All “reasons” items were answered using 4-point Likert-type scales with response options ranging from “not at all important” to “very important” as reasons for drinking alcohol. Moderate drinking is typically defined by public health agencies as up to one alcoholic drink per day for women and up to two for men. A standard drink is 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. Factors including age, genetics, body size and existing health conditions all influence how alcohol affects a person. This shift in understanding is particularly significant because it challenges deeply ingrained cultural beliefs about why alcoholics drink research insights the healthfulness of certain alcoholic beverages. It’s becoming clear that the potential risks of alcohol consumption, even in moderate amounts, may outweigh any perceived benefits.
Reasons for drinking alcohol
A major focus of this study concerned the role of physical availability in alcohol purchase and consumption decisions. Consequently, participants were required to be of the legal drinking age so that their purchase habits (by legal means) could be assessed (Abbey, Scott, & Smith, 1993). A 2024 report from the American Association for Cancer Research concluded that more than 5% of all cancers in the U.S. are attributable to alcohol use.
On average, 2% of additional variance was explained when these interaction terms were included. When coping motives were high as compared to low, individuals experiencing moderate or high levels of stress engaged in more heavy alcohol consumption. When social motives were high as compared to low, individuals whose friends were high-frequency drinkers engaged in the most heavy drinking. The unadjusted regression model included drinking motives and no/lo consumption. The adjusted model controlled for sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, education, social grade, and IMD) and hazardous drinking (AUDIT-C).
Among 100 women who have one drink a day, 19 will, and among 100 women who have two drinks a day, about 22 will. Decades ago, large surveys of adults began showing an association between how much alcohol someone drank and their risk of death. People who said they drank heavily had an increased risk, but those who drank nothing at all also had an increased risk compared with those who drank one or two servings of alcohol per day. For decades, studies suggested that moderate alcohol intake could protect the heart, reduce diabetes risk or even help you live longer. ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. The Center conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research and other data-driven research.
Further work is needed to better understand the nuanced relationship between drinking alcohol to conform and consuming no/lo drinks, particularly among those who are using the drinks as a substitute to standard strength alcohol. Therefore, it is likely the effect of drinking motives among those who are directly substituting is diluted in this study. Conclusions No/lo drinks may facilitate reduced alcohol consumption by offering an alternative for individuals wishing to participate in alcogenic environments.
- When women, men, Blacks, and Whites were analyzed separately, the same set of psychosocial predictor variables emerged for each subgroup.
- Study participants were asked to report on how many days out of the past 30 they had consumed an alcoholic beverage including beer, wine, wine coolers, and liquor.
- As found in past research, women, Blacks, and older adults were expected to consume less alcohol than were men, Whites, and younger adults.
- “So the answer to the question of why alcoholics drink is probably that there is no single answer; this will probably have implications for how we diagnose and treat alcoholism.”
In some of the data analyses reported in this paper, frequency and quantity were multiplied to produce an indicator of total monthly alcohol consumption. Studies using similar (but not identical) measures of alcohol consumption found high reliability in self-reports (Russell, Welte, & Barnes, 1991; Williams, Aitken, & Malin, 1985). In this study, the four types of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, wine coolers, and liquor) were mentioned in each question, and study participants were asked to take a minute to think before giving their answers. This is the first study to quantitatively explore associations between the reasons adults drink alcohol and the consumption of no/lo drinks. Thirty-five-minute telephone interviews were conducted with 781 Michigan residents who had consumed alcohol in the past 30 days. In order to examine ethnic differences in predictors of alcohol consumption, the sample was restricted to White and Black individuals, and Blacks were oversampled.
A diary or in-depth interview study would allow for the use of more sensitive measures than were possible in the large-scale survey described here. Qualitative research which examines the complex interplay of individual, social, and situational factors would be of particular value. This study’s results suggest that a strong belief in either coping or social reasons for drinking alcohol puts individuals at risk for abusing alcohol, especially when the appropriate environmental circumstances arise. In the second preliminary step, the interactions between each of these three sociodemographic factors and each motive for drinking alcohol (six interaction terms) were entered as a block of predictor variables. This determined if motives for drinking interacted with demographic factors in a consistent way. For heavy alcohol consumption, the interaction between age and coping motives was a significant predictor variable.
