Sober up, New York!
More than 1.2 million Big Apple residents are getting rip-roaring drunk, a shocking new city health survey has found.
One in five city adults (ages 18 and up) engaged in “binge drinking” in the previous 30 days, the study obtained by The Post reveals. That means five or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting for a man, and at least four for a woman.
That’s up from 2011, when 18 percent, or 1.1 million city adults, got trashed.
And a majority of New Yorkers — 56.7 percent or nearly six in 10 — had at least one drink over the prior 30 days, according to the 2012 Community Health survey. That’s 3.56 million people, also a slight increase over the prior year.
Some 364,000 city residents are considered “heavy drinkers” — men who have two or more drinks daily and women who have at least one a day.
But there’s a huge gender gap. More than one in four guys (26.7 percent) are binge drinkers, compared with one in seven women (13.7 percent).
Some of the city’s bustling Manhattan neighborhoods are hangover havens: one-third of adults in Chelsea/Greenwich Village and Union Square/lower Manhattan are binge drinkers.
And nearly three in 10 residents on the Upper East Side/Gramercy and East Harlem (29 percent and 27 percent, respectively) got blitzed.
Folks in a few neighborhoods stood out as relative teetotalers. Fewer than 10 percent of residents in Brooklyn’s Borough Park and Northeast Queens (Bayside/Little Neck/Fresh Meadows) were boozers. Those communities have many residents whose faith forbids or discourages social drinking.
Substance-abuse counselors warn that the uptick is alarming because alcohol, if abused, can lead to other risky and self-destructive behaviors. Unlike other drugs, though, alcohol is ingrained in the culture, legal and widely accessible.
“Drinking alcohol is socially acceptable. It’s legal. It’s cathartic. It’s used for celebration. It’s used for sorrow. Drinking alcohol has become mainstream behavior — and it’s big business,” said Luke Nasta, director of Camelot Counseling Centers.
Health officials also warn that excessive drinking is linked to many medical and societal problems, including heart, liver and sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, depression, dementia and domestic violence.
Alcohol is a factor in nearly half of the city’s homicides, 28 percent of auto fatalities and one in 10 hospitalizations, city data show.