Alcohol and Alcoholism - Binge Drinking and Gender Essay

Drinking on college campuses has become a huge problem. For example, in the 10th century only old people used to drink, but now students drink more than their parents. Students see their parents drinking, so they may think that drinking has no effect on health that anyone can drink so why can’t the students drink? Therefore, college students have been drinking alcohol since the 14th century. Barrett Seaman’s article “How Bingeing Became the New College Sport,” appearing in TIME magazine on August 29, 2005, explains how binge drinking is affecting college students. It also suggests that lowering the drinking age might help solve the problem of binge drinking. This article has much information on how and where students get drunk.

“According to the CDC, about 90% of all teen alcohol consumption occurs in the form of Binge Drinking, which experts say peaks at the age of nineteen.” (qtd by Listfield). Binge Drinking is the consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol in a short period of time. The author, Emily Listfield, defines that the standard alcohol consumption over a two hour period is considered to be four beers for women and five beers for men. This has become a great distraction for college students nationwide and a major dilemma on college campuses. Nearly two hundred thousand students visit emergency rooms each year due to the abuse of alcohol, and more than one thousand seven hundred students die. In the article “ The Underage Drinking Epidemic”, Listfield identifies the problems that underage drinking can cause, the dangers that could happen, and four solutions on what parents can do to keep their kids from binge drinking.

In Henry Wechsler’s, “Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking”, he discusses the issue of binge drinking. Binge drinking is an extensive problem on college campuses. The majority of colleges merely focus on the student, rather than what encourages students to drink. Fraternities, sororities, and athletics are huge sources of the students on campus who drink. There are many approaches colleges can take to decrease the problem, and many colleges are already getting a head start. It is also important to not ignore how often colleges indirectly encourage students to drink (20).

“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

Alcohol abuse is a serious health problem when it comes to college students. "The average amount of binge drinkers on college campuses is 50% of men and 39% of women" (<a href="http://www.oregoncounseling.org/ArticlesPapers/">http://www.oregoncounseling.org/ArticlesPapers/</a>). There are various reasons why students drink and serious short and long term effects on the body and mind. Alcoholism is a serious problem for college students and there are many actions being taken to try to lessen the problem among colleges throughout the country.

Those that participate in binge drinking do it for many different reasons, a bad test grade, roommate arguments, celebration for a job well done, peer pressure, or simply because it is the weekend. No one is saying that it is wrong to go out and have a few drinks but when students go out and just drink to get drunk, actions must be taken to stop such activity. According to the graph on the next page done by the Harvard Public School of Health it is clear that a majority of students drink to simply get wasted. [Colorado State University 1] The number of binge drinkers may not have gone up in 1999 compared to 1997, for every five students two are binge drinkers, or 44%. [Wechsler #2, 1] However, the intensity of drinking has increased, when students are going out they are having more to drink. [Wechsler #2, 2]

In Getting Wasted, Vander Ven (2011) argued that previous research into the collegiate drinking culture had largely avoided exploration into the social rewards and pleasures that a student who drinks receives or at least perceives, and

Binge drinking will affect student’s behavior while in college. Once students began to drink, they began to change and act different. Drinking causes people to act out of character. Therefore, when students binge drink and if they have a low tolerance for

The documented data states that college students who are athletes, males, whites and some first year students drink the most. It can be presumed that Folsom Lake College and other community colleges

With college students, 18-24 years old, problematic drinking has developed into a public health issue across the country. High school student’s anticipation to attend college is at an all-time high due to the embracement of fraternity parties and the drinking that is encouraged, rather than getting an education or degree. I use the word “encouraged” because the partygoers are sometimes pressured to drink to have fun. Not only can alcohol become addictive but it can also lead to experiment with other drugs. In this paper the bio-psychosocial approach will be used to review what is prompting students to abuse alcohol.

Binge drinking has been synonymous with typical young adult college culture for decades. Fillmore and Jude (2011) reported that binge drinking is often defined as someone drinking four to five drinks during one episode of drinking, or consuming enough alcohol for a person to have a blood alcohol concentration of .08% or higher. In this paper, I will define college culture as an exclusive group, with differing needs and attitudes from society, provide statistics and college cultural practices that demonstrate the prevalence of binge drinking amongst college students, explain several problems that can arise as a result of binge drinking, and explore harm reduction and motivational interviewing as viable treatment modalities used to decrease the likeliness of this cultural phenomenon.

College students, drinking heavily and using drugs is a persistent problem despite widespread initiatives that promote and limit drinking during and after college. Drinking in college is perceived to enhance socialization, bonding, and make one less inhibited. College, for some is characterized by a high level of freedom and low level of responsibility, and has been seen as time-out from the “real world”. Because many college students think this way, heavy drinking and narcotic use is permissible. Most students who participate in such behavior, seem to expect their future lifestyle to be burdensome and tedious, planning for the future with careers and children; great memories for the good times associated with drug use and drinking is expected.

First, there are seventy percent of college students, who consumed alcohol beverages in the last thirty days. Also, there are half of the college students, who are binge drinkers on campus. They attend to drink a lot in a short time period. The students imply drinking is part of campus culture and traditions, which resembles of rite of passage and independence.

When the health behavior within a population of students has the result of less than desirable consequences, the promotion of behavioral change that will improve this type of conduct must have consideration. The high use of alcohol that has become rooted in college culture, with particular attention to binge drinking, is a destructive practice of concern. Despite this high-risk indulgence being one of the major sources of physical injury among college students (Karam, Kypros & Salamoun, 2007), it would be remiss not to ponder the toll this takes on students academically as well. Through missed study time, absenteeism and poor effort on assignments, course work will invariably suffer. Perhaps worse of all, from an academic standpoint, binge drinking results in cognitive dysfunction (Kotler, 2005).

Although all types of drinking can have adverse effects, there are different levels of use that result in different effects. Moderate drinking is defined as drinking that generally does not cause problems in the drinker or society, typically one drink per day. This low level of alcohol consumption has been shown in studies to, reduce stress, decrease tension and anxiety, (NIAAA, 2000). Social drinking generally does not cause problems with the individual as long as the amount consumed does not increase over time, but this level of drinking has not been known to have any positive effects. Binge drinking is classified as having five or more drinks in one sitting. This is the level of use that college students engage in on the weekends. Some social effects that have been noted by students are the increased ability to "break the ice" in conversation, allowing people to have more fun, and facilitating sexual opportunities, (Statistics on Alcohol, 2000). However the Core Institute survey showed that of the students who had engaged in binge drinking at least