Surrounding Themselves With Heavy Drinkers Makes People more Likely to Drink Heavily

Today's Shocking Study Findings come from the April 6th issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. In an article entitled "The Spread of Alcohol Consumption Behavior in a Large Social Network".

The Key Findings:

Changes in the alcohol consumption behavior of a person's social network had a statistically significant effect on that person's subsequent alcohol consumption behavior.

The behaviors of immediate neighbors and coworkers were not significantly associated with a person's drinking behavior, but the behavior of relatives and friends was.

People whose friends or relatives drank heavily were 50% more likely to also drink heavily compared to people who weren't connected with heavy drinkers.

The researchers also found in general that being surrounded by heavy drinkers increased the reported alcohol consumption by about 70%, while being surrounded by abstainers decreased reported alcohol consumption by half.

So, basically, people that like to drink a lot, tend to socialize with people who like to drink a lot.

Fascinating.

Source: USA Today and Annals of Internal Medicine