Chicago Can Drink You Under the Table

By Laura Oppenheimer in Food on Jan 10, 2007 9:01PM

Dr. Dre once rapped about "drinkin', smokin', straight West Coastin'." These days, drinkin' and smokin' are more like mid-westin'. And Chicago in particular. Unless you are talking about smoking pot. We still don't do too much of that in the Windy City.

A new survey found that more Chicagoans admit to binge drinking than in any other metropolitan city surveyed. A whopping 25.7 percent of people surveyed in Chicago admit to "drinking excessively" in the past month. Our friends down in Houston can almost keep pace with us, with 25.6 percent of respondents reporting binging in the past month. The national average is 22.7 percent.

Of course, no good all-night bender could be complete without a trusty pack of cigarettes, which is why it's no surprise that Chicagoans smoke like a collective chimney. Only Detroit had a greater percentage of respondents — 27.4 percent — answer that they had smoked a cigarette in the past month; 26.2 percent of Chicagoans reported they had lit up in the past month.

Shockingly, San Francisco has the highest rate of illicit drug use reported, at 12.7 percent; Chicago lagged way behind with only 8.2 percent of respondents reporting they had recently used an illicit drug.

The study was conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Image via Vintage Gear Addicts.