Four of the 10 counties in the nation with the biggest increase in heavy drinking are in Northern Kentucky, a new study finds, and local officials acknowledged Thursday that they are mystified by those results.

 

Bracken, Mason, Lewis and Owen counties are on that list, which Kentucky dominates: Nine of the 10 counties are in the Bluegrass State. No. 1 is Loving County, deep in west Texas.

 

Loving County, Texas, and Bracken County are also 1-2 on the study's list of the 10 counties with the highest increase of heavy drinking among men; Bracken's men registered an 88.8 percent increase. On the list of 10 counties with the biggest increase in heavy drinking among women, the only Kentucky county is Lawrence, where the women had a 124.4 percent increase.

 

The study defined "heavy drinking" as more than one drink a day for women and two for men.

 

 

Four NKY counties tops in heavy drinking

How can those counties populations be high enough to make this list?

How can those counties populations be high enough to make this list?

 

It's based on percentages.

It's based on percentages.

 

Gott ya, so 5 people in Bracken co are drunks, theres only 10 in the county, 50% are heavy drinkers. Got it.

It's all due to basketball anxiety.

3 of them being on the river, could make you wonder if its something in the water.

 

Owen Co doesnt surprise me, wife works there, I get it.

Gott ya, so 5 people in Bracken co are drunks, theres only 10 in the county, 50% are heavy drinkers. Got it.

 

3 of them being on the river, could make you wonder if its something in the water.

 

Owen Co doesnt surprise me, wife works there, I get it.

 

I'm innocent...

3 of them being on the river, could make you wonder if its something in the water.

 

Owen Co doesnt surprise me, wife works there, I get it.

 

Kentucky River goes through Owen Co.

So it's an average of two drinks a day that makes you a heavy drinker or 14 a week?

 

Am I the only one who thinks that's a weird threshold?

So it's an average of two drinks a day that makes you a heavy drinker or 14 a week?

 

Am I the only one who thinks that's a weird threshold?

 

Unless you're a gal. Then it's one a day.

 

If that's the threshold, I know about eleventy billion heavy drinkers.

Well that proves it, I'm a drunk.

88.8% increase in Bracken County? Wow.

 

 

Why are the women drinking so heavily in Lawrence County?

M

88.8% increase in Bracken County? Wow.

 

 

Why are the women drinking so heavily in Lawrence County?

 

Well, I did leave town 5 years ago...

So Little Randy creates so much havoc there that they are now drunks?