Nearly 500 people died per day from alcohol during the pandemic, according to new official data.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found that from the start of 2020 through 2021, 178,000 Americans died from conditions caused by alcohol, the highest tally since 1999. Causes of death included liver failure and cancer, or by more direct causes such as alcohol poisoning or drunk driving.
Officials said it confirmed that a spike in binge drinking during the first year of the Covid pandemic had continued, which was linked to the daily disruptions caused by the pandemic, as well as the rise of alcohol delivery services.
The 488 average deaths due to alcohol per day in 2021 marks an increase of 29 percent from before the pandemic.
It also makes booze one of the country’s biggest killers. For comparison, around 270 people are dying from Covid on average every day, according to figures for the first week of February. Fentanyl kills an average of 200 people per day, while stroke kills around 400 people daily.
Alcohol has become one of the top killers of Americans everyday, though far lower than deaths due to heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and accidental injuries. The figures were culled from government sources as well as advocacy organizations and reflect the most recent years for which data is available. The most recent years range from 2020 to 2023. Covid deaths are recent as of first week of February
Psychiatrists and addiction experts believe that the stress of the global pandemic, including anxieties and isolation, precipitated a sharp uptick in alcohol-related deaths
Two-thirds of the 2021 alcohol deaths were due to chronic conditions that develop from long-term use, including cancer and liver disease, while a third occurred from binges, such as car crashes, multiple-drug overdoses, and suicides.
The number of deaths from excessive alcohol use increased by almost 23 percent from 2018-2019 to 2020–2021. This increase was about four times larger than the previous increase of 5 percent from 2016–2017 to 2018–2019.
The CDC said that they expect these numbers to increase in the future.
Alcohol consumption has been ticking upward since the mid-90s, reversing about a decade’s worth of declines. In the year 1995, on average, each person consumed about 2.1 gallons of alcohol throughout the entire year.
The CDC’s application called the Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) assesses average alcohol use-related deaths, usually over a five year period.
While 178,000 deaths were recorded during 2020 to 2021 – 488 per day – 138,000 were recorded from 2016 to 2017, a 29 percent increase.
And in 2024, excessive drinking led to about 4 million years of life lost prematurely. On average, the people who died because of excessive alcohol use lost about 23 years of their lives.
Dr Daniel Lieberman, a psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher at George Washington University, told DailyMail.com: ‘These numbers are indeed concerning. We’re seeing evidence of increasing mental illness among Americans, including depression, anxiety, and now, with this data, alcohol use problems.
‘It’s a reflection of the growing stress in our daily lives brought about by the many ways the pandemic and lockdowns have impacted our lives. Soaring food and housing prices as well as rising political tensions are probably also playing a role.’
Researchers from the CDC and Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research captured 58 total causes of death related directly or indirectly to excessive alcohol use. Those directly related to alcohol include alcoholic liver disease, alcohol poisoning, and suicide.
This incidence was higher in men, but the rates rose fastest among women.
The daily death toll due to alcohol in 2020, while paling in comparison to that of Covid, is higher than the number of daily Covid deaths today – around 269
The above graph shows that alcohol use has been on the rise since the mid-90s, having previously seen a sharp decling over about a decade. Graph courtesy of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
The rate of daily deaths due to alcohol that year surpassed daily deaths due to fentanyl that year, which reached 154. It’s also far higher than the current rate of daily fentanyl deaths, which is about 202 per day.
It also surpasses the number of daily deaths due to pneumonia – about 113– and more than the number of flu deaths in 2019, which was around 68. The daily number of stroke deaths, meanwhile, is 383.
Dr Lieberman added: ‘As a society, we seem to be more willing to turn to risky substances to cope with the rapid, and sometimes frightening changes, that are going on around us.
‘Many states are legalizing marijuana and other recreational drugs, but alcohol is the substance people turn to most often. Because it’s so widely used, people may underestimate the risks of using it to cope with stress.’
Substance misuse and addiction ballooned during the pandemic. From April 2020 to April 2021, during the first year of widespread lockdowns and quarantine orders, a total of 100,306 Americans died of drug overdoses, the first time that more than 100,000 overdose deaths were reported over a 12-month period.
At the same time, nearly a third of US adults experienced worse depression symptoms in 2021 compared to around 28 percent in early 2020, and 8.5 percent pre-pandemic.
And binge drinking rates increased as well. Sixty percent of Americans increased their alcohol consumption during lockdowns, and 46 percent reported increased stress as a reason for their increased drinking.
Dr Lieberman said: ‘I hope that this report will be a wake-up call.’
