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Binge drinking, according to social scientists, is five or more drinks for a man at any one time within a two-week period; four or more drinks for a woman. Dr. Henry Wechsler of Harvard University says binge drinking doesn't necessarily mean getting falling-down drunk. Instead, having four or five drinks in a row indicates problems associated with drinking.
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A Harvard University study (reported by U.S. News & World Report) shows that 44 percent of all undergraduate students in the U.S. binge drink. It also found that 23 percent of the men and 17 percent of the women were frequent binge drinkers. Last year, about 50 college students died from alcohol poisoning.
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One study found that students who make A's have an average of three drinks a week, while students who make D's and F's average 11 drinks a week.
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Dr. Wechsler found that students who aren't binge drinkers resent the problems caused by binge drinkers. These problems include verbal abuse, physical assault, sexual assault, vandalism, and "being a pain all the way around."
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Like cocaine and crack, alcohol is a drug that can cause both short-term and long-term health problems.
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Alcohol in large amounts is poisonous. It impairs judgment, slows down the body, depresses brain functioning, impedes breathing, and lowers body temperature. When bingers get drunk, they sometimes become nauseated and sleepy. Some become unconscious. Others might vomit because the stomach valve is trying to keep the poisonous amounts of alcohol from moving to other body parts. This can lead to aspiration, with bingers suffocating on their own vomit. Still other binge drinkers die from a stroke. Alcohol greatly decreases the blood flow to the brain. Because it can't get enough blood, that part of the brain dies and may cause death.
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Drinking one glass of alcohol after another until you pass out is like playing a game of Russian roulette.
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Leslie Balz was a 21-year-old senior and honor student at the University of Virginia. Last fall, before the final home football game, she drank heavily at a party and passed out on the upstairs couch. Her friends left her on the couch to "sleep it off" and they went to the game. When they returned, they found her unconscious at the foot of the stairs. She apparently had tumbled down a flight of stairs, hit her head, and suffered massive brain injury. She died a few days later.
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After the alcohol-poisoning death of a student a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ralph Hingson of Boston University School of Public Health said, "There's this sense that this is hopeless, that kids are always going to drink. Well, it's not hopeless. If people take this terrible tragedy and convert it into organized action-as was done by Mothers Against Drunk Driving or by the antismoking people-there is an opportunity."
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