Daily Gut: The Military, the Media, and the Martini

Now imagine you were somebody who only got your news from USA Today. What a weird worldview you’d have.

For one, you’d think colorful pie charts solve every problem, and you’d also think our military consists of nothing but troubled head cases. In the past year or so, USA Today has done little more than paint our military as rife with suicide, mental health problems, divorce, troubled kids and of course – alcohol and drug abuse.

Let’s look at the most recent USA Today piece on alcohol abuse. The paper reported that “Soldiers…with alcoholism or alcohol abuse, such as binge drinking, increased from 6.1 per 1,000 soldiers in 2003 to an estimated 11.4 as of March 31.”

That is disturbing, no doubt – and it’s all from military data. But what happens if you compare that figure to our general population? Well, according to the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 15.5 percent of the general population report episodes of binge drinking in 2006 – and for males alone – the number jumps over 20 percent.

Okay, think about that. Twenty percent of males in the general population binge drink – that’s one in five.

In the military – largely made up of young males who deserve to drink – it’s six soldiers per 1,000.

What does that tell you? Well, first: our soldiers seem far more well-adjusted than USA Today would like to let on. And also: our soldiers are far more capable of handling alcohol than non-military bozos like myself.

That should be no surprise: these are discipline dudes, and unlike me, their jobs require them to be clear-eyed and sober. As a magazine veteran and a television talking head, I can safely say that nearly all media jobs can be done drunk. The only dangerous machinery we face is an elevator.

Now to be fair to USA Today, my analysis is not perfect (I’ve had four martinis already). And I confess I’m not comparing apples to apples – the NIAAA stat was collected differently than the number cited in USA Today. Still, there’s a fundamental truth here: Our military doesn’t just rock physically, but also psychologically. It’s a truth that goes against USA Today’s and most film directors’ desire to paint our soldiers as ticking time bombs.

Finally, buried in the same USA Today piece is another interesting fact: “Enrollments in drug abuse treatment programs have remained largely unchanged in the Army during the war, rising from 3.7 per 1,000 in 2003 to an estimated 4.2 as of May.”

Think about that. As rehab clinics in America become more commonplace than bowling leagues – the Army presses on during the toughest of times.

I’ll drink to that.