According to the Daily Beast, Seattle ranked as America’s 19th drunkest city for 2011, with just over 14 drinks consumed on average per (legal) resident every month, which pans out to a little over three drinks a week, which is technically nothing. I guess this is good news—that we’re not drunker, I mean. Although glancing about the Stranger offices, which feature more visible booze bottles than employees at the moment, I’d say we’re doing more than our part to bolster Seattle’s reputation as a town of middling drunks.

Meanwhile, Boston reigned as 2011’s drunkest city, according to the Beast’s (unexplained) drunky formula. And here’s a sobering wet blanket one Boston brain trauma doc throws on the dubious prize:

Scientifically conducted studies indicate alcohol is involved in a least a fifth of motor vehicle accident brain injuries. By contrast, my ten-minute personal reflection indicates Boston’s drug of choice is involved in at least three quarters of crashes generating a traumatic brain injury severe enough for the rehabilitation hospital. One of my patients eventually emerged from the vegetative state he was in after a meaningless drunken fight. (While the clinical anecdotes here bear some resemblances to the real cases, I’ve altered many details to further obscure identification.)

The clinical examples he goes on to cite are enough to make me rethink that after-lunch body shot I had scheduled with Mudede.

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...

23 replies on “Seattle Ranks as 19th Drunkest City in America”

  1. Maybe if we had decent transit, we’d be a drunker city. I know I’d go out more if I didn’t have to budget for a cab every time. We can do this, you guys. Come on.

  2. Still too many damn teetotalers in this down, dragging down the average. We need more Frizzelles and fewer Goldys. Let’s make Seattle #1 in 2012!

  5. With just a little work by each and every one of us, I feel confident that we can get Seattle into the top 10 by the close of 2012!

    We must have goals, people! Together, we can WIN THIS THING!!!

  8. I agree that three drinks a week is not significant, and that overall per capita consumption is a silly benchmark.

    On the other hand, I seem to recall reading that the distribution of alcohol consumption is wildly skewed, with a tiny population of alcoholics consuming the great majority of the alcohol. A number that addressed this – the proportion of people who had a serious drinking problem, as opposed to a region-wide the drinks a week – might be worth knowing.

  10. @8:
    If you follow the link you’ll see that in addition to the per capita measures they also include:
    “Percent of population that are heavy drinkers” and
    “Percent of population that are binge drinkers

    (Seattle comes in at 6.1% and 16.9% respectively)

  11. Recalculate these figures without including the beer drinkers, who don’t count, and tell me what you get. If you take me out of the count as well, we could be under one drink per person per month, since I’m well over a million per week, I think.

  15. The only thing that would make me happier than the word “rethink” in that final sentence would be if it was replaced with “cancel forever.” Oh well. Consenting adults and all that.

  17. I remember the look of shock when my doctor asked how many drinks I had a week, and I said 14. (Two a day? Seems entirely reasonable.) Now I lie and say six.

  21. 30, Seattle-Tacoma
    Ted S. Warren / AP Photo
    Average drinks, per person, per month : 12.59
    Percent of adults who are heavy drinkers : 5.1
    Percent of adults who are binge drinkers : 15.3
    Deaths per 100,000 residents from alcoholic liver disease : 7.9

Comments are closed.