Alcohol Assessment Test: The AUDIT, AUDIT-C and CAGE Questions, How They Are Scored, and What a Score Means

The AUDIT alcohol assessment test is a 10-question screen developed by the World Health Organization that scores your past-year drinking from 0 to 40. A total of 8 or more is considered to indicate hazardous or harmful alcohol use.

Each answer scores 0 to 4, and the questions are about frequency, quantity, and consequences. In the order they are asked:

1. How often do you have a drink containing alcohol? Never (0), monthly or less (1), 2 to 4 times a month (2), 2 to 3 times a week (3), 4 or more times a week (4).

2. How many drinks containing alcohol do you have on a typical day when you are drinking? 1 or 2 (0), 3 or 4 (1), 5 or 6 (2), 7 to 9 (3), 10 or more (4).

3. How often do you have six or more drinks on one occasion? Never (0), less than monthly (1), monthly (2), weekly (3), daily or almost daily (4).

4. How often during the last year have you found that you were not able to stop drinking once you had started? Same 0 to 4 scale.

5. How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected from you because of drinking? Same scale.

6. How often during the last year have you needed a first drink in the morning to get yourself going after a heavy drinking session? Same scale.

7. How often during the last year have you had a feeling of guilt or remorse after drinking? Same scale.

8. How often during the last year have you been unable to remember what happened the night before because you had been drinking? Same scale.

9. Have you or someone else been injured as a result of your drinking? No (0), yes but not in the last year (2), yes during the last year (4).

10. Has a relative, friend, doctor or other health worker been concerned about your drinking or suggested you cut down? No (0), yes but not in the last year (2), yes during the last year (4).

Answer in standard drinks: a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 1.5-ounce shot each count as one. People underestimate here more than anywhere else, and the test only works if the count is honest.

Source: AUDIT, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, World Health Organization form as published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The AUDIT-C is the first three questions of the AUDIT on their own, scored 0 to 12, and it screens for how much and how often you drink without asking about consequences.

The three questions are how often you drink, how many drinks on a typical drinking day, and how often you have six or more (for men) or four or more (for women, and anyone 65 or older) on one occasion. It is the version most primary care offices use because it takes under a minute. The Department of Veterans Affairs treats a score of 5 or more as a positive screen for unhealthy drinking; other guidelines use lower cutoffs. A positive AUDIT-C means the amount is a concern, and the full AUDIT or a conversation is the next step.

Source: AUDIT-C, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

No. A screening test estimates risk; a diagnosis of alcohol use disorder is made by a clinician against eleven criteria, and the number you meet sets the severity.

Under the DSM-5, two or three criteria in a year is mild alcohol use disorder, four or five is moderate, and six or more is severe. The criteria cover things a ten-question quiz cannot fully reach: tolerance, withdrawal, time spent drinking or recovering, giving up activities, continuing despite harm. So a high AUDIT score is a reason to have that evaluation, not a substitute for it, and a clinician who takes your score seriously will ask more questions rather than fewer.

Source: Alcohol Use Disorder, StatPearls, National Library of Medicine.

A low score with no yes on the dependence questions means keep an eye on it. A score of 8 or more means talk to someone. A yes to morning drinking, blackouts or being unable to stop, at any total, means the conversation should include what happens when you stop.

If you are taking the test because you already suspect the answer, the most useful next step is the honest one: describe the pattern to a clinician, or to us. If you took it for someone else, the how to help someone who will not admit a drinking problem page is about that conversation. And if the person who needs the assessment is drinking heavily every day, medically supervised alcohol detox is the version of stopping that does not depend on getting the risk estimate right. What it costs, self-pay and with insurance, is on how much detox costs, and checking your coverage takes about two minutes.