Sheldon Shiraki sits at the bar in the trendy Fritti restaurant in Atlanta, happily sipping an ice cold cocktail.
Asked how many drinks it would take for the government to consider him a "heavy drinker," he laughs.
"I don't know -- maybe 25 to 30 drinks," Shiraki says.
"A month?" I ask.
"A week," Shiraki says with a smile.
"Let me do the math," his friend Pamela Gjerde says from the next bar stool over. A local, she calls the bartender by name and says she will sip a glass of white wine a couple days a week. For a woman to be considered a "heavy drinker" she thinks she'd have to have 15 to 20 drinks weekly.
They both looked shocked to learn they seriously overestimated the number.
Women are considered "heavy drinkers" if they have eight or more drinks a week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Men can have 14. At 15, you, my friend, are a "heavy drinker" in the eyes of the CDC.
One in 10 deaths among adults between the ages of 20 and 64 are due to excessive alcohol consumption, the CDC says in a report released Wednesday. That means some 88,000 people die a year as a result of drinking too much. The majority of those are men -- about 70%.
Do you consider yourself a light, moderate or heavy drinker? Health agencies have these definitions to help you understand when your drinking may become a health problem.
The definition is different for women because women's bodies are typically smaller than men's. They also metabolize less alcohol in the stomach, meaning more ends up in their blood stream.
A standard "drink," by the way, is not that big frosty mug or that giant Hurricane glass you kept from Mardi Gras. The CDC says a drink is 12 ounces of beer (5% alcohol content), 8 ounces of malt liquor (7% alcohol content), 5 ounces of wine (12% alcohol content), or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof (40% alcohol content) distilled spirits or liquor -- the fancy term for gin, rum, vodka, whiskey etc.
Are you a heavy drinker? You'd be surprised 
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