Causes and Effects of Binge Drinking In many of the colleges and universities today, there are a tremendous amount of students who Drink. The students who consume at least five drinks in a row at one point during a two week period are considered Binge Drinkers. Binge Drinking by college students is the cause to some of the students’ deaths, causes some students grades to fall, and is very dangerous and unhealthy. The overwhelming amount of college students deaths caused by binge drinking has increased greatly by about 44 percent. To go along with the amount of deaths is the amount of life long injuries one may obtain from binge drinking. As David L. Marcus states, in recent newspapers, headlines are troubling. “ A 20-year-old student at Georgetown University dies in a fight after drinking. A fraternity member at the University of Michigan shoots a 19-year-old pledge with a pellet gun at a keg party. A party at Washington State University turns into a 500-student brawl.” (David L. Marcus) These incidents that occurred were only at three universities out of hundreds. Another incident that occurred at a party at Duke was of a 20-year-old student who got drunk and died after inhaling his own vomit. All these deaths and injuries can all have been avoided if only the students had not been involved in the stupid acts of binging. In a magazine article written by Jack Hitt, he tells a story of his nephew who knew two college students that died after binging. One died after falling off a cliff and the other was from blood poisoning. Along with these two deaths came 5 other students who had been paralyzed and seriously injured in car accidents after their acts of binging. As for students not believing anything they re... ... middle of paper ... ...New York; May 1999. Binge Drinking Blowout: Educating Teens About Alcohol Use. Volume: 45 Issue: 5 Start Page: 52 Hitt, Jack; New York Times Magazine; New York; Oct. 24, 1999 The Battle of the binge. Start page: 6, 31:3 Marcus, David L.; U.S. News & World Report; Washington; 3/27/00 Drinking to get drunk Campuses still can’t purge bingeing behavior. Special volume/issue: Vol. 128 No. 12 Start page: 53 Weber, Wim; The Lancet; London; Feb. 24, 2001 Young people’s alcohol consumption reaches alarming levels in Europe. Volume: 357 Issue: 9256 Start page: 617 Wechsler, Henry; The Chronicle of Higher Education; Washington; Oct. 20, 2000. Binge Drinking: Should we attack the name or the problem? Volume: 47 Issue: 8 Start page: B12-B13
We meet people every day that can have a positive or negative influence on our lives and it is in these people that our lives are defined. One bad choice can send you in a downward spiral that you may not be able to recover from no matter how much help is around you. When it comes to binge drinking colleges are plagued with this growing issue because alcohol is legal and is not regulated the way that some fee that it should be.
Getting Serious About Eradicating Binge Drinking is an informative article by Henry Wechsler. Wechsler has worked with the College Alcohol study since its creation in 1992, and he also lectures at the School of Public Health at Harvard. In his article, Weschler discusses the prominent trend of binge drinking on college campuses and how to solve the widespread problem. Binge drinking is a term used to describe the act drinking alcoholic beverages with the intention of becoming intoxicated over a short period of time.
“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college environment, will damage themselves mentally, physically, and socially later in life, because alcohol adversely affects the brain, the liver, and the drinkers behavior.
My second weekend here at James Madison University, I was at a party with my friends off campus. Hundreds of kids flocked to the sidewalks near the apartment complexes. All of the upper classmen had given us one vital safety provision, which was to not step onto the street with a cup or beer in hand. I quickly noticed why they had told us this because the streets were swarming with police officers and two feet away on the sidewalks were hundreds of kids drinking right in front of them. During the party, I decided to take a stroll outside for some fresh air and there I saw something that I couldn’t believe. A freshman, perfectly fine, and by this I mean he was not drunk at all, began walking home on the street without a cup or beverage in hand. As soon as his toes touched the pavement two police officers on bikes jumped on him and began interrogating this poor young man. They began questioning him as they looked for any suspicious movements or actions made by the student. After about ten minutes of secret service-like interrogation, they whipped out a breathalyzer test. Clearly, the student failed because he was quickly taken away in hand cuffs in front of hundreds of James Madison students.
College student drunkenness is far from new and neither are college and university efforts to control it. What is new, however, is the potential to make real progress on this age-old problem based on scientific research results. New research-based information about the consequences of high-risk college drinking and how to reduce it can empower colleges and universities, communities, and other interested organizations to take effective action. Hazardous drinking among college students is a widespread problem that occurs on campuses of all sizes and geographic locations. A recent survey of college students conducted by the Harvard University School of Public Health reported that 44 percent of respondents had drunk more than five drinks (four for women) consecutively in the previous two weeks. About 23 percent had had three or more such episodes during that time. The causes of this problem are the fact that students are living by themselves no longer with parents or guardians; they earn their own money; students need to be a part of a group, be accepted; and they have the wrong idea that to feel drunk is “cool.”
