Germans and Drinking

 I sat and watched a news piece off ARD (public TV, Channel One) that discussed regions of Germany where people seem to drink more alcohol than other regions. 

So this health insurance group did a national review and came to several conclusions.

First, there are around 1.1-million Germans who would be classified as alcoholics (out of 83-million in population).  I'm not totally surprised over the number (I might have even said it was double that number).

Then they said this interesting thing....Bremen (far NW) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (the German state east of Hamburg, made up of the coastal region which was old DDR) have a far higher number of alcoholics than the rest of Germany.  The national average is around 14 alcoholics per 1,000 people....while these two regions have an average around 21 to 22 alcoholics per 1,000 people.

Reason?  None really given.

I could look at Mecklenburg and just say economically.....they've never taken off since the Wall came down.  Bremen?  It's a port city, but the regional unemployment rate is around 11-percent (March 2021 numbers).  You might make the case that both suffer in terms of the economy, and people just drink more in 'bad' times.