One thing I learned from this is that I'm not even close to the national average consumption for the U.S. – I'd better get to work on that! Assuming the U.S. average is about 8 liters of alcohol a year, that works out to 3/4 ounce of pure alcohol. My consumption is nearly entirely in wine, so that works out to about 6 ounces a day. That doesn't sound like much, but I actually only have wine a couple times a week – which means I'd have to drink about 20 ounces of wine at a sitting. Yikes! That would knock me for a loop!
I'm not surprised by the large Russian consumption. I saw an awful lot of vodka when I was there, and witnessed people drinking in amounts and at rates that I'd have thought were fatal. But France and England? I wouldn't have guessed that their alcohol consumption was on a par with Russia's...
