Binge drinking, particularly on college campuses, is a real problem. First, let us define “binge drinking”: it is defined as having 5 or more drinks in a row, in other words, drinking a large quantity of alcohol quickly for the purpose of getting drunk. A social drinker will have a few drinks throughout the evening, but the goal isn’t to get “dead drunk”. Yes, I am aware that drinking and college go together like peanut butter and bread. I am not talking about social drinking, though, I am talking about binge drinking.
Binge drinking has terrible consequences. Did you know….
1700 college students die every year as a result of binge drinking.
599,000 are injured as a result of binge drinking.
More than 696,000 college students are assaulted every year due to college binge drinking. Alcohol can produce aggression.
Alcohol and binge drinking contribute to more than 97,000 cases of sexual assault and/or date rape. 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 had unprotected sex and more than 100,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex .
2.1 million students at college age (18-24) drive drunk every year.
The list goes on, from academic problems to addiction. So what is the solution? Many colleges are requiring first year students to take alcohol courses their first week at college, and that is helpful. Unfortunately though, most college students learn about binge drinking and alcohol poisoning first hand, by either seeing a friend experience it (as our blogger Colleen wrote about) or doing it personally. The death of an LSU student in 1997 brought the dangers of binging into stark relief, and things are worse, not better, than they were 13 years ago. Dying from acute alcohol poisoning is not as rare as it should be. Often, students watch their friends drink until they are vomiting or passed out and think it is funny, but those are both signs that the body has taken in too much alcohol and death can be a result.
A friend of mine lost his son to alcohol poisoning. His son was at a party his senior year where binge drinking was going on. The young man passed out, and the other partiers just left him on the floor and did not worry about him. He died some hours later, a promising young man dead because no one tried to get him help. It happens more often than you think. I will discuss the symptoms of alcohol poisoning in my next blog, Binge Drinking: Alcohol Poisoning.
