What is one drink?

If your doctor said "don’t drink more than one cocktail every week", what do you tell the bartender? Your bartender might make you a cocktail with 2 shots of vodka. Is that what your doctor told you?

If your pharmacist tells you "one beer with this med is fine", what beer was he talking about? Light beer or extra-strong beer? What if you had a pitcher with your friend?

If you drink a cup of wine and your friend Katie drinks a glass of wine. Did you have one drink? Or did Katie have one drink?

So here is the problem

How do we keep track of our alcohol consumption?

How do we know what is safe drinking?

How do we know what is unhealthy drinking?

Alcohol is same everywhere

Beer is beer if you are in Australia or USA or Germany.

But every country has different definition of one standard drink.

Government (or health department) in every country define what is one standard drink.

Standard drink

Every country has different definition of standard drink.

In USA, one standard drink is 14 grams (18 ml) of pure alcohol.

In United Kingdom, they call a standard drink 8 grams of alcohol.

In Australia, one standard drink is 10 grams of alcohol.

In Austria, one standard drink is 20 grams of alcohol.

So if you were in Austria and if you had 20 grams of pure alcohol: you had one standard drink as per Austrian health department.

But if you were in Australia and if you had 20 grams of pure alcohol: you had 2 standard drinks as per Australian health department.

Why define standard drink?

You can keep track of how much you are drinking.

Example: One day you drink a can of regular beer. Next day you finish a bottle of wine.

You can measure your alcohol use by standard drink:

One 12 ounce can of regular beer = one standard drink

One bottle of wine = 5 standard drinks

This can help you understand about safe drinking limits. One bottle of wine might not make much sense. But 5 standard drinks in one day seems too much.

This also helps you share information with doctor. You can tell your doctor how many standard drinks you drink every day or every week.

Here in USA, one drink is:

14 grams (18 ml) of pure alcohol.

That is:

500 ml of light beer (3% alcohol)

360 ml of regular beer (5% alcohol)

140 ml of wine (10% alcohol)

45 ml of whisky or vodka (40% alcohol)

Standard drink definition by United States National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA): Read here

Are you a moderate drinker or heavy drinker or binge drinker? Read here