America’s relationship with alcohol is getting better and worse at the same time. Fewer people are drinking overall, which is nice. But for those still clinging to the bottle, things are worse than ever.

A new study from UCLA just confirmed that alcohol is killing people at nearly twice the rate it did 25 years ago. Between 1999 and 2024, alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. spiked 89 percent, according to PLOS Global Health.

The peak came in 2021, surprisingly in the middle of COVID, when over 54,000 Americans died directly from drinking. And while those numbers have dipped slightly since then, they’re still a solid 25 percent higher than they were pre-pandemic.

This isn’t specifically about people who drink themselves into alcohol poisoning. That remains relatively rare. Instead, the bi

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