastern European countries left off.
Re: Russia Excluded (Score:4, Informative)
Was gonna say, beating Russia would be tough
Re: Russia Excluded (Score:5, Interesting)
perhaps you're confusing intoxication rates with alcohol consumption.
intoxication occurs once BAC reaches certain values, which are roughly the same for every nation, however it takes vastly different amounts of alcohol to reach the same BAC for different folks.
an individual human DNA can have up to two main enzymes responsible for dissolving alcohol. most eastern europeans have both; most of the world has one; most east asians have neither. which means it takes a russian a few times more alcohol (vol) to reach the same state of BAC as an asian person of the same sex and body mass. that's how russians earned their reputation for being heavy drinkers, without doing much to achieve that -- whereas intoxication rates reflect desire to "drink until you're drunk", which is a bit of a different animal.
Re: Russia Excluded (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: Russia, I lived & worked in Moscow for a while. Going to work on the metro early in the morning (a little bit before rush hour), I'd say about 1/2 of the people on their way to work were either drinking beer or alco-pops. Some of the rest had probably already finished theirs. It wasn't uncommon for people (professionals with good jobs) to grab a 'pick-me-up' from a street kiosk (a 50cl bottle of vodka) just after work. People's attitudes to drinking seemed to be polarised; they either hated it &
Re:Russia Excluded (Score:5, Funny)
If you look at the report, the country I thought most likely to challenge Australia for the title wasn't included. No Russia. Only 22 countries were studied. It's pretty much Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, with many Eastern European countries left off.
The Russians were too drunk to complete the surveys.
Re:Russia Excluded (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah I was thinking that the Russians might report they were sober 27 times during the past year...
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Probably wishful thinking, too, but you can't really expect them to keep track.
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If you look at the report, the country I thought most likely to challenge Australia for the title wasn't included. No Russia.
Of the many countries with even more of a reputation for drinking than Australia, the only one on the list was Finland.
One day two friends, Jukka and Pekka, meet after a long time apart and they go to a sauna in the woods. They drink vodka in silence for a couple of hours. Then Jukka asks: “So Pekka, how have you been doing?” Pekka says nothing, and they continue drinking for another couple of hours. Eventually Jukka asks: “How's the family?”. At that point, Pekka stands up and shouts: “Did we come here to talk, or did we come here to drink?”
Of course this is all a bit subjective. If we look at the most deaths caused by alcohol, Moldova comes first, Russia second, and SE Asian countries after that.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
Dropping dead is a good way to show you really can't handle booze.
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Russia second, and SE Asian countries after that.
Sorry I forgot South Korea. A serious bunch of alcoholics who are dropping dead from liver disease at a terrifying rate.
https://google.com/search?q=so... [google.com]
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In Soviet Russia, drink beers you...
this doesn't sound right (Score:1)
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If you look at the samples, more than one third of responders is from germany.
Most countries had 1% of responders in this survey. And the sample size was only 32k
Please come back with your international survey when you have surveyed MILLIONS
So much Alcohol wasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
So many drinks are wasted because some countries cultures cannot fine joy with moderation.
I enjoy a good drink, when I feel the edge being taken off, I know it is time to stop. Drinking more doesn't make me feel better, it just makes me less functional, as well recovering from being too drunk doesn't feel good as well. Where after the edge is off, and you stop you are functional, can enjoy yourself, and there isn't such a crash.
There are cultures where people think if a little makes me feel good then a lot will make me feel better. Waste a lot of expensive Alcohol where you will not get any more joy out of it.
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Re:So much Alcohol wasted. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I advocate for the French model - kids are given the ability to sample the "adult" drinks and encouraged to actually enjoy it in a very controlled setting (i.e., with other adults present).
Thus the mystery of it is taken away and the first time they go away, they don't go on drunken benders because that's the first time they're having alcohol.
I don't know why, since many states allow underage consumption of alcohol provided there is a responsible person in the room, so kids should be exposed to alcohol and its responsible use.
(I also advocate for schools teaching firearm safety and training, which should demystify guns and hopefully have an impact on mass shootings and such. They're exposed to it anyways so why not provide the proper training?).
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Yeah, I advocate for the French model
Which is to move the goalposts, misrepresent the question, and deny all unflattering conclusions.
If you drink the same amount as on another day, count that as "zero." After all, you didn't drink just to drink, you drank because you were eating. So that's not drinking, it's just having a meal.
And getting drunk, that means being drunker than you think you can subjectively handle, so zero times.
When this subject comes up and there is a French person in the room who drinks about 4 glasses of wine per day, they'
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Yeah, I advocate for the French model - kids are given the ability to sample the "adult" drinks and encouraged to actually enjoy it in a very controlled setting (i.e., with other adults present).
