(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Who Needs Dry January More: Rural or Urban Drinkers? [1] ['Sarah Melotte', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2025-01-10 Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox. Dry January kicked off this year with an advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General about the carcinogenic risks of alcohol consumption. UK advocacy organization Alcohol Concern launched the first Dry January in 2014 to encourage people to discuss and reconsider their alcohol habitats. Many Americans now participate in the British-born trend. CivicScience data showed that 27% of American adults were likely to try Dry January this year. If you follow major news outlets on social media, your feed probably looked similar to mine on the first of the year. I woke up to several headlines warning Americans about the dangers of excessive alcohol use. The 2025 Surgeon General Advisory warned that alcohol use has a causal link to at least seven different types of cancer, including breast cancer in women. The advisory recommended a warning label on alcohol products similar to those on packets of cigarettes. For those of you who participate in Dry January, I can imagine the scary headlines provided an incentive to start 2025 off the right way, if your hangover from New Year’s Eve wasn’t enough motivation by itself. Nothing like a little self-righteousness to push you to be your best you. But is alcohol consumption really a major public health concern in the U.S.? Data from the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics suggests that it is. In 2020, 10% of Americans over the age of 12 suffered from Alcohol Use Disorder, a medical condition characterized by an impaired ability to control one’s alcohol consumption. Many Americans who might not qualify for Alcohol Use Disorder still engage in unhealthy drinking habits, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About 17% of U.S. adults reported drinking excessively in 2023, with rural and urban residents reporting about equal rates of excessive drinking. The CDC says excessive drinkers are those who either engage in binge drinking, which refers to more than five drinks at a time for men or more than four drinks at a time for women, or those who engage in heavy drinking, which refers to 15 or more drinks per week for men, or eight or more drinks per week for women. Rural residents are slightly less likely to report that they excessively drink compared to their urban counterparts. In metropolitan counties, 17.4% of residents reported excessively drinking in 2023, compared to 16.5% of nonmetropolitan, or rural, residents. (This data is from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual phone survey that asks American adults about their health behaviors and chronic conditions, among other things.) The difference in the rate of excessive drinking between rural and urban residents is negligible, however. Drinking habits tend to vary more by state and region than they do from urban to rural areas. People who live in rural counties in states in the upper midwest and Alaska and Hawaii were more likely to report higher levels of excessive drinking compared to rural people in other regions. About 19% of rural adults in Alaska and Hawaii reported drinking excessively in 2023. Wisconsin reported the highest rate of excessive drinking among rural adults, meanwhile. Twenty-two percent of rural Wisconsins engaged in excessive drinking in 2023. Montana fell closely behind Wisconsin, with about 21% of rural Montanans that reported drinking excessively. States that comprise the Bible Belt reported the lowest rates of excessive drinking. About 13% of rural adults in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana drank excessively in 2022. West Virginia reported the lowest rate, with only 12% of rural adults saying they engaged in excessive drinking in 2023. Take all of these statistics with a grain of salt, however. Public health researchers warn about potential inaccuracies that plague (no pun intended) surveys that rely on self-reported health measures.. Respondents to phone surveys might not want to admit to engaging in undesirable behavior, a phenomenon statisticians refer to as the social desirability bias. Excessive drinking rates might actually be higher than they appear, and survey biases might not be evenly distributed geographically. Regions with greater stigma around alcohol abuse might under report excessive drinking behaviors compared to others. Related Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. 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