The 10 Drunkest Cities In Massachusetts [2024]

Is there anything wrong with being called the drunkest city in your state? Especially in Massachusetts, which is one of the loudest, lushest states in the U.S.

Booze is one of the reasons you’re called Massholes. As a term of endearment, that is.

In any event, it’s pretty clear that many of you like to get your drink on just about every chance you can in the New England area.

How do you decide how much a place drinks? By the number of available places to buy booze, and by how often people are talking about drinking, that’s how.

Plus, we thought why not add in a stereotype? Cause, you know, drinking is one reason for divorce, and something that divorced people do a lot of.

Using that criteria, it’s not hard to scrape the internet, run some scientific data on where partiers might live in Massachusetts, and then put out a list.

So, hold our beers and watch this. After analyzing all cities with a decent amount of people in them, we came up with this list as The Wicked Drunkest Cities in Massachusetts:

The 10 Drunkest Cities In Massachusetts

Yeah, yeah, we hear ya. Boston isn’t even in the top 10. It’s 15th. Yeah, we’re aware that on any given night, there are simply thousands of Bostonians pouring themselves into the gutters every night.

But we’re looking at per capita. There’s hundreds of thousands of Boston residents who are perfectly happy with a quiet night in to monitor Gronk’s twitter feed.

Read on below to see where your town ranked.

For more reading on Massachusetts, check out:

What drunken criteria did we use?

In order to rank the drunkest cities in Massachusetts, we had to determine what criteria defines someone who drinks a lot.

We threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible. Using Yelp and Sperling’s Best Places, this is the criteria we used:

Number of bars and pubs per capita
Number of wineries per capita
Number of liquor stores per capita
Each city’s drunk related tweets within the last week
Each city’s divorce rate

For geo-located tweets, we measured the following raw number of tweets that came from within a city’s general are: #Drunk, #Party, #Beer, #Wine and #Cocktails

Note: For the sake of getting reliable numbers, we counted places within a city’s border, as well as within a short driving distance.

1. Plymouth

Population: 56,098
Divorce rate: 3rd highest in the state
Bars per capita: 1st in MA
Liquor stores per capita: 1st in MA

Hot damn, Plymouth, you are tore up from the floor up! We’re impressed. Based on the data, it sounds like you are all having a really, really good time.

It’s off the charts for you guys up there. You have more bars and liquor stores, per capita and in the general area, than anywhere else in the state. No wonder the divorce rate there is so high. At 16%, nearly 1 in 6 of you have already made it to splitsville.

And based on the number of drinking distractions, a lot more of you are on your way there.

And it’s not just the everyday folks getting plowed there.

There were also a far higher number of drunk-related tweets coming from the Plymouth area, including this gem:

“Drank in Boston all day and still made it back to plymouth in time to get more drunk here.”

2. Scituate

Population: 18,123
Divorce rate: 24th highest in MA
Bars per capita: 6th in the state
Liquor stores per capita: 5th in the state

Scituate is a small, middle class city about an hour south of Boston. Although, we’re pretty sure Scituate residents know all of the back roads.

Here, you’ve got the 6th most bars per capita, and the 5th most liquor stores per capita. Which means people there are most likely getting bleary eyed a lot more often than their Massachusetts peers.

Hey, we’re not judging you. In fact, it sounds like a fun place. We’re just saying you guys like to throw back a 12er of Sam Adams a little bit more frequently than most of the rest of the area.

There were actually a surprising number of Scituate drunk tweets floating around. We’re surprised people can actually spell Scituate right after a night out. Here was our fave:

“U know ur drunk when ur on the roof of an elementary school in scituate mass”

3. Salem

Source: Wikipedia User SalemPuritan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Population: 41,641
Divorce rate: 18th highest in the state
Bars per capita: 15th
Liquor stores per capita: 21st

Since Salem is by far the largest city to make this list, they can make a pretty convincing case that they have the most drunks in the state.

Remember what we said above: “Yeah, we’re aware that on any given night, there are simply thousands of Bostonians pouring themselves into the gutters every night.

But we’re looking at per capita. There’s lots of Boston residents who are perfectly happy with a quiet night in to monitor Gronk’s twitter feed.”

But we digress. Salem simply has a ton of distractions for imbibing, and there are obviously, many, many drunk people tweeting from Salem just about every hour of the day.

