"Between 1790 and the mid-1820s, alcohol consumption reached dizzying heights. In the 1820s, Americans 15 and older consumed the equivalent of 7 gallons of pure alcohol a year. This number, compiled by the historian William Rorabaugh, is even worse than it sounds, given that the vast majority of the booze was consumed by a single subgroup of the drinking-age population: white men. As Rorabaugh has dryly noted, "this rate of use is among the highest ever recorded in any society and is close to the human body's physiological maximum capacity for intake of alcohol."
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