Alcoholic beverages have been a part of social life for millennia, yet societies have always found it difficult to understand or restrain their use. Different societies not only have different sets of beliefs and rules about drinking, but they also show very different outcomes when people consume alcohol.

This study is conducted to assess the reasons behind consuming alcohol among adult males of Bareilly district, Uttar Pradesh, India.

A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out on males aged ≥15 years in Bareilly district. Thirty clusters were chosen from this population by probability proportional to size sampling, and then from these clusters, in each cluster, houses were taken out and from each, one adult male was selected till the sample size was achieved. The prevalence of alcohol usage among males in Uttar Pradesh (by National Family Health Survey 372) is 25.3%. Taking 10% of nonresponsive rate and design effect of 2, calculated sample size is 632.

Totally 699 adult males participated in the study and analyzed data show that 31% males are current drinkers, 5% are past drinkers, and rest are teetotalers. Most of the study subjects indulged in this habit due to peer pressure (58.7%), while 24.9% reported that the cause was a curiosity to drink. Only 7.0% were because of conforming to social status or norms. The majority of the study subjects continued to drink in order to cheer-up (44.6%) in order to relax (40.8%), whereas only 16% current drinkers reported the cause as “peer pressure” or “think and work better.”

We can conclude that the most common reason to start alcohol habit is peer pressure and people continue it to cheer themselves.

Singh H, Joshi HS, Singh A, Katyal R, Upadhyay D. Reason behind Drinking: A Cross-sectional Study on Alcohol Use among Adult Males in Bareilly District, Uttar Pradesh, India. Int J Adv Integ Med Sci 2017;2(1):29-31.