How do you know if your alcohol use is a problem? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Play

Alcohol is ubiquitous, especially as we approach the winter holidays. Denis Antoine, an alcohol use disorder or AUD expert at Johns Hopkins, says with something that’s around seemingly all of the time, it’s important to assess your own relationship to alcohol use.

Antoine: Alcohol use is very very prevalent. If you look at the statistics approximately 85% or more of the population have actually had a drink over the course of their lifetime as an adult. That age is getting lower and lower with 12 year olds and teens getting access in different ways. If you look at the amount of people who've had a drink within the past year it goes down to about 60 to 65 percent. How many people have a drink in the past month it's still around 50% for women but the question is what is disorder and disorder is I usually frame it as is alcohol causing a problem for you.  :33

Antoine says the individual nature of what is a problem means the answer is variable, and may also change over someone’s lifetime. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.