Responses
Drinking for social reasons was assessed with four items which asked study participants the extent to which they drank alcohol in order to be sociable, to enhance the enjoyment of social situations, because the people they knew drank, and to celebrate social occasions. Age, social grade and education were treated as factors, whereas IMD was treated as a continuous variable. Ethnicity is reported descriptively (white, black, Asian, mixed heritage, other, table 1) but was not included in the regression model due to small numbers of black, Asian and other ethnically diverse groups in the sample population. Finally, we’re learning more about the impact of alcohol on women and older adults. Women have begun to catch up to men in alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms.
- Currently, no/lo drinks are regularly consumed by a minority of adults who drink alcohol.
- Other breakthroughs have been made in screening and intervention, and in the medications available for treatment.
- The fading scientific support for alcohol’s health benefits marks a significant shift in our understanding of this widely consumed substance.
- Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems.
- On average, 2% of additional variance was explained when these interaction terms were included.
The “Why” of Drinking Matters: A Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Drinking Motives and Drinking Outcomes
Together, we can accelerate our response to public health’s most critical issues. We now understand how alcohol affects the brain and why it causes symptoms of AUD. This has been critical in treating it as a mental disorder, like you would treat major depressive disorder. Meanwhile, countries including Canada have moved to more cautious recommendations, advising no more than two drinks per week for all adults.
Sample
We measured frequency of no/lo consumption as a single item.39 Participants were asked, “How often do you have an alcohol-free or low-alcohol drink (beer, wine, cider, spirits or other type of alcoholic drink under 1.2% ABV)? Participants responded on an 8-point scale, ranging from never to nearly every day. Due to low numbers responding at higher frequencies, responses were recoded as a binary variable–less than monthly/at least monthly, to capture whether respondents were a regular consumer of no/lo drinks or not.
All analyses were population weighted and tests for the key assumptions of this analysis were undertaken.57 The data breached the linearity of log-odds assumption for AUDIT-C; therefore, an exploration of higher polynomial terms for AUDIT-C was undertaken. This indicated that AUDIT-C had a quadratic relationship with the dependent variable; consequently, a linear and quadratic term for AUDIT-C was included in the model. There was no evidence of multicollinearity among independent variables using variance inflation factors (online supplemental Table 2). The discriminative power of the primary model was assessed using receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (AUC). Alcohol consumption has frequently been linked to sociodemographic factors including gender, ethnicity, and age (Cahalan et al., 1969; Clark & Midanik, 1982; Hilton, 1987).
Health risks of alcohol use
The median household income for study participants fell in the range of $15,000 to $24,999. As an indicator of heavy alcohol consumption, study participants were asked to rate how often in the past month they had consumed five or more alcoholic drinks on one day (Cahalan et al., 1969; Hilton, 1987). This question was answered using a 5-point Likert-type scale with response options ranging from “never” to “nearly every time or every time” they drank.
Main analyses
Descriptive analyses illustrate the proportions of respondents consuming no/lo drinks at least monthly for low and high endorsers of each alcohol drinking motive. Quasibinomial logistic regression models, including drinking motives as continuous variables, tested for associations between regular no/lo consumption (dependent variable) and alcohol drinking motives. This method is a robust approach for binary outcomes when overdispersion is present,55 56 which was a concern given the low base rate of at least monthly no/lo consumption (21%) in our sample. While negative binomial or zero-inflated regression models are valuable for addressing overdispersion, they are primarily designed for count data rather than the binary (yes/no) outcome capturing no/lo consumption in this study. The quasibinomial approach, which models a dispersion parameter, was thus the most appropriate method to account for overdispersion while maintaining the binary nature of our dependent variable. There is also a large literature on people’s self-reported alcohol expectancies.
Understanding these patterns can inform alcohol policies, public health messaging, and responses to future crises. Ultimately, the decision to drink alcohol remains a personal choice, but it’s one that should be made with a full understanding of the potential risks and benefits. As the scientific community continues to investigate alcohol’s effects on health, we can expect further refinements in our understanding, potentially leading to more targeted and effective public health strategies in the future. One of the most striking findings is that the previously observed benefits of moderate drinking have essentially vanished under closer scrutiny. The health halo that once surrounded alcoholic beverages, particularly red wine, is rapidly dissipating as more rigorous and unbiased studies come to light. Overall, 52% of Americans ages 21 and older say they’ve heard about studies showing that drinking alcohol can increase a person’s risk of cancer.