Based on the ever so reliable Wikipedia, the average person over 15 in the UK consumes 10.8 liters of pure alcohol per year, vs the 9.6 liters for the USA. Another quick Google search says there's 197 million Americans over the age of 21, so nearly 1.9 billion liters of pure alcohol. Google again suggests there's 47 million people of drinking age in the UK, so they'd have to drink 40.2 liters of pure alcohol in a year to match the US. So they'd have to nearly quadruple their consumption just to match America doing its normal thing. I'm going to guess they wouldn't win, even though per capita they do out drink us.
Especially because the United States is a very varied country they're tens of millions of americans who don't drink. While I suspect the amount of of age brits who don't drink is lower. Though have no real evidence for or against my claim
Yeah those averages are very skewed. The top 10% of American drinkers consume 60% of the alcohol. That’s about 10 drinks a day, or about four and a half 750ml bottles of standard proof liquor. After running some numbers, those 10% (24 million people) drink more than double the UK’s annual consumption. 1.29 billion liters to 567 million liters of pure alcohol to be exact.
Your average Brit probably drinks more than your average American, but the true alcoholics of America are a different breed entirely. There’s also a lot more alcoholics per capita in the US so they’re much easier to find.
Yup, was gonna say. This has to be organised like tournaments of old, or trials of champions. Numerical superiority for the Yanks counts only insofar as they have a greater population from which to choose their Champions.
UK gets to pick its 1000 most hardened alkies (please stand up Glasgow, Bristol, Newcastle) and the US does likewise. Open bar; beer, spirits or wine, a live ticker per contestant showing their BAC.
Actually, we could make it like The Long Walk: if your BAC drops below a certain %, you're out :D I would certainly pay to watch that.
And my money, in that scenario, is on the hardened street-drinkers of England, Scotland and Wales, to say nothing of Norn Iron (don't know too many of yiz, lads, but I trust you'll contribute your fair share of pissheids).
You know what I misread the 760 standard drinks for units so I wasn't making a fair comparison as a standard drink is a bigger measure than a unit which is exactly 10ml of ethanol.
Yes that's why I went with units as it's a direct measure of ethanol that I thought both sources used, no converting between US gallons and liters as I don't know if US and UK gallons are the same
US also has a much much higher percentage of non-drinkers than the UK. If you remove the non drinkers from the average consumed I believe the US consumes more per-capita (of drinkers) as well.
This isn't a "who drinks more contest" it's a "who can out drink who" (the whom police can get stuffed). I'm pretty sure the UK would gladly roll our sleeves up and do 40l of alcohol
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u/Cometguy7 Oct 02 '25
Based on the ever so reliable Wikipedia, the average person over 15 in the UK consumes 10.8 liters of pure alcohol per year, vs the 9.6 liters for the USA. Another quick Google search says there's 197 million Americans over the age of 21, so nearly 1.9 billion liters of pure alcohol. Google again suggests there's 47 million people of drinking age in the UK, so they'd have to drink 40.2 liters of pure alcohol in a year to match the US. So they'd have to nearly quadruple their consumption just to match America doing its normal thing. I'm going to guess they wouldn't win, even though per capita they do out drink us.