4. Walpole

Population: 24,102
Divorce rate: 10.5%
Bars per capita: 16th in the state
Liquor stores per capita: 25th

Here’s the thing about Walpole – you clearly are drinkers since you have a high number of bars and liquor stores in the area. But your divorce rate is only about average. At 10%, that’s somewhere in the middle for the state.

And, as a household, Walpole residents bring in about 100k a year. Are you sticking together for the money? Is the night life the glue in your relationship? We’re not going to speculate, but we will make an assumption: When your husband is out till the wee hours, it might be easier to overlook when he has a big bank account.

Just sayin.

5. Adams

Population: 8,384
Divorce rate: 8th highest in the state
Bars per capita: 18th in the state
Liquor stores per capita: 16th in MA

Jesus Christ, Adams, you’re a freaking mess. Nearly 9% of you are out of work, you’re broke, but you’re out at the bars all the time. No wonder 1 in 6 of you got a divorce. How can you keep living your lives like this?

Okay, enough motherly scolding from us. But seriously though, how many of you have your names on a chalkboard behind the bar with a huge tab that you’re never going to pay?

6. West Yarmouth

Population: 6,023
Divorce rate: 12%
Bars per capita: 14th in the state
Liquor stores per capita: 25th in Massachusetts

Public service announcement: Watch yourselves on Route 6 when you’re driving on the cape at night. You’ve got some West Yarmouth people driving around, and many are most likely a little buzzed.

Out here, you’ve got a lot of distractions for residents to take advantage of whatever they’re celebrating that night. A Red Sox win, the B’s won, your fantasy team had a good night. Seriously, is the number of beers consumed in Massachusetts directly related to the success of the sports teams from there?

7. West Bridgewater

Population: 6,907
Divorce rate: 11.5%
Bars per capita: 20th in MA
Liquor stores per capita: 13th in the state

About two beers south of Boston is the small, middle class community of West Bridgewater. Where you have 1 in 10 people divorced, and many liquor stores in the area at which to purchase your numbing elixor.

Quit moping and hitting the hooch from the couch, West Bridgewaterans. Yeah, she left you. Deal with it. The future Mrs. You is probably out there, right now, waiting for a drunken night out to remember why she’s divorced, too.

8. Andover

Population: 33,201
Divorce rate: 11%
Bars per capita: 18th in the state
Liquor stores per capita: 10th

We got you pegged, Andover. Sure, you live in big fancy homes, and you have good salaries. You’re the type that keeps it together’. You’re functional drinkers. A bottle of wine every other night, maybe some top shelf Glenlivet on the other nights.

At least you’re letting your hair down with the rest of us. It would be so easy for you to just sip your champagne from home and talk about your stock portfolios all evening. Just don’t drink and trade. Always a bad idea.

9. Hudson

Population: 19,029
Divorce rate: 11.5%
Bars per capita: 25th in the state
Liquor stores per capita: 14th in Massachusetts

Hudson is a smallish, middle class city just inside the 495 beltway. You can expect to see many of the residents here, getting plastered quite regularly when you consider how many bars and liquor stores there, per capita here.

We really enjoyed reading about a Hudson resident who was pulled over for drunk driving, climbed into a tree, and claimed that he was an owl. This guy deserves a few free shots if you see him at the bah.

10. Newburyport

Source: Public domain

Population: 17,460
Divorce rate: 11.5%
Liquor stores per capita: 14th in Massachusetts
Bars per capita: 22nd in the state

We’re not saying that Newburyport folks are snobs, but they probably have different problems than most of us. Their main concerns on a night out are

1. Which restaurant should we go to so we can be seen’.

2. Which bar can we duck into and not be seen’ because we’re hammered.

3. Is our driver on his way? I need to pee.

Good for you, residents of Newburyport. You’re having a good time. We envy you.

This was our favorite drunk tweet coming from the area:

“drunk people walking the streets of Newburyport at 11pm in high heels and mini skirts like what are you doing its NEEEWWBURYPORT”

There You Have It

If you’re measuring the locations in Massachusetts where there are a high number of divorced people, bars and liquor stores, and where people are talking about drinking the most often, this is an accurate list.

And while you might think the larger cities and college towns are more drunk’ than these places, when you measure the percentage of people who have access to alcohol, and who are separated, it makes sense. Cause, the data never lies, does it?

Amherst Center
North Amherst
Weston
Cochituate
Franklin