[imagesource: Getty Images]

According to the world’s largest annual drug survey, a certain country down under enjoys drinking alcohol a bit more than everybody else.

The Global Drug Survey’s 2021 report has ranked Australia as the drunkest country on the planet.

That’s because, as VICE so eloquently puts it, Australians get “shitfaced almost twice as frequently as the global average”.

Getting drunk, per the report, is when you drink so much that your “physical and mental faculties are impaired to the point where your balance/speech [is] affected, you [are] unable to focus clearly on things and that your conversation and behaviours [are] very obviously different to people who know you”.

The global response to this was that people on average get drunk 14,6 times a year, or a bit more than once a month.

Meanwhile, ‘Stralians reported getting drunk on average 27,7 times a year.

This might not be news for some, as the 2019 report found that Australian drinkers had the highest rate of requiring emergency medical attention.

Following closely behind Australia are Denmark and Finland, with citizens from each reporting getting drunk 23,8 times a year on average.

Does the survey for the world’s happiest countries know this?

Meanwhile, Mexico, New Zealand, and Romania ranked lowest in terms of how frequently citizens got drunk.

Back to the Ozzies:

While Australians may have ranked as the world’s biggest binge drinkers, however, they weren’t as unhappy about their drinking habits as some. When researchers asked people to consider if they regretted getting drunk – or “wishing you had drunk less or not drunk at all” – Australia ranked ninth in the world.

Irish, Polish and New Zealand respondents had the most regrets about getting drunk, while Denmark had the least. Overall, cis men were the least likely to regret getting drunk.

Interesting…

Anything happening in 2021 can’t help but mention something about the effects of COVID-19, so here we go:

As a sign of the times, about six percent cited feeling anxious about COVID-19 or other stuff; four percent said they got too inebriated because they “hadn’t drank for ages due to COVID-19 restrictions”; while two percent said they overindulged because they were at an online party.

These are the words that the survey participants used to sum up 2021:

Image: GDS 2021 Global Report

Yeah, we feel that.

[source:vice]