Study: Workaholics likely to hit booze hard

A long workweek may drive you to drink, new research shows.

Researchers analyzed data on more than 430,000 people and found that those who worked at least 49 hours a week were up to 13 percent more likely to engage in “risky alcohol use” compared with those who were on the job for only 35 to 40 hours a week, according to a study published Tuesday by the journal BMJ.

Risky alcohol use was defined as more than 14 drinks a week for women and more than 21 drinks a week for men. That much alcohol makes people vulnerable to a variety of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, liver problems and cancer.

For good or ill, alcohol and work frequently mix. In one survey cited by the research team, one-third of workers said they’ve come to work with a hangover and 15 percent said they have been drunk on the job. But the nature of the link between work hours and alcohol is murky.

Some researchers suspect that drinking helped relieve stress brought on by stressful work conditions. Others think that hard-charging people naturally wind up in “work hard play hard” situations.