This blog is about integrity, especially in the sexual area, but as you can see if you’ve been following it for any length of time, other issues that affect the quality of life are fair game. I don’t ever recall posting a single article on alcohol. However, lately, I’ve been sick of hearing stories in the news about people who were killed or seriously injured in car accidents; and people who were the subject of violence, physical, sexual, emotional, or otherwise, in situations where excess alcohol consumption was a factor. This issue has affected people close to me. IMO, it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough given how recurrent it is, and how much human suffering it is responsible for. I knew the numbers were bad, but I had no idea just how bad until I starting combing through the literature.
I am pro-personal freedom, and I do not tell people how to live their lives. (I myself drink a little on occasion!) However, I think it’s fair game to encourage each other to live responsibly, especially when our decisions impact others in a big way. That means not drinking and driving, for starters, and not mistreating others while sober or under the influence. For some people, total abstinence may be a wise prescription, whereas many others can drink alcohol responsibly with no issues. Every individual gets to decide the life they want to live, as long as they do not infringe on those of the people around them.
As for Christianity, there is no outright prohibition on alcohol anywhere in the Bible. However, you do find a number of warnings against excess consumption (e.g. Ephesians 5:18; Galatians 5:19), and exhortations to live “sober-minded” (1 Peter 5:8).
Without further ado, here are some eye-opening statistics on the dangers of excess alcohol consumption. Share these with your loved ones.
Alarming Statistics On The Dangers Of Excess Alcohol Consumption
- On average, roughly 40 percent of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offenses were under the influence of alcohol during the time of their crime. Many of these criminals had an estimated blood alcohol content (BAC) level of more than three times the legal limit at the time of their arrest (source).
- About 27 percent of aggravated assaults are committed by individuals who have used alcohol. Aggravated assault means causing serious injury, such as bodily harm to another person (source).
- Research studies have found that about half of sexual assaults on college campuses involve a situation in which the perpetrator, the victim, or both were consuming alcohol (source).
- An estimated 37 percent of sexual assaults and rapes are committed by offenders who were under the influence of alcohol (source).
- According to NHTSA 10,142 people died in alcohol-impaired crashes in 2019. Alcohol-impaired crash fatalities accounted for 28 percent of all crash fatalities. (source).
- Every day, about 28 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that’s one person every 52 minutes (source).
- The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that roughly 55% of domestic abuse perpetrators were drinking alcohol prior to assault (source).
- Among confirmed cases of child maltreatment, 40% involve the use of alcohol or other drugs. This suggests that of the 1.2 million confirmed victims of child maltreatment, an estimated 480,000 children are mistreated each year by a caretaker with alcohol or other drug problems (source).
- An estimated 95,000 people (approximately 68,000 men and 27,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third-leading preventable cause of death in the United States. The first is tobacco, and the second is poor diet and physical inactivity (source).
- Between 2011 and 2015, the leading causes of alcohol-attributable deaths due to chronic conditions in the United States were alcohol-associated liver disease, heart disease and stroke, unspecified liver cirrhosis, upper aerodigestive tract cancers, liver cancer, supraventricular cardiac dysrhythmia, AUD, breast cancer, and hypertension (source).
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