Moderate Drinking Explained: Guidelines, Definition, & FAQs

Like a “standard drink,” “moderate drinking” can have several definitions. In common parlance, a moderate drinker is someone who does not drink to the point of drunkenness unless on special occasions. It is a nebulous concept that people often use to distinguish between a heavy drinker—someone who may frequently drink to the point of drunkenness—and the occasional drinker or non-drinker. These are not scientific terms by any means; they are merely the phrases that have come to be adopted by individuals in their day-to-day use of language, and their definitions are highly subjective. However, there is a vast middle ground between having one drink every now and then and alcoholism, and the truth about the potential risks to one’s health when it comes to moderate drinking are blurry.

Issues with past studies on moderate alcohol use and health

Here, use and consequences are studied independently rather than as one psychiatric condition. Systematic epidemiological sociological surveys of the general U.S. population began in the 1960s. Most of those national and community studies were sponsored by NIAAA and its predecessor within the National Institute of Mental Health. Since 1965 researchers at the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, California, have conducted, at approximately 5-year intervals, nine national surveys as well as numerous community studies.

Drink Alcohol Only in Moderation

Researchers acknowledge that some participants could have underestimated their consumption or dependency. We selected our sample to increase heterogeneity among our participants. As such, our results should not be seen as representative of a population. Rather, they could be more reasonably interpreted as representing viewpoints from a wide variety of men and women with varying drinking patterns and patterns of health care service use.

Extreme Binge Drinking

In some QF surveys, respondents are asked how often and how much, on average, they consumed different types of alcoholic beverages over the past year. Those surveys generally include specific definitions of standard drink sizes for each beverage type assessed. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 85.6 percent of people aged 18 and older reported that they drank alcohol at some point in their lifetime.

• For some analyses, such as studies investigating drinking consequences (e.g., drinking and driving and other alcohol-related injuries and violence) not only the amount but also the pattern of alcohol consumption is important and should be assessed.
• Those who endorsed these kinds of definitions tended to discount or ignore simple recommendations.
• Additional research addressing these inconsistencies would be useful.
• Moderate drinking is defined as 2 drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women, per the CDC’s guidelines.

Why moderate drinking was linked to a healthy lifestyle

We used 150 in-depth interviews linked to questionnaire data to learn how people define moderate drinking and to describe the relationships between definitions, attitudes, and beliefs about moderate drinking and individuals’ drinking patterns. Some studies have found a protective effect with low to moderate levels of alcohol on overall health. Low to moderate drinkers may have a lower risk of coronary heart disease if already heart-healthy, a lower risk of stroke, and improved diabetes outcomes. Two alcoholic drinks per day is considered moderate drinking for men. The higher the alcohol content (ABV) of the beverage, the less you should drink. A new analysis, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has found that drinking low amounts of alcohol does not have health benefits.

Deaths from excessive alcohol use‎

But good evidence shows that drinking high amounts of alcohol are clearly linked to health problems. Heavy drinkers may be at risk of malnutrition if alcohol is substituted for nutritious foods. Excessive alcohol consumption makes it hard to get enough essential nutrients while staying within your daily calorie allotment and maintaining a healthy weight. The Dietary Guidelines also list several categories of people who should not drink at all. Finally, the Dietary Guidelines provide specific recommendations for recovering how to drink moderately alcoholics and for people who have family members with alcohol problems. The reported alcohol consumption is likely to be higher if the respondent perceives the assessment to be less stigmatizing.

Moderate drinking increases health risks compared to not drinking

“This could include breast cancer, for example, liver disease, liver cancer, heart disease,” to name a few. Women who consume eight or more drinks per week are considered excessive drinkers, according to the CDC. Breast cancer, liver disease and heart disease have all been linked to excessive drinking over time. Similarly, although more than 50% of American adults have a close family member who is struggling with or has had alcoholism in the past (Dawson & Grant, 1998), we found few people who appeared to understand the symptoms of alcohol dependence. More importantly, significant numbers of people suggested that increased tolerance had changed their definitions of moderate drinking to include much higher levels of consumption.