In general I agree. My Freshman year roommate at university certainly fit the description of the American kid who went on drunken benders because he was suddenly free to drink. On the other hand, I spent the summer living with friends of the family in the South of France at a beach town when I was 15 and I remember having to help carry the 14 year old youngest son out of the gutters outside the nightclubs. There's no perfect system when it comes to usage of recreational drugs.
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Your analogies are flaud.
My highschool teacher used to say that his grandfather told home the key to long life is to keep things in moderation, then someone asked him how he died. Apparently he was hit by a train.
You can't get hit by a train in moderation.
Your example are in general completely bad things with little benefit and all harm. While drinking, small amounts our body is designed to deal with the toxins, while we get some positive out of it.
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While I solute your abandonment of American puritanicalism I've met plenty of people from these "enlightened cultures" that very much enjoy a good evening of very heavy drinking.
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It's also irresponsible to get kids used to the taste. That's just asking for trouble.
I've read about several studies (Score:2)
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Yes. Because your use case represents the world.
This is not insightful. "Wasted" drinks is a fluffy valuable statement. If your goal is to get absolutely smashed and forget your life for a while, it is not wasted. It served its purpose.
The idea of inebriation as something to be cherished and coddled is ridiculous.
Re:So much Alcohol wasted. (Score:4, Insightful)
Waste a lot of expensive Alcohol where you will not get any more joy out of it.
People don't get wasted on expensive alcohol. They get wasted on cheap shit. Especially in Australia. God knows no one willingly drinks Bundy Rum sober.
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I didn't say the culture was bad, just an aspect of it.
A high divorce rate isn't always bad. It means more people are not living in a lie just to keep up impressions, as well cases of abuse and other issues that get hidden behind the white fence just to keep impressions that they are perfect.
Kids don't hate themselves, however like kids of all generations, evaluate what is right and wrong beyond what their parents say. Now as a parent you are stuck on a stupid excuse the kids will not follow your view and
Nonsense. (Score:2)
There are cultures where people think if a little makes me feel good then a lot will make me feel better. Waste a lot of expensive Alcohol where you will not get any more joy out of it.
Utter nonsense, all you're doing is claiming that your opinions supercede others. Your concept of fun is not everyone's.
I personally enjoy drinking the shit out of 5 or 6 ales and getting hammered. I don't do it often because it's certainly not good for me health wise at my age and I don't enjoy the day after so much but I do try to enjoy a fun binge with friends a few times a year because quite honestly it's a real fun treat and we all have an utter blast.
To me, your post just looks like puritanical hogwas
New Zealanders lie 2.7 times as much as Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
Which would account for the disparity in the reports of their binge drinking. Just kidding!
I doubt that (Score:1)
El Salvador and Russia are #1 and #2 respectively in most number of alcohol deaths. Australia's actually pretty far down the list.
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That's like expecting the country with the highest car owenrship to have the most accidents.
More people in Australia ENJOY alcohol, more people in Russia ABUSE alcohol.
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I dare say that might have more to do with the quality of the alcohol consumed.
Re: I doubt that (Score:2)
As a Kiwi (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As a Kiwi (Score:4, Informative)
Australia already beats New Zealand hands down on the number of poisonous things that will crawl out every time you climb over a fence, move a rock, etc. I mean, seriously, they have poisonous mammals! What other country has native poisonous mammals?
Re:As a Kiwi (Score:4, Funny)
New Guinea has a poisonous (venomous actually, I think) BIRD!
I'm an Aussie and I'm impressed!
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I looked it up and apparently a few more poisonous mammals other than the platypus are now known, with some in countries other than Australia, so I suppose my information there might be a bit outdated. There are birds with various kinds of venom and poison on a few continents though. Overall, Australia does pretty well in the poisonous (and weird ) animals department.
Re: As a Kiwi (Score:2)
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Pardon the pedantic response, but this is slashdot...
Many types of shrews [wikipedia.org] native to Europe and North America are venomous. Southwest Asia even harbors a venomous monkey.
And, of course, bats are mammals and venomous species exist outside Australia.
Now, somebody please pass a Foster's...
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How dare you be pedantic on Slashdot! Why, I would never, never do that here! I would certainly never be sarcastic either.
Yeah, I looked it up after I posted and saw that my info was outdated. I did know about the vampire bats, but I wasn't really thinking of that as poison, since it's to aid in feeding on live animals rather than to kill prey. Reading up on the various other poisonous mammals was interesting. Nature is wonderfully weird.
Re: As a Kiwi (Score:2)
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We'll keep our drinks, you keep your sheep. Cheers :-)
Re: As a Kiwi (Score:1)
NZ to Australia is like Canada to the US.
