Connecticut's 'Drunkest City' Is...

If you live in the Norwich-New London metro area in Connecticut, apparently you like to drink. Quite a lot, according to a new report by 24/7 Wall St.

The Norwich-New London area is considered Connecticut's "drunkest city," based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 24/7 Wall St. then "reviewed the metropolitan areas reporting the highest levels of binge and heavy drinking in each state."

"Adults in the Norwich-New London area are more likely to drink excessively than adults in any of Connecticut’s four metro areas," writes 24/7 Wall St. "While alcohol abuse can come with negative, often serious consequences, area residents tend to be relatively healthy. The Norwich metro area has one of the lower premature death rates in the country, and area residents are far less likely to report feeling unhealthy than Americans on the whole."

Drunkest city in Connecticut: Norwich-New London
Percentage of Metropolitan Statistical Area adults binge or heavy drinking: 19.7%
Percentage of state adults binge or heavy drinking: 17.6%
Percentage of alcohol related driving deaths: 36.0%

24/7 Wall St.'s methodology is as follows:

To identify the drunkest city in each state, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the percentage of men and women over 18 who report binge or heavy drinking in each state’s metro areas. Metro level data was aggregated from county level data provided by County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program. Health outcomes, including the number of deaths before age 75 per 100,000 people, also known as the premature death rate, and the percentage of adults who report fair or poor health were also aggregated from county-level data obtained from County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. All data are as of the most recent available year. Social and economic characteristics, including median household income and percentage of adults who have completed at least a bachelor’s degree came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey.

"Still, excessive drinking does not appear to be consequence-free in the Norwich-New London metro area," 24/7 Wall St. added. "Alcohol is involved in 36.0% of all area roadway fatalities, more than the corresponding state and national rates of 33.2% and 31.0% respectively."

Nationally, Appleton, Wisconsin, is the drunkest city in the United State with 26.8 percentage of adults reporting excessive drinking in the metropolitan area.

Nationwide, 87.6 percent of adults have drank alcohol at some point in their lives, while 71.0 percent consumed alcohol in the past year. A little more than 56 percent say they drank in the past month and 18 percent of adults report excessive drinking, according to the report.

Click here to read the full report from 24/7 Wall St.

Patch Editor Tom Davis contributed to this report.

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