How we drink: Here’s everything you need to know about Canadians’ overall boozy habits

We dried out a little in the 1990s. “I think it has to do with drinking and driving laws — during that period there was a big shift on how we relate to alcohol and driving.” People also became far more health conscious through that decade, he says. But by the turn of the century, we started steadily drinking more, with a bit of a dip in 2012, following the financial downturn. There’s been an increase since, but then a drop in sales in 2013-2014.

LESSON 2: WE LIE ABOUT HOW MUCH WE DRINK

How much did you drink last Saturday night? Come on, tell the truth. It turns out we’re very bad at assessing how much alcohol we throw down our gullets. Researchers — grappling with self-reported data they know doesn’t quite reflect reality — are now trying to fix that. A United Kingdom study which explored the discrepancy between survey responses about how much people say they drink and the amount of alcohol sold found 75% of men and 80% of women were drinking above the daily limit. That was 19% and 26% more, respectively, than what they claimed.

A forthcoming Canadian study on the same discrepancy found that only a third of Canadians accurately reported their consumption to interviewers. “The great majority of alcohol sold in Canada is drunk in a way that exceeds national low-risk drinking guidelines,” study co-author and University of Victoria psychology professor Tim Stockwell told the National Post. “[F]urther, the number of people exceeding these guidelines is almost double previous estimates,” When researchers controlled for under-reported data, they estimate more than 40% of Canadians are “higher risk” drinkers.

We aren’t always intentionally misleading those who ask about how many drinks we drink. Part of the problem is we just can’t remember — at least over the long term, says Thomas. Doctors and researchers can take some of the responsibility for that: Instead of asking how many drinks a person has in a year or an average week, they could ask, “How many did you drink last night?” and then work it out from there (more studies are now taking that approach). On top of that, people don’t know what a standard drink looks like. The big glass of wine your sister-in-law pours at the family barbeque is probably more like 10 oz rather than the standard drink of 5. A pint of beer at a pub? That’s one and a half standard drinks. At the end of the day, stigma’s also to blame for our bad counting: No one wants to be painted a drunk. When Thomas gives talks, he’ll ask how many people have been impacted by alcoholism. A wave of hands always goes up. And yet there’s real trouble discussing alcohol. “People are not comfortable talking about these things,” he says.

LESSON 3: WE DRINK AT HOME

A whole lot of Canadians prefer to swill their spirits and sip their wine in the comfort of their own homes. “Looking at the data, we see the vast majority of drinking is going on behind closed doors,” says John Mohler, a vice-president at Ipsos Reid, one of Canada’s leading polling agencies, which has run the robust Alcohol Consumption Tracker, a market research tool, since 2011. The 2015 ACT, which has more than 1,000 Canadians keep a monthly online diary of their drinking behaviours, found a full 58% of drinks are consumed in one’s own home and 16% of drinks consumed in the home of another person. This is the case across regions and generations. “It’s cheaper to drink at home, it’s easier, it’s more accessible — you don’t have to go anywhere — you have greater selection, typically,” adds Mohler. “Going somewhere has implications…[this way] you don’t have to drive.” While 80% of drinks are consumed in the presence of somebody else – 29% in the presence of only a spouse and 20% in a large group — 19.6% of drinks are being swallowed alone. Gabor Forgacs, a professor of hospitality at Ryerson University, connects this with the rise in single person households noted in the most recent Census. “I suppose if someone has a meal alone … isn’t it natural to make it less unhappy by adding a glass or two? Who is going to say “Honey, that’s enough for now…?”

LESSON 4: WE WAIT UNTIL AFTER WORK (MOSTLY)

We’re most commonly found with a drink in our hands in the evening hours of 5pm to 10 pm, with 66% of total drinks consumed within this timeframe. According to the Ipsos data, 18 percent of drinks are downed from noon to 5 pm, and 14% in the night, past 10pm. Younger generations are more likely to stray outside the evening zone. Men are also more likely to be “routine” drinkers, says Mohler.

LESSON 5: WOMEN ARE DRINKING MORE

The biggest rise in drinking has been amongst women of childbearing years and of European descent, experts say. Countries that rank high on the United Nations index of emancipation have seen a rise in female drinkers in the past number of years (these include countries such as Norway). It’s a trend that has health experts sounding the alarm, because women process alcohol differently than men. “We tend to think, in our culture, of two things: Drunk driving and liver disease,” says Ann Dowsett Johnston, the Toronto-based author ofDrink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, which chronicles the rise in risky drinking amongst women. “We don’t think of the 200+ cancers and diseases related to alcohol ingestion.”Fifteen percent of breast cancers draw a straight line to alcohol, she says. Women drink for a lot of the same reasons as men: To celebrate and relax. But for a modern woman laden with greater expectations on the home front and at work, it becomes both a reward and a socially acceptable coping mechanism, she says. “It’s a quick decompression tool.”

LESSON 6: EUROPEAN-CANADIANS SKEW THE NUMBERS

Canadians of European descent are driving the upward trend in drinking, says Jurgen Rehm, the director of social and epidemiological research at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “We have a number of immigrants who drink not a lot or next to nothing, which basically means that the increase you’re seeing [in Canadians drinking] means that those who already consumed quite heavily are now drinking more.” A new study of immigrants to Ontario found that while immigrants tend to drink less than those born in Canada, place of birth was significantly associated with risky drinking, except for people who emigrated from East Asia or Northern Europe.