It was September and Samantha, a first-year university student, had been at school for only two weeks when she was invited to a party in her dormitory. At first, she had “just a few beers.” As the party progressed, she was offered a shot of vodka. One small group of women and men were making a game out of drinking the shots. Samantha joined in and managed, by witness accounts, to put away nearly 25 shots. By the time the party ended, Samantha needed help getting back to her dorm room, where she passed out. Her friends assumed she would “sleep it off.” However, the next morning, they found her dead from alcohol poisoning.
That death and many more that take place on college campuses prompted Dwayne Proctor, PhD, of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a Princeton-based organization dedicated to improving health and health-care, to ask, “How many more students must die before we decide to stop treating binge drinking as a collegiate rite of passage, and confront it as the serious public-health threat that it is?”
♦If binge drinking were a disease that caused 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, 70,000 sexual assaults, and 110,000 arrests each year, you can be certain that the response from the public and the government would be massive and comprehensive.
For college administrators, students, parents, alumni, politicians, and society in general, the time has come to choose : do we want to cultivate institutions of higher learning or of lower expectations and harder drinking?
Opportunities abound to make a difference. What’s missing is a concerted will to act. The death toll will be a testament to our timidity.
Binge drinking is a preventable cause of death. Doing so, however, means comprehending the facts, understanding the issue, knowing the risks, acting responsibly, and exercising common sense. Here is some information to inspire courage and conviction, as well as help improve the lives of young people.
Know what defines binge drinking. The generally accepted definition of binge drinking is the heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time, specifically five or more drinks, one after the other, by men, and four or more such drinks by women. Doing this once in a two-week period constitutes binge drinking. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in a two-week period.
Although binge drinking is a dangerous and even deadly practice, people engage in it for a variety of reasons : they want to be part of a group, they want to feel older and more accepted, they respond to peer pressure to drink, or they think that alcohol will make them feel better.
♦In her book The Dangers of Binge Drinking, Magalena Alagna cites the following as common signs of binge drinking :
- Frequent hangovers from heavy drinking at parties.
- Drinking until you get sick or pass out.
- Doing or saying things you wouldn’t normally do or say.
- Feeling you must drink to have fun.
- Avoiding spending time with friends who don’t drink.
- A night of drinking ends in being hospitalized.
- Noticing a lot of your stories begin with “We were so drunk that night,” or, “I was so wasted.”
- Alcohol-related behavior causes you to be arrested.
- You frequently black out as a result of drinking.
- You experience short-term memory loss as a result of drinking.
Understand the dangers of alcohol. “Alcohol has been called the most active drug affecting the human body, impairing the intellect, physical abilities, and metabolism,” says Sharon Scott, a professional counselor. She also notes that “alcohol use by youth has devastating consequences” and cites the following :
- Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are the only group in America with a declining life expectancy.
- Driving under the influence is the leading cause of death for teens; suicide is the second major cause of teenage deaths, and today such suicides are ten times more likely to be alcohol or drug related than they were 20 years ago.
- Approximately 10,000 young people ages 16 to 24 are killed each year in other types of alcohol-related accidents, including drownings, violent injuries, homicides, and inhalation of vomit.
Realize how alcohol impacts the body. Heavy drinking is a major health risk. It reduces the ability of the body to function normally. Ken Christiansen, a 19-year-old University of Minnesota-Duluth student who had just made the rugby team, attended a team initiation party where students drank heavily. Walking home after the party, Christiansen fell down a ravine. His body was found the next day. At the time of death, his blood-alcohol level was twice that of the legal limit to drive in Minnesota. Although the medical coroner’s report determined that hypothermia was the cause of death, three university students were later charged with providing alcohol to a minor. The three had hosted the party and supplied kegs of beer for the event.
Consider also the fact that heavy alcohol consumption can permanently damage vital body organs.
Binge drinking can result in alcohol poisoning. When a person drinks too much too rapidly, it affects the body’s involuntary reflexes, including breathing and the gag reflex. Many binge drinkers have choked to death because their gag reflex was unable to function. Other signs of alcohol poisoning include :
- Extreme confusion
- Inability to be awakened
- Vomiting
- Seizures
- Slow or irregular breathing
- Low body temperature
- Bluish or pale skin
Know these signs of alcohol poisoning, because if you observe any of them in a friend, you must immediately call for emergency medical assistance.
Binge drinking impairs judgment. A recent U.S. survey revealed that alcohol was a main factor in four of ten sexual assaults at schools surveyed. And, in one year, all sexual assaults at the University of Colorado were alcohol related. Furthermore, alcohol is involved in 90 percent of campus rapes, according to Columbia University’s Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse. Another study on campus rape, published in the Journal of American College Health, revealed 55 percent of rape victims and 73 percent of assailants had used alcohol or other drugs prior to the assault.
Students who frequently binge drink were 22 times more likely than nonbinge drinkers to :
- Be hurt or impaired
- Drive a car after drinking
- Get in trouble with campus or local police
- Engage in unplanned and unprotected sexual activity
- Damage property
- Fall behind in schoolwork
- Miss classes
Blackouts are not uncommon. One of the most frightening and dangerous consequences of binge drinking is a blackout, something experienced by thousands of students. A blackout is the warning signal that they are doing damage to their brains. During an alcohol-induced blackout, the drinker remains conscious but retains no memory of events. Often, it is a friend who tells the drinker how he behaved or what he said during the blackout.
Aaron M. White, PhD, a biological psychologist at Duke University Medical Centre, surveyed students at one college to learn what kinds of activities they had been involved in during their blackouts. he discovered that students engaged in a variety of activities, including spending large amounts of money, engaging in sexual activity, getting in arguments, vandalizing property, and driving a vehicle – all without any memory of those events.
♦Here is one true blackout experience related by “Chuck,” a university student, on the occasion of his 21st birthday. In his dorm room, he began with four drinks before proceeding to a nearby bar.
“At the bar I had fifteen or sixteen drinks in a three-hour period. The last thing I remember, I finished my drink and asked for another. I apparently continued to dance. Apparently, my friends tried to drive me home. Apparently, I got sick and was face-down in snow throwing up.
“My best friend half-carried, half-walked me home. I went to visit a friend in my dorm; I climbed into bed with him. I don’t remember any of this. There are pictures of me hovering over the toilet. I woke up the next morning with a garbage pail full of vomit next to my bed. I don’t remember any of this. It’s funny – my friends laugh about it. But really, I could have been very close to being dead there. It’s not a funny situation.”
♦The final consideration to make about binge drinking is this : it can bring a lifetime of pain. While in college, Casey McCary Bloom drank heavily for several hours and then drove while intoxicated. He caused an accident that resulted in the death of a teenage girl. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison and is incarcerated in Florida.
“In one blink of an eye, my college career violently was taken away from me,” he writes. “Fear, sadness, and a painful sense of confusion is cast over me as I lie here in a cold, lonely place called prison. I am facing 21 years in prison for one mistake I made and regret – to drink and drive. I, like many of you, was a college student with my whole life ahead of me. The choice I made to get behind the wheel of a car drunk took every bit of my life, along with a piece of my heart, away from me.”
Teetotaling may not be such a bad idea after all, for people who never drink never have alcohol-related consequences to regret.
