Heavy drinking drove hundreds of thousands of Americans to early graves

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Heavy drinking is robbing Americans of decades of life.

From 2011 to 2015, an average of 95,158 deaths annually could be tied to excessive alcohol use, or 261 deaths per day. Excessive drinking brought death early, typically 29 years sooner than would have been expected.

All told, the United States saw 2.8 million years of potential life lost each year, researchers report in the Oct. 2 Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report.

The researchers used a program developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that estimates annual deaths and years of potential life lost due to an individual’s own or another’s excessive drinking. The tool takes into account whether the cause of death is fully attributable to alcohol, such as alcoholic liver cirrhosis, or whether excessive drinking can partially contribute to a condition, such as breast cancer.

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