By Brandi Neal

Original Source: bustle.com

While studies have shown that having one or two drinks a day can be beneficial to your brain, binge drinking has the opposite effect. And, Americans are binge drinking in an alarming way, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that noted that Americans consumed a total of 17.5 billion binge drinks in 2015. Binge drinking is defined as having four or more drinks in one sitting for women and having five or more drinks in one sitting for men, which accounts for more than 44,000 deaths in the U.S. a year, according to the study. It's no secret that a lot of people experiment with drinking in college and in their 20s, and during this time having more than four drinks is not uncommon.

However, for some people, this pattern can evolve from experimental to normal to dependence. What's more...click here to continue reading