(Cox News Service) — If you can read this, bless your luck: New Year’s Eve may have been even more dangerous than you thought.

Binge drinking by Americans has risen by 25 percent since 1993, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say in a study published today, and those who binge are 14 times more likely to drive while drunk than those who drink lightly.

But those who binge-drink – defined as having five or more drinks in a row – may not be who you think they are, the researchers said.

Most binge drinkers are older than 25. Only 31 percent of them are 18 to 25 years old, a group that includes teens too young to drink legally. Younger drinkers, though, binge twice as often as older ones.

And few binge drinkers are alcoholics or habitual heavy drinkers: 73 percent of those who binge have just one or two drinks a day most of the time.

“This makes the point loud and clear that alcohol abuse is a problem in the general population,” said Dr. Tim Naimi, lead author of the study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. “It is not restricted to heavy drinkers or alcoholics, or to college students.”

The study relies on data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a nationwide telephone survey of Americans 18 and older that the CDC conducts every year.

Between 1993 and 2001, the researchers found, episodes of binge drinking rose from 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion per year.

“On average, that’s 7.4 binge drinking episodes for every American adult, every year – and almost half of the population doesn’t drink at all,” Naimi said. “Collectively, Americans binge-drink at about the same rate they get haircuts.”

Half of the 100,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States each year are due to binge drinking, the study estimates. Binges also are responsible for numerous costly injuries and accidents, from falls and drowning to domestic violence and unintended pregnancies.

“The general public isn’t aware of the dangerous health and social consequences of binge drinking,” Naimi said. “We still view it with an attitude of ‘Boys will be boys.'”

Copyright 2002 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.