Alcohol consumption among middle-aged Americans has been climbing since 2018, even as younger generations drink less, according to national data cited by physician and author Dr. Marc Siegel. While overall drinking rates fell somewhat after the pandemic, they remain above pre-pandemic levels, and heavy drinking among middle-aged adults has specifically increased.
Siegel points to the competing pressures many in this age group face, caring for aging parents while raising adolescent or young-adult children, as a likely driver. A recent study out of Colorado found that older adults are more likely to drink alone than their younger counterparts, a pattern associated with greater health risks, including cognitive decline.
The numbers are substantial. An estimated 28 million Americans suffer from alcohol use disorder, with a large share of them middle-aged. Roughly half of all alcohol-related deaths in the United States occur in that same age group.
A 1930s Meeting in New York City
Amid those statistics, Siegel points to a decades-old approach that he argues still works: Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in the 1930s by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith following what Siegel describes as a chance meeting. He writes that the renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung would have called such an encounter synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence.
Wilson and Smith built the 12-step program around making a spiritual connection, and in doing so became what Siegel calls messengers for each other, and eventually for millions of other people struggling with alcoholism.
In his new book, “The Angels Among Us,” Siegel recounts Wilson’s admission to Towns Hospital in New York City in 1934, his fourth hospitalization for alcohol intoxication followed by withdrawal. Siegel writes that Wilson, in despair and uncertain he would survive, demanded that God show Himself.
“The room lights up with a blinding glare of light. Wilson is seized by an ecstasy he has never known. He stands on a mountaintop with a great wind blowing. He thinks to himself, ‘This is not a wind of air. This is spirit. This is the God of the preachers.’ Bill feels that a great, clean strength is blowing through him, that he is now free.”
Wilson described the experience to Dr. Silkworth, the physician treating him at the hospital. Siegel writes that Silkworth concluded Wilson was not crazy but had undergone a significant psychic event, and advised him to hold on to it and share it with others. That advice, according to Siegel, shaped the approach Wilson and later Dr. Bob took: meeting other alcoholics where they were, without preaching or condescension, to spread sobriety through peer connection.
Why In-Person Connection Still Matters
Siegel argues that lesson remains relevant today. He contends that the kind of peer-to-peer kindness that helped Wilson recover depends on in-person exchange and does not translate the same way through social media, and that self-destructive behavior, including alcohol addiction, is more likely to take hold in isolation.
His conclusion is straightforward: doctors can serve as healers in the way Dr. Silkworth did for Wilson, but so can fellow sufferers who choose to show up for one another.
If you want to get run out of an AA meeting, mention the name Jesus Christ.