Well, we all like the occasional drink, don’t we? But what do we consider “occasional” drinking, and when have we drank enough? It probably won’t be a big surprise that this can vary greatly from country to country.
Thanks to science, we can actually measure how drunk each country is, on average. We just take the liters of alcohol each inhabitant consumes per year. Also, we are talking about pure alcohol here – not “liters of alcoholic drinks”.
Let’s take a look at some of the drunkest countries in the world. Cheers!
Czech Republic
At a whopping 14,4 liters per capita per year, that’s quite a lovely amount of alcohol people are pouring into their veins. As you’ll find out from the rest of this list, Eastern Europeans just love their drinks and I guess that’s what you do when your winters are cold as hell. Gotta keep warm somehow.
Belgium
The country that makes the best beer in the world, also turns out to be one of the biggest drinkers in the world? That’s probably not a surprise to anyone. What is a surprise is that at 12,1 liters per capita, they barely made the list.
Bulgaria
We mentioned Eastern Europe, right? These guys aren’t as bad as the Czech Republic, but at 12,7 liters per capita they’re no small fry either.
Ireland
Their national holiday is known around the world for being a good excuse to get drunk, so it’s no surprise to anyone that the Irish drink 13 liters of pure alcohol per year. This isn’t counting all the other people drinking to St. Patrick in the rest of the world.
Lithuania
Hello there, Eastern Europe! Lithuania doesn’t mess around though – they drink 15 liters of pure alcohol per capita per year. That’s actually an insanely high number and probably not all that good for your health.
Germany
Oktoberfest was born here and it’s probably the biggest beer country in this list apart from Belgium, so their 13,4 liters per capita isn’t shocking anyone at this point, right? Hell, considering some of the other numbers we’ve seen here, it’s actually pretty modest.
Moldova
If the only thing your country is known for is Epic Sax Guy, you’re going to drink a lot. In fact, you’re going to drink 15,2 liters of pure alcohol per year. Since this is our top scorer, let me illustrate that number: if a regular beer is 5%, that means the average Moldovan drinks 304 liters of beer per year. That’s nearly one liter a day. And this is assuming that everyone in Moldova drinks.
Honorable Mention: United Kingdom
While the UK’s 11,5 liters of pure alcohol per capita doesn’t really impress anyone at this point, we do have to mention them simply for the fact that the British get drunk 51,1 times per year on average. This means that while in the grand scheme of things Brits might not drink that much, they do get drunk about once a week. That’s worth at least a mention on this list, right?
