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Reflection on regular alcohol consumption in college
How binge drinking affects life essay
Binge drinking habits among college students in the US
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Recommended: Reflection on regular alcohol consumption in college
Frank's* binge drinking began on a warm fall evening in September 2002. The 18-year-old freshman had just finished moving into Northeastern's Smith Hall, a dormitory on Hemenway Street for first year students, when one of his roommates decided that it was time to start drinking.
"Out of nowhere he pulled out a huge bottle of Southern Comfort and invited a bunch of people over," said Frank. "I was excited, because my idea of coming to college was to party and have fun and meet a lot of new people."
Frank says that that night, he and his roommate and a couple other freshmen students from Smith Hall drank the entire bottle of Southern Comfort as well as a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka.
"It felt great. I was talking to a bunch of new people, socializing, having a great time, then it all caught up to me and the room started spinning. I ended up passing out in my bunk bed and sleeping straight through til the next afternoon."
Frank's story is a common one on college campuses across the country. According to the Harvard School of Public Health's College Alcohol Study, a 2001 survey found that 44.4% of college students admit to binge drinking. The study defines binge drinking as five drinks in a row for males and four in a row for women, with a drink consisting of a 12 ounce beer, a 5 ounce glass of wine, or a 1 and a half ounce shot of hard liquor. One hundred and nineteen four-year colleges in the United States were selected to participate in the study, to represent a random cross-section of male and female students enrolled in 4 year colleges.
The binge drinking rate for white males like Frank was closer to 50% meaning that approximately one out of every two white males at a college in the United States has participated in binge drinking during their undergraduate career.
The study also states that "binge drinking was often accompanied by educational difficulties, psychosocial problems, antisocial behaviors, injuries, overdoses, high-risk sexual behaviors, and other risk taking, such as alcohol impaired driving."
The natural question one might ask is why this is occurring. Dr. Henry Wechsler, the author of the HSPH College Alcohol Study, recently published a book on the topic, "Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses." According to Dr. Wechsler's book, "The availability
To sum up my response to this reading I would have to conclude that Jack Hitt is correct that binge drinking is still very alive and well on college campuses, and still presents a very valid point that it should be stopped. Where I don’t agree with the reading is that people will continue to binge no matter what. People are smart in many ways and if you show them potential outcomes that drinking can lead them to then they are less likely to continue down this downward spiral that could have life lasting effects on the rest of their lives and even
Binge drinking is portrayed as a common activity on college campuses. In reality only 43% of students interviewed from a pool of 14,500 said they had binged in the past two weeks; which is less than a majority. If less than
“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.
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.”
Lily, Henrietta M. and Harmon, Daniel E. Alcohol Abuse and Binge Drinking. New York: the Rosen Publishing Group Inc., 2012. Print.
D.J. (2014, January 16)."Butel" Slab e interesot za otkupuvanje na grobnite mesta. Telegraf.mk. Retrieved March 14, 2014, from http://www.telegraf.mk/aktuelno/91612-butel-slab-e-interesot-za-otkupuvanje-na-grobnite-mesta
Most people point to wars, Presidents or the economy when asked to describe the history of the United States, but what about alcohol. Social history in general has always taken a back seat to political and economic history, mostly because many aspects of social history are not exactly bright spots from the past. Alcohol, for example, is actually a much bigger aspect of our history than one may expect. As a matter of fact, early America was centered around drinking as a kind of social event. William Rorabaugh’s book Alcoholic Republic outlines how prevalent drinking really was during the years after the Revolutionary War. Rorabaugh argues that post-colonial Americans should be considered alcoholics. However, the evidence Rorabaugh uses
...n White, eds. Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1991.
According to conservatives, the state is justified in using its coercive power to uphold and enforce a community's moral convictions, and in that sense, to prevent citizens from delibrating actions that offend their perceived "right and wrong" standards of morality and decency. Conservatives believe that it is in their and the state's duty to steer people, by force if necessary, into the right paths and away from the wrong paths – and they belive that "what is right and wrong is known independently of the values and interests that people actually have" (339). On the same side though on different grounds, some feminists call on the state to regulate or prohibit pornography - but the primary focus of feminists revolves on the harm that pornography causes to women rather than the obsceni...
In the past few months I have learned a lot about myself. When the incident first occurred I was very angry. I know plenty of people that drink that are under age and they don’t get caught. I kept asking myself why me? At first I was hesitant to change, but the last few months have been eye opening. I have definitely used this situation to my advantage. There are so many things that I have learned about myself. I have used these last few months to really evaluate my life and set new goals for myself. I think this experience has greatly affected my life in more ways then one. I have done many things to change my life. I have seen changes in my personal life regarding my family and my friends. Many people talk about life changing experiences and how it affects them. I think that my life has changed for the good because of this incident. I’m glad that I have used this negative incident to better my life and to change the fate of my future.
student may not attend class the day after drinking because he or she may be
Weshler, Henry, and Wuethrich, Bernice. Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on college campuses. Chicago: Rodale Inc., 2002. Print.
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.
...J., & Kanungo, R. N. (1998). Charismatic leadership in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Feigelman, William. (1990). Treating Teenage Drug Abuse in a Day Care Setting. Praeger Publishers: New York. Miller, H. G., C. F. Turner, and L. E. Moses (1990). AIDS: The second decade. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Moran, Gabriel. (1996). A Grammar of Responsibility. Crossroad Publishing: New York. Stevens, C. U., D'Intino, R. S., & Victor, B. (1998). The moral quandary of transformational leadership: Change for whom? Research in Organizational Change and Development, 8, 123-143. Wilson, John. (1995). Discipline and Authority in Classroom and Courtroom. Boyars/Bowerdean: London. Wren, J. T. (1998). James Madison and the ethics of transformational leadership. In J. Ciulla (Ed.) Ethics, the heart of leadership (pp. 145-168). Westport, CT: Praeger.
"Because time and amount of drinking are uncontrollable, the alcoholics is likely to engage in such behaviors as [1] breaking family commitments, both major and minor; [2] spending more money than planned; [3] drinking while intoxicated and getting arrested; [4] making inappropriate remarks to friends, family, and co-workers; [5] arguing, fighting and other anti-social actions. The alcoholic would probably neither do such things, nor approve of them in others unless he was drinking" (Johnson 203).