SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Heavy drinkers who "cut back," still drink a lot more than "normal," U.S. researchers say.
Lead researcher Kevin Delicacy of the University of California, San Francisco, says most heavy drinkers maintain a steady level of heavy alcohol consumption over time.
"It's pretty toxic, but somehow they manage to keep drinking at a fairly sustained level," Delicacy says in a statement. "Our people were functional, for the most part. They had addresses, a lot of them had insurance at baseline and they're not at the bottom of the barrel,' which is interesting."
Delicacy used a telephone screening program to identify 672 problem and dependent drinkers who had not been in an alcohol treatment program for at least 12 months.
The study, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, found 11 years later, men in the study had reduced their average number of drinks per month by 51 percent, and women by 57 percent, but despite cutting back, male and female problem drinkers still consumed 160 percent and 223 percent more alcohol, respectively, than the average adult without a drinking problem.
