SummaryThis study provides a basic demographic profile of an emergency room alcohol patient population, and examines the relationships of age, ethnicity and sex to type of complaint at admission, likelihood of referral for further aid, type of psychiatric diagnosis given, and ultimate disposition of the case. One thousand, one hundred and eleven consecutive alcohol related admissions were included from the emergency room of a large, inner‐city county hospital of a city in which a substantial proportion of the population is Spanish and Negro. Alcohol admissions were predominantly Caucasian and male, with a modal age of 35 to 49 years. The most common medical diagnoses were, respectively, acute intoxication and chronic alcoholism, followed by organic brain syndromes and psychoses attributed to alcohol use, seizure disorders and alcohol‐related somatic complaints, and suicide attempts and bizarre behaviour under the influence of alcohol. 16.8% of these patients received psychiatric evaluation and only 21.8% were referred for further help with their alcohol related problems. Further breakdowns and relationships of these variables are discussed, and possible reasons for the observations are sugges