Not only in the US, Many countries around the world have the same problem in college campuses. Like many European countries, college drinking has been developed into kind of traditional culture in the US and she has been facing the change of the culture of drinking at colleges. However, other than the damage and injuries that happen during semester break each year, the only consequences of college drinking that usually come to the public's attention are occasional student deaths from alcohol overuse, such as alcohol poisoning or other alcohol-related tragedies. (Ramaley) In fact, the consequences of college drinking are much more than occasional and normal. According to the studies, 1,825 college students who aged from 18 to24 died from alcohol-related inadvertent injuries, including car crashes, while 599,000 students are unintentionally hurt over the influence of alcohol (Hingson et al., 2009). College drinking also results in serious injuries, assaults, sexual abuse and other health and academic problems. The impacts of excessive college drinking are more widespread and destructive than most people realize. Therefore, this essay will first consider the pr...
We all know what it is like to wake up in the morning, with our head aching, and our body feeling like it was just hit by a train. College students world wide know this feeling. These are the results of binge drinking. The question of why college students continue to submit themselves to alcohol is unknown. While many reasons are given, the cause generally falls into one of three categories, peer pressure, insecurity, or to help solve there problems. But the one thing students don’t realize are the consequences and effects that binge drinking can have, health and social problems are just a few.
In recent studies by U.S News and World Report, college campuses are turning off the tap. In other words banning alcohol entirely. One of the reasons for the banning of alcohol on campus is due to the outstanding reports of alcohol related incidents that have taken the lives of students. September of 97’, Scott Krueger, and eighteen-year-old freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died from alcohol poisoning while at a Phi Gamma Delta initiation event.(Reisberg, 1) The lack of action taken by MIT caused the students’ parents to sue them for their irresponsibility.(Reisberg, 2) Another accident that occurred due to alcohol was to a twenty-year-old Louisiana State University student named Benjamin Wynne. Wynne had apparen...
According to a national survey conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “almost 60 percent of college students ages 18–22 drank alcohol in the past month, 1 and almost 2 out of 3 of them engaged in binge drinking during that same timeframe” (NIH). Binge drinking culture refers to the recent rise and normalization of college age students drinking excessively. The CDC describes binge drinking as “a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol level to 0.08grams within two hours” (CDC). For many young adults, college is one of the first times they will experience complete freedom. This freedom often leads to partying, which goes hand in hand with the consumption of alcohol. However, since the age at which
“When I was 13, my dad started drinking more and more. Every day he would come home from work and have beer, lots of it. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then he started getting more angry and violent. He would shout at my mom and me. It was like my father had gone and been replaced with another guy” says an anonymous kid who lives with an alcoholic parent in “How my dad’s drinking problem almost destroyed my family”. The kid depicts that he is so confused, angry and upset especially when his father got fired for going to work drunk. This is one of many children’s voices who suffers having an alcoholic in their family. Most of them are depressed because alcohol has destroyed their family. This is an addiction that does
Weshler, Henry, and Wuethrich, Bernice. Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on college campuses. Chicago: Rodale Inc., 2002. Print.
Binge Drinking is an intriguing phenomenon that many college students take part in all across the country. The issue of binge drinking has been a problem on college campuses for decades. Binge drinking has many horrible effects, but the problem starts with the causes for it. If the causes could be controlled then the issue would not get out of hand. Many college students give different causes for their drinking problems, and experts on the subject have their explanations as well. The problem is, while growing through adolescence anything can become an excuse for drinking, such as ¡§its Thursday the day before Friday, we need to drink¡¨ or, ¡§it¡¦s the last Wednesday of the semester, lets get some beer.¡¨
Binge or excessive drinking is the most serious problem affecting social life, health, and education on college campuses today. Binge or excessive drinking by college students has become a social phenomena in which college students do not acknowledge the health risks that are involved with their excessive drinking habits. Furthermore college students do not know enough about alcohol in general and what exactly it does to the body or they do not pay attention to the information given to them. There needs to be a complete saturation on the campus and surrounding areas, including businesses and the media, expressing how excessive drinking is not attractive and not socially accepted.
Most people do not realize that alcohol is a drug that claims the lives of youth in college campuses across the world. In my case, it took the encounter with the ORL staff at UCLA for me to come to understanding that I am putting myself and those around me in danger through my risky drinking habits. With hours of self-reflection and the help of a cosmopolitan article called The Deadly Drinking Mistakes Smart Girls Make, I have found that there are several risks associated with alcohol that can put me at a quarrel with death. Even so, drinking does not always need to be deadly, and by keeping in mind the well-being of my fellow bruins and the skills mentioned in the article, I can find a balance between drinking for fun and drinking till death.
Alcoholism is a disease that affects many people in the United States today. It not only affects the alcoholic, but also their family, friends, co-workers, and eventually total strangers. The symptoms are many, as are the causes and the effects.