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According to Centers for Disease Control guidelines, I drink too much. I usually have a cocktail at the end of the working day, a glass of wine with dinner and, with my wife, a nightcap of a delicious but reasonably priced Scotch, a number which blows the CDC rules — a two-drink limit — by 50%.
Tut-tut, you might say. Terrible! But in my native England, I am considered somewhat abstemious, with that trio of tipples coming under the four-drinks-a-day guidelines suggested by authorities there when I was in my youth.
In general, I have found American drinking patterns to be quite different. There are a large number of people who are either non-imbibers or consume very little. Then there are the binge drinkers who will knock back a six-pack and/or a bunch of shots. The British, perhaps guided by their pub culture, tend to drink over a longer period, tending to use alcohol to lower their famous reserve. (That said, U.K. drinking habits, as displayed by soccer hooligans and their ilk, have become more uninhibited.)