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.

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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.

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