They try real hard to pretend they're all unique and special, but they're really just a defacto state.
Occasionally OZ throws NZ a bone and they get to crow about winning something, but it's kinda like charity.
Half of NZ lives in Bondi anyway, working as labourers or removalists.
I like NZ, went there a lot pre covid, but they do often pretend to be something they're not.
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I think we know what this means... (Score:2)
Russians don't brag anymore.
If Maine was a country... (Score:2)
....it would top the chart.
Duh (Score:2)
Australia Is the Drunkest Country In the World, Survey Finds
How is this not common knowledge? Australians literally boast about how drunk they get.
For Christ's sake...have you ever seen the size of a Foster's Lager can?
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Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! :)
Also, very few people drink Fosters in Australia as it's not easy to find, nor is it a great beer. Unlike Emu Export, aka Bush Chook! :)
Opinions may vary on this topic.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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I don't mind a Coopers, nope, not at all :)
There's a LOT of real, local, small, craft breweries that can give it a run for the money, though!
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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Oooh, another Hottest 100! I will have to listen to/drink it!!
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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Yeah, Australians don't drink Fosters. That's an American beer advertised to people with no sense of taste but want to feel international.
His name is Deez (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
'nuff said
Conversely, which is the unhappiest country ? (Score:1)
Some people can't handle their drink, but that shouldn't detract from the majority who can, and use it to have FUN TIMES!
For a bunch of techies.... (Score:2)
... I'm surprised nobody has touched on how to drink scientifically. My view is based on the following assumptions
1) In most cases the human liver can metabolise about 10ml or ethanol per hour, some a bit more, some a bit less.
2) Everyone has an optimum level of alcohol to get cheerfully drunk, for me it's about 25ml.
If I want to stay cheerfully drunk for as long as possible I need to drink 25ml of ethanol (about 1/3 of a bottle of wine) as quickly as possible, then put in 10ml (one large glass) every hour
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I'd say a lot of people go in with a plan, but by 25ml they forget what they're doing and pass out at 50ml.. then the next day wonder what happened.
"Bar Victoria" (Score:2)
Disclaimers (Score:2)
If you look at the PDF, they clearly say their survey is not a prevalence study and is not demographically balanced. So at best it is comparative given equal exposure (unlikely).
For alcohol consumption, the most insightful figures are those which report teetotallers (non-drinkers) and instead of drinks/capita report drinks/drinker.
COVID-safe practices - for cocaine (Score:2)
Isn't it great how many cocaine consumers adopted "COVID-safe practice"?
Those people must be really concerned about their health.
Looking forward to statistics on safety belt adoption by intoxicated drivers.
This study is wrong! (Score:2)
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> wives are normally prepared to see their husbands to come home drunk and most times past midnight
After midnight, do they let it all hang down?
Aussie Trannies FTW! (Score:1)
Insanely stupid (Score:2)
Here's the first AUDIT question from GDS 2021 Global Report [globaldrugsurvey.com]
How often do you have a drink containing alcohol?
* Never
* Monthly or less
* 2 to 4 times a month
* 2 to 3 times a week
* 4 or more times a week
Approximating a year as 52 weeks divided in 12 months and converting to milli-drinks per day, the available ranges are:
* 0
* (0,33]
* [66,132]
* [286,429]
* [571,infinity)
THREE large discontinuities.
Doh!
Double doh!
Triple doh!
It's not even specifying standard drink volumes. If you drink from an old-fashioned jug bala
I'm pretty sure (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure New Zealand scored so badly because with the current financial situation nobody can afford alcohol, pay for your rent, buy enough food if your lucky, but no chance of over taxed alcohol.
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Melbourne, Australia's worst hit city, is out of lockdown.
Over 90% are fully vaccinated yet we still have our a thousands cases a day as anti-vaxxer losers fill the streets with protests about their freedoms. And then spread it to their fellow antivaxxed, go figure.
Get vaccinated or you'll be one of the 200 lucky folks in hospital.
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And you're a far right antivaccination nutter.
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"Trevor Noah Questions Impartiality Of Moderna CEO, Gets Called “Anti-Vaxxer” By His Own Fans"
https://tradeforprofit.net/202... [tradeforprofit.net]
Even the idiots are starting to wake up. You'll be the last man standing, calling everyone an anti-vaxxer, lol.
Re: What a dumb NFN_NLN (Score:2)
Unedited footage of people experiencing events?
I guess you can't digest news unless a talking head is telling you how to react. It must be confusing to you, which causes you to lash out in frustration.
Reflex, it's just your brain cells firing during the thinking process. You'll get used to it.
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cheers!