Depending on the amount of alcohol consumed, an individual can either suffer from a bad hangover, make all sorts of bad choices or end up in the hospital.
A new study published in Time Magazine attempted to find which types of alcoholic beverages are most likely to land drinkers in the emergency room.
Leading the way was Budweiser.
According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the iconic American beer is a popular choice among drinkers, but can leave individuals in sticky situations. The study suggest Budweiser counts for 15 percent of those who end their nights in the ER for some sort of injury. The popular beer makes up only 9.1 percent of domestic beer sales.
The Time Magazine article said the beer is a bit of an outlier amongst the data. Based on the study, Malt liquor, not regular lagers, is the more popular choice among the emergency room set.
According to the study, Steel Reserve Malt Liquor came in second to Budweiser. Steel Reserve Malt Liquor makes up for 8 percent of the beer market, but 14.7 percent of the ER market. That's 3 percent less than Budweiser. Malt liquors as a whole make up a paltry 2.4 percent of the U.S. beer trade, but a full 46 percent of the alcohol consumed by emergency room goers.
Third and fourth place among most popular ER alcohols are also malt beverages: Colt 45 and Bud Ice. Bud Light and Barton's, a discount brand of vodka, round out the top six.
David Jernigan, the study's director, cautioned that the study only included interviews with 105 hospital patients, and all from one hospital in Baltimore. Jernigan mentioned the study proves this sort of research is possible, something he claims the Federal Trade Commission had previously denied.
According to Traci Toomey, the director of the University of Minnesota's alcohol epidemiology program, that's good news. As told NBC News this sort of data can possibly lead to more studies on how alcohol is marketed. Also it can researchers an idea on how to prevent alcohol related injuries in the future.
"Some products are marketed to certain groups of people in our society," Toomey said. "So we might want to put some controls on certain products if we find they are tied to greater risk. But how they are marketed and priced is critical information and that has been very hard to study."
