Workaholics Drink More Alcohol

A new study shows that 48 hours of work per week or more lead to a tendency to drinking a lot in quantity, and more often. The study involved 14 different countries and about 330 000 people of different ages, working groups, generations. The results say that those who work more than the normal norm, are 11 percent more predisposed to drinking heavily. In the study, it is specified that heavily drinking means more than 14 drinks per week for women and 21 drinks per week for men. That means 3 drinks per day for a man. It’s quite a lot, taking into consideration the fatigue, the other responsibilities besides work and the obvious sleep deprivation.

Analyzing the numbers, Cassandra Okechukwu  who comes from the Harvard School of Public Health has been invited to write an editorial in which she concluded that 11 percent of the people in 14 countries means 2 million people who drink very much because of their stressing jobs that keeps them overtime. The team of researchers agreed with all of her statements.

“The workplace is an important setting for the prevention of alcohol misuse, because more than half of the adult population are employed. Further research is needed to assess whether preventive interventions against risky alcohol use could benefit from information on working hours.”

Risky alcohol use means usually the fact that it leads to very many health problems, like heart disease, liver problems, stroke, cancer. Of course, it involves driving too, because there are a lot of people that are so fond of their cars that can’t leave them somewhere and take the taxi just because they had a little bit more to drink.

The reasons why people drink more are mostly work-related: the dullness of the actual activities that they have to do, the same mechanical processes that have to be done day by day in a similar way, the aches and pains that they start having because of sitting down or on their feet too much, eye problems caused by computers, depression, anxiety, etc. Alcohol helps smoothing the transition between this life and the one that they have home and that sometimes seems to be another world.

Mrs. Cassandra Okechukwu thinks that people should worry about their drinking habits more, especially when their behavior starts to change. She is hopeful that maybe these findings will raise a problem to big enterprises that sustain working overtime a little bit more than natural.

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