Filed under: Life — at 2:57 pm by jim

Don’t I already sound more intelligent, just by saying that I read The Economist?  Anyway, I came across this short article about the per-capita alcohol consumption in various countries:

http://economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9325487 

Fascinating… our average consumption is well below European countries, because of our higher minimum drinking age.  We Americans apparently guzzle down a lowly 8.6 liters per year.

Upon first reading this, I panicked… I figured that I’m drinking at least 20 beers each week, which is 7 liters of beer… and we’re not even looking at shots and mixed drinks.  So in one week, I drink almost as much as the average American drinks in a year.  How is that possible???

But then I realized that they’re talking about PURE alcohol.  AAAAAHHHH… well that’s cool, I never drink pure alcohol.  So that’s 0.

Oh, you mean that they want me to calculate how much alcohol is in each of my drinks?  OK.  As an example, if a 12oz beer is 4% alcohol by volume, then that one beer is equivalent to 0.48oz of PURE alcohol.  So from those 20 beers, I drink 9.6oz of pure alcohol each week.

Add to that six shots each week… shots are roughly 40% alcohol (80 proof), and each shot is 1.5oz.  So that’s 6 * 0.40 * 1.5, which comes to 3.6oz of pure alcohol as shots.

And finally, add mixed drinks to that.  I’m not much of a mixed drink guy, so I only have about four of those as well each week… but the bars usually make those pretty strong, so each one is probably equal to about 1.5 shots of alcohol.  So that’s (4 * 1.5) * 0.40 * 1.5 = 3.6oz of pure alcohol as mixed drinks.

Alright, so I drink (9.6 + 3.6 + 3.6) = 16.8oz of pure alcohol each week…. and I probably do that about 48 weeks a year.  So that’s 806oz, or 24 liters of pure alcohol each year.  Well, it’s good to know that I’m above average in something.