The chaser of choice for an increasing numbers of drinkers here is a visit to the emergency room.
The city Health Department reported yesterday that there were 74,000 alcohol-related visits to emergency rooms among New Yorkers 21 to 64 in 2009 — well more than triple the 22,000 in 2003.
The heavy imbibers accounted for 3.4 percent of all e.r patients last year, more than double the 1.5 percent in 2003. The jump in e.r. visits by underage drinkers was even more dramatic–from 1,000 to 4,000.
“Those are staggering numbers,” declared Robert Lindsey, president of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.
Manhattan neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of bars and clubs — from Greenwich Village to Chelsea to Murray Hill — also racked up the highest proportion of drinkers in need of urgent medical attention in 2007-08.
But so did areas less noted for hard partying: north and west Queens, a swath of southern Brooklyn and the Greenpoint section of that borough.
Jacob Harris, 27, who was downing a beer at the Off the Wagon bar on MacDougal Street yesterday afternoon called the findings “pretty shocking.”
Neighborhoods where people held their alcohol the best or just didn’t drink as much: most of Staten Island; the northeast Bronx; central Brooklyn; Canarsie-Flatlands and Flatbush; and the Rockaways in Queens. Assistant Health Commissioner Daliah Heller said that since the number of problem drinkers hasn’t increased, it’s possible the beverages they’re consuming have changed — and not for the better.
“Maybe binge drinkers are drinking more or they’re drinking more potent alcoholic beverages,” she said.
Additional reporting by Amanda Melillo