The purpose of reading PT Blogs is to be able to interpret the world around us. Readers here are quizzed on binge-drinking, moderation, and abstinence based on reading the leading PT Blogger.

The Stanton Peele Addiction Website, March 16, 2011. This blog post also appeared on Stanton's Addiction in Society blog at PsychologyToday.com.

What I Have Learned About Drinking from PT Blogs - The Quiz

This post is a response to More Intelligent People Are More Likely to Binge Drink and Get Drunk by Satoshi Kanazawa

The great thing about Psychology Today Blogs is how much you learn about current life -- it's fabulous, really. Particularly noteworthy have been Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa's posts on intelligence and drinking. Kanazawa has discovered -- through his intrepid evolutionary psychology analysis -- that smarter people seek more stimulation, and thus binge drink more. Brilliant.

Armed with this knowledge, we can review the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data (Tables 3.2 and 3.3) on drinking styles by education level for Americans 18 years of age and older.

Styles of drinking analyzed:

Abstinent

Infrequent

Light

Moderate

Heavier

Binge drink at least once in last year

Binge drink 12 or more times past year

Educational levels:

Less than high school graduate

GED diploma

High school graduate

Some college-no degree

Associate of arts degree

Bachelor of arts, science degree

Masters, doctorate, medical degree

Okay - let's have it!  Which group has the highest level of abstainers (68%) -- which also had the fewest light-moderate drinkers (17%)? Which group had the highest level of light-to-moderate drinkers (54%) -- which also had the fewest abstainers (28%)? That is, one group had fewer than half the abstainers of the other, and three times as many light-moderate drinkers.

This should show how much reading PT Blogs has prepared you for understanding life in these United States!

Okay, let's jump ahead. The same group with the most light-moderate and fewest abstainers had the fewest who had five or more drinks 12 or more times in the past year (5%) -- one half the level of frequent binge drinking (10%) of the group with the most abstainers!

Of course, if we categorize these data in terms of the percentage of drinkers who frequently binge, the difference surges: the group with the most abstainers had three times the rate of binge drinkers among current drinkers (21%) as the group with the fewest abstainers (7%).

So, it seems you'll have to distinguish in your mind, dear reader, between regular drinking and binge drinking -- which can require some effort, I know.