Slowly Drowning

In 2017, a study sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)found that "alcohol use disorder" (AUD) had increased 83.7% amongst American women between 2002 and 2013. Furthermore, "high risk" or "heavy drinking" had increased by 58%when comparing rates from 2001 to 2002 with rates from 2012 to 2013. The big question was of course "why" but the second largest question (and the most important) was "how do we curb this increase?". Four years after the release of this study, the daily drinking habits of women have tapered off, however binge drinking (the practice of having 4 or more drinks within a 2 hour period) rates continue to increase in the female population.

Through a series of visualizations, this piece explores the increase in drinking amongst American women as well as the physical and mental toll drinking causes. The goal of this piece is to provide the viewer with a better understanding of what problematic drinking is, how prolonged alcohol consumption has irreversible and fatal consequences, and what steps could be taken to prevent long-term damage.

For this project, there were three datasets used to outline the statistics around women and alcohol consumption: National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); The Behavioral Risk FactorSurveillance System (BRFSS); National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). These three were chosen because they were the data source for many of the articles on this subject, each survey has public health institutional oversight, and each data library could give me historic as well as recent statistics.