A day at the cricket: The breath alcohol consequences of a type of very English binge drinking

Abstract

Media images of violence and accidents associated with binge drinking raise concerns and the headlines and sound-bites blame heavy intoxication. However, there has been very little attention to breath alcohol concentrations (BACs) associated with bingeing. In this naturalistic study of 12 male spectators at a cricket match, alcohol consumption ranged from 8.5 to 21.7 units and at the end of play BACs ranged 0−61 µg/100 mL. The implications of these results for the definition of a “binge” are discussed.

• Binge drinking
• breath alcohol concentration