About 58% of American adults say they drink alcohol at least sometimes, according to recent survey data. That figure is slightly below the longtime national average of around 63%, signaling a modest but meaningful shift in the country’s drinking habits.
How Many Americans Drink Overall
More than half of U.S. adults currently drink alcohol, but the number has been drifting downward. Between 2021 and 2024, 58% of adults reported drinking at least occasionally, compared to a historical norm closer to 63%. That gap of about five percentage points represents millions of people who have either cut back or stopped drinking entirely.
The decline isn’t spread evenly across age groups. Young adults are driving most of the change, while older Americans are actually drinking more than they used to.
Drinking Rates by Age Group
The sharpest drop has come from adults under 35. In the early 2000s, 72% of 18-to-34-year-olds drank alcohol. By the 2021 to 2024 period, that number had fallen to 59%, a 13-percentage-point decline in roughly two decades. That’s a significant cultural shift for the age group historically most associated with drinking.
Middle-aged adults (35 to 54) have held relatively steady, moving from 67% to 69% over the same period. The most notable increase has been among adults 55 and older, whose drinking rate climbed from 49% to 58%. In other words, the oldest age group now drinks at nearly the same rate as the youngest, something that would have been unusual a generation ago.
Binge and Excessive Drinking
The overall percentage of drinkers tells only part of the story. How much people drink matters more for health than whether they drink at all. The CDC defines binge drinking as four or more drinks on a single occasion for women, or five or more for men. This pattern of drinking accounts for a disproportionate share of alcohol-related harm, including injuries, liver disease, and alcohol poisoning.
Excessive alcohol use contributed to roughly 178,000 deaths per year in 2020 and 2021, representing about 5% of all deaths in the United States. That figure was 29% higher than the annual toll recorded just four years earlier (2016 to 2017), a steep jump that coincided with increased drinking during the pandemic years.
What Counts as Moderate Drinking
Current guidelines from the CDC define moderate alcohol use as two drinks or fewer per day for men and one drink or fewer per day for women. A “standard drink” is 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. Many people underestimate how much they pour, especially with wine and cocktails, so actual consumption often exceeds what people report on surveys.
These thresholds are not a recommendation to drink. They describe a level of consumption associated with lower risk compared to heavier drinking. For people who don’t currently drink, there is no established health reason to start.
Why Younger Adults Are Drinking Less
The drop among 18-to-34-year-olds is one of the most discussed trends in public health and the beverage industry alike. Several factors appear to be converging. Younger generations report greater awareness of alcohol’s health effects, more interest in wellness culture, and wider access to non-alcoholic alternatives that didn’t exist a decade ago. The rise of “sober curious” culture, where people experiment with reducing or eliminating alcohol without necessarily identifying as having a drinking problem, has also reshaped social norms in this age group.
At the same time, the increase among adults over 55 has raised concern among researchers. Older bodies process alcohol less efficiently, and drinking interacts with a longer list of medications and chronic conditions. The combination of higher drinking rates and greater biological vulnerability makes this an age group where even moderate increases in consumption can have outsized health consequences.