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Ireland comes second in global alcohol consumption

Ireland comes second in global alcohol consumption

Additional reporting from Kevin Galvin

Ireland has one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the world, coming second out of 34 countries.

A new survey from WIN International on Ireland's health habits also found 1 in 6 people smoke regularly.

Five years ago, author of 'Soberista', Kate Gunn, gave up alcohol for a 30-day challenge - and never went back to it.

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She says the hangovers were one of the main reasons.

"It definitely makes anxiety worse, it takes longer through your working week to get over it, so you're very sluggish.

"Lots of things that we just live with, as part of the drinking culture, that everyone goes through and we all kind of laugh at the hangovers.

"But I felt it was definitely slowing things down, for me."

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Over half of 18 to 34 year olds in Ireland claim to feel stressed often.

Richard Colwell, the chief executive of Red C research, says stress seems to be a particular problem for Ireland:

"There certainly seems to be an Irish problem about this.

"What we see is that those, under 35, over half of those people say that they regularly say they feel stress. That compares to just 35% as a global average.

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"In Ireland we certainly seem to have more of an issue around stress than we see elsewhere."

It found that overall, the pandemic has had a limited impact, with stress, exercise and sleep levels all similar to before Covid.

One in 6 people say they smoke regularly while just under a third say they regularly drink, giving Ireland the second highest rate of alcohol consumption out of 34 countries.

But it's not all negative, almost three quarters of people say they're healthy or very healthy, rising to 80% of for 18-34s.

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