Important Massachusetts substance abuse statistics include rates of binge drinking and heavy drinking, number of arrests and fatal traffic accidents involving drug drivers, and annual totals of deaths due to drug overdose.

Newton Recovery Center offers personalized outpatient care in a safe and highly supportive environment for adults who have become addicted to alcohol and other drugs.

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Alcohol Use in Massachusetts

For the past three years the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) has released a report titled A Profile of Health Among Massachusetts Adults. The most recent report, which was published in March 2026, covers the 2024 calendar year.

Based on information gathered by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), this report tracks two Massachusetts substance abuse statistics, binge drinking and heavy drinking.

For purposes of the BRFSS survey, these terms were defined as:

Binge drinking: Having five or more drinks (for men) or four or more drinks (for women) on a single occasion.
Heavy drinking: Averaging 14 or more drinks per week (for men) or seven or more weekly drinks (for women) over the past month.

Another indicator of problematic drinking in Massachusetts is the number of arrests due to suspicion of OUI. This acronym stands for operating under the influence, which is the state’s legal term for drunk driving. The threshold for OUI by noncommercial drivers in Massachusetts is a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08%.

Binge Drinking

The BRFSS survey for 2024 found that binge drinking rates in Massachusetts had declined from the prior two years, but many people continued to engage in this dangerous behavior:

15.7% of surveyed adults said they had at least one binge drinking episode in the previous 30 days.
The 2024 rate of past-month binge drinking represented an improvement from 2023 (when the survey found a 16.4% rate) and 2022 (17.2%).
Past-month binge drinking in 2024 was more common among men (18.7%) than among women (12.8%).
Adults ages 25-34 had the highest rate of past-month binge drinking (24.4%). This was slightly higher than the 18-24 age group, which reported a 23% rate.

Heavy Drinking

The 2024 edition of the DPH report found that heavy drinking by adults in Massachusetts had also declined from prior years:

The overall rate of heavy drinking among all adults in 2024 was 5.5%. This was the second year that the heavy drinking rate declined, dropping from 6.7% in 2022 and 6.4% in 2023.
The rate of heavy drinking in 2024 was higher among women (6.2%) than among men (4.8%).
Among age groups, the two highest rates were 6.5% in the 25-34 group and 6.2% in the 55-64 group.

Drunk Driving

According to the home and personal safety website SafeHome.org, law enforcement personnel in Massachusetts made 7,961 arrests due to suspicion of OUI in 2024.

SafeHome.org also reported the following about alcohol’s role in fatal motor vehicle accidents in Massachusetts and elsewhere in the U.S.:

In 2023, there were 343 traffic fatalities in Massachusetts.
Of this total, 116 (34%) involved drivers with a blood alcohol content of 0.08% or higher.
Only eight states had a higher percentage of alcohol-involved traffic fatalities than Massachusetts did.
Hawaii led the nation with a percentage of 42%, followed by Texas with 40%. Mississippi and Utah tied for the lowest rate with 21%.
Massachusetts was one of 19 states, plus the District of Columbia, that exceeded the national average of 30% for alcohol-involved traffic fatalities.

For More: Massachusetts Alcohol Treatment

Overdose Deaths in Massachusetts

Another set of vital Massachusetts substance abuse statistics is the number of people who died after overdosing on alcohol or other drugs.

One of the systems that tracks overdose deaths in Massachusetts is the State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS), which is maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A SUDORS download from the Massachusetts DPH reported the following about overdose deaths in 2024:

The state recorded 1,646 overdose deaths in 2024, which works out to a rate of 22.8 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Men accounted for 71.8% of all overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 2024.
The overdose death rate among men was 34.6 per 100,000. For women, the rate was 13.4 per 100,000.
More than half of the state’s overdose deaths involved people in the 35-44 age range (26.9%) or the 45-54 age range (24.1%).
The 35-44 and 45-54 age groups also had the highest overdose death rates at 48 and 46.9 per 100,000 respectively.
83.1% of overdose deaths involved people who had an opioid in their system at time of death
51.2% of the overdose deaths involved people who had both an opioid and a stimulant in their system when they died

The DPH download also identified several substances that contributed to overdose deaths in 2024, followed by the percentage of deaths they were involved in:

Fentanyl: 74.4%
Cocaine: 60.4%
Benzodiazepines: 19%
Prescription opioids: 18.8%
Methamphetamine: 6.3%
Heroin: 2.7%

As indicated by the statistics above, opioids were present in the vast majority of overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 2024. This category of drugs, which includes fentanyl, heroin, morphine, and most prescription painkillers, was responsible for a dramatic increase in annual overdose deaths over a recent 12-year period.

This increase is documented in the Massachusetts 2024 Opioid-Involved Overdose Report, which as also produced by the DPH:

In 2010, opioids contributed to 568 overdose deaths in Massachusetts.
The number of opioid-involved overdose deaths increased for the next six years, reaching 2,079 deaths in 2016.
The annual number of opioid-involved overdose deaths in Massachusetts peaked in 2022, when the state recorded 2,364.
The peak was followed by a slight decrease in 2023, when 2,114 opioid-involved overdoses were recorded.
In 2024, opioids were involved in 1,336 overdose deaths in Massachusetts. This represented a 37% decrease from the previous year and a 43.5% drop from the 2022 peak.

It appears that the downward trend in opioid-involved overdose deaths continued in 2025. Preliminary data indicates that there were 978 such deaths in Massachusetts last year.

If these numbers hold up, 2025 will mark the first year since 2013 that the state recorded fewer than 1,000 overdose deaths involving opioids.

Find Substance Abuse & Addiction Treatment in Massachusetts

Newton Recovery Center is a trusted source of customized outpatient care for adults whose lives have been disrupted by addictions to alcohol, opioids, benzodiazepines, and other dangerous substances.

Treatment options at our rehab in Newton, MA, include a day treatment program, intensive outpatient program (IOP), and outpatient therapy program.

Call 617-830-9005 today to learn more, or verify your insurance now.