Study details

For the study, CDC analyzed data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and found that almost 5.4 million people in the United States were treated for an alcohol-specific cause, like acute alcohol intoxication or alcohol addiction, during the 2021 to 2022 study period.

Specifically, the study found that almost 4 million men visited EDs from 2021 to 2022 for alcohol-related causes, slightly double the nearly 2 million men who did the same in 2003.

Similarly, alcohol-related ED visits for women increased from 701,000 in 2003 to almost 1.4 million in the 2021 to 2022 study period.

CDC only included alcohol-specific causes in the study by tracking specific medical codes for issues that are entirely due to excessive alcohol consumption with no other factors, a spokesperson for the agency said.

Alcohol-specific causes include a variety of emergency conditions that come from chronic alcohol misuse, including nerve damage, weakened heart muscles, inflammation of the stomach lining, and liver conditions.

In addition, a 2025 study published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine found that no amount of alcohol is safe in terms of dementia risk.

In addition to alcohol-related ED visits increasing over the past two decades, other research has also found that alcohol-related cancer deaths have doubled in the past 31 years, and that alcohol-related liver disease has doubled in the past 20 years.

However, alcohol consumption in the United States has been steadily decreasing. A poll from Gallup published last year found the percentage of U.S. adults who said they drink alcohol dropped to 54%, the lowest rate seen by Gallup in almost 90 years of tracking alcohol consumption in the country.

Earlier this month, HHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture released new dietary guidelines advising that Americans consume "less" alcohol, though the guidelines didn't specify what "less" means. Previous guidelines recommended that men have no more than two drinks per day and women have no more than one.

However, the guidelines noted that certain people should abstain from drinking altogether, including pregnant women, people in recovery from alcohol use disorder or who are "unable to control" their drinking, and people taking medications that could have hazardous interactions with alcohol.

The guidelines also noted that people with a family history of alcoholism should "be mindful of alcohol consumption and associated addictive behaviors."