Abstract Background Skog’s collectivity theory of alcohol consumption predicted that changes in alcohol consumption would synchronize across all types of drinkers in a population. The aim of this paper is examine this theory in the Australian context. We examined whether there was a collective change in alcohol use in Australia from 2001 to 2013, estimated alcohol consumption in non-high risk and high risk drinkers, and examined the trends in alcohol treatment episodes. Methods Data from the 2001–2013 National Drug Strategy Household Surveys ( N = 127,916) was used to estimate the prevalence and alcohol consumption of abstainers, high risk drinkers and frequent heavy episodic drinkers. Closed treatment episodes recorded in the Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Services National Minimum Dataset ( N = 608,367) from 2001 to 2013 were used to examine the trends of closed alcohol treatment episodes. Results The prevalence of non-drinkers (abstainers) decreased to the lowest level in 2004 (15.3 %) and rebounded steadily thereafter (20.4 % in 2013; p