Alcohol use disorder (AUD) or alcoholism is characterized as when an individual’s alcohol drinking behavior affects their mental or physical health or causes distress or harm to their social and personal lives.
An individual with alcohol use disorder will continue to drink even negatively impacting their life, such as losing a job or breaking up in a relationship. These alcoholics may be aware that their alcohol consumption ruins their lives, but they could not help it.
Alcohol use disorder is a pattern of alcohol use that involves problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol or continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems. This disorder also involves having to drink more to get the same effect or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking. Alcohol use disorder includes a level of drinking that’s sometimes called alcoholism.
How Prevalent Is Alcohol Use Disorder?
According to the 2018 survey of NSDUH, almost 14.4 million adults ages 18 and older had AUD only in the United States. This includes 9.2 million men and 5.3 million women. Almost 401,000 teenagers aged 12 -17 had AUD, which consists of 173,000 males and 227,000 females of this age group.
The annual global alcohol consumption is 6.4 liters per person older than the age of 15. The share of adults who drinks alcohol is highest across Western Europe and Australia…
