Peak Drinking Season in the United States. Where are the Biggest Drinkers?

     I ran across this article in The Charlotte Observer, it has a lot of very interesting information I thought you might enjoy reading.

     While we don't recommend that you "binge drink through New Year's," there's no doubt that the holidays have traditionally been a time for boozing it up. For instance, considering the total monthly alcohol sales in the United States, you may detect a seasonal trend - the spikes in December of each year.

     We're not just buying booze during the holidays, of course - we're guzzling it down, too. Various direct and indirect measures of alcohol consumption, including breathalyzer data, Web searches for hangover relief and alcohol-related traffic deaths all suggest that peak American drinking happens between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

     New England is home to the nation's heaviest drinkers - New Hampshire, where about 64 percent of residents age of 12 or older drink monthly, is tops in the country. Vermont, Maine and Connecticut also come in at drinking rates above 60 percent. Hard-drinking cheeseheads in Wisconsin see to it that their home is the only Midwestern state in the top tier of American drinkers.

     The next tier of heavy drinking states are all in the northern part of the country. Some researchers posit that there may be a relationship between heavy drinking and latitude - at the country level, alcohol consumption tends to increase the farther you get away from the equator. This could be a function of the potential for boredom and depression during winter months when the nights are long, the days are short, and baby it's cold outside - for a prime example of this, see recent stories involving alcohol and misconduct among people who live in Antarctica.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article122829154.html#storylink=cpy