Heavy Episodic Drinking in the Sao Paulo Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study in Brazil: Gender and Sociodemographic Correlates * (Report‪)‬

ALCOHOL-USE DISORDERS (AUDs), such as alcohol abuse/harmful use or dependence, have long been considered an important issue in public health and medicine because of their high prevalence and their devastating effects on individuals, families, and society (Kessler et al., 1997; Rehm et al., 2003; Robins et al., 1991). Alcohol, on a global basis, is responsible for 4.0% of the total loss of disability-adjusted life years, with Latin America and the Caribbean region responsible for 9.7% of this estimate. Alcohol also causes more years of potential life lost through death and disability than tobacco and illegal drugs (World Health Organization [WHO], 2004) and is related to many major disease outcomes and social harms in most developing societies (Rehm et al., 2006). AUDs constitute only a small part of all alcohol-related harms (Rehm et al., 2005). Heavy episodic drinking (HED), also considered a broader definition of binge drinking by some authors (Kuntsche et al., 2004), is defined as the consumption of five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more drinks in a row for women, at least once in the past 2 weeks (Wechsler et al., 1995, 2002). It also is typically defined as the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks on one occasion for a man and four or more drinks on a single occasion for a woman (five-plus/four-plus drinking; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [NIAAA], 2005) or as a pattern of alcohol consumption that places the drinker at increased risk for experiencing alcohol-related harms (Wechsler and Nelson, 2001).