Reading scholarly statistics about something as unmindful as excessive drinking can be amusing. First of all, excessive drinking is defined as 5 drinks for men and 4 drinks for women per day. Need I mention my previous, three-bottle-of-wine-a-day habit would translate into 15 drinks a day?

I’m the statistical equivalent of three drunk men… For me, these findings are like reading the possible ill effects of traversing a bunny hill when I’m used to downhill racing.

Nonetheless, I gleaned these snippets from a Harvard University study on alcohol and injury :

• 13% to 63% of all accidental falls are alcohol related (duh, Harvard…).
• Alcohol is implicated in one-third of drowning incidents.
• 8% of all ER visits each year for illness or injuries are associated with alcohol.
  
• Evidence links a high proportion of deaths from fires and burns to drinking.

says (in a sort of first-year, poetic, power-point presentation I found):

“Alcohol is responsible for approximately half of all trauma deaths and nonfatal injuries in the United States—a very tragic and very expensive public health problem that continues every day and every night on our nation’s highways, in our cities, and on our farms.”

Farms? Imagine the statistics for drunken cow-pie slippage or goat goading…

Does any of this make you want to put down the drink?