Prevalence of alcohol blackouts
Department of Psychiatry, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina conducted a survey on this issue.

The authors conducted an e-mail survey of 772 college students to learn more about their experiences with blackouts. Approximately half (51%) of those who had ever consumed alcohol reported they had experienced a blackout at some point in their lives, and 40% had experienced 1 in the year before the survey. Among those who drank in the 2 weeks before the survey, nearly 1 in 10 (9.4%) had experienced a blackout during that period. Many later learned that, during the blackout, they had vandalized property, driven an automobile, had sexual intercourse, or engaged in other risky behaviors. Experiencing 3 or more blackouts was associated with a variety of other experiences, including heavier drinking, lower grades, an earlier age of drinking onset, and having others express concerns about their drinking. The female students who reported blackouts during the 2 weeks before the survey drank far less than male students did during this time period, supporting the use of gender-specific definitions of risky drinking.

J Am Coll Health. 2002 Nov;51(3):117-9, 122-31.

Famous historian Arnold J Toynbee about Islam and alcohol
Let me share a writing by Arnold J Toynbee about influence of Islam in curing alcohol dependence. He was a very famous historian in his time. Encyclopedia Britannica online has the following to say about Toynbee:

“Arnold J Toynbee was an English historian whose 12-volume A Study of History (1934–61) put forward a philosophy of history based on an analysis of the cyclical development and decline of civilizations that provoked much discussion.”

The essence of Toynbee meta-history is that civilizations thrive and survive on the basis of their ideas. He was not particularly fond of Islam, but he counts two major strengths of Islam over the Western civilization, namely prohibition of alcohol and human equality in Islam. He had the following to say about Islam and alcohol:

“As for the evil of alcohol, it is at its worst among primitive populations in tropical regions which have been ‘opened up’ by Western enterprise; and, though the more enlightened part of Western public opinion has long been conscious of this evil and has exerted itself to combat it, its power of effective action is rather narrowly limited. Western public opinion can only take action in such a matter by bringing its influence to bear upon Western administrators of the tropical dependencies of Western powers; and, while benevolent administrative action in this sphere has been strengthened by international conventions, and these are now being consolidated and extended under the auspices of the United Nations, the fact remains that even the most statesmanlike preventive measures imposed by external authority are incapable of liberating a com¬munity from a social vice unless a desire for liberation and a will to carry this desire into voluntary action on its own part are awakened in the hearts of the people concerned. Now Western administrators, at any rate those of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ origin, are spiritually isolated from their ‘native’ wards by the physical ‘color bar’ which their race-consciousness sets up; the conversion of the native’s soul is a task to which their competence can hardly be expected to extend; and it is at this point that Islam may have a part to play.”

A little bit later in the same chapter:

“In two of these tropical regions, Central Africa and Indonesia, Islam is the spiritual force which has taken advantage of the opportunity thus thrown open by the Western pioneers of material civilization to all comers on the spiritual plane; and, if ever the ‘natives’ of these regions succeed in recapturing a spiritual state in which they are able to call their souls their own, it may prove to have been the Islamic spirit that has given fresh form to the void. This spirit may be expected to manifest itself in many practical ways; and one of these manifestations might be a liberation from alcohol which was inspired by religious conviction and which was therefore able to accomplish what could never be enforced by the external sanction of an alien law.
Here, then, in the foreground of the future, we can remark two valuable influences which Islam may exert upon the cosmopolitan proletariat of a Western society that has cast its net round the world and embraced the whole of mankind; while in the more distant future we may speculate on the possible contributions of Islam to some new manifestation of religion.”

Click to access Islam-the-West-and-the-Future-200911.pdf

Arnold J Toynbee. Islam, the West, and the future. This is a chapter of a book by Arnold J Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, published by Oxford University Press 1948.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report for USA
Islam obviously has several clear distinctions over Christianity and the Western civilization. These are the three contenders for the world-view of the future. The West uses ‘Christianity’ and ‘Western civilization’ interchangeably, depending on the occasion and need.

Let this knol or thread be devoted to the favor that Islam has done to humanity by prohibiting alcohol. Please also cite references so it becomes an international repository on this issue. Here is what I read today:

“Dangers of alcohol. Excessive alcohol use is the third leading lifestyle-related cause of death in the United States every year, according to the CDC.

‘Nearly a quarter of general hospital admissions in the country are either directly or indirectly related to alcoholism,’ said Lewin, who added that alcohol is responsible for 50% of all liver-disease related deaths in the United States.

The total direct cost to the health care system from alcohol-related health problems is about $45.5 billion, according to industry reports. ‘On top of that is the indirect costs to society from lost work productivity and driving fatalities,’ Lewin said.”

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/03/news…ion=2009110304