Binge Drinking

What Is Binge Drinking?
Binge drinking is the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks in a row for males, or according to most experts, four or more drinks for a woman. The size of a “drink” depends on what variety of alcohol you’re drinking. Alcohol in all forms (even beer) is dangerous if you drink enough of it.

If you are like most people, drinking more than four or five drinks within a few hours will produce a BAC of 0.08 percent or more. (In most states, the legal level is 0.10 BAC.) In other words, you’ll be drunk and too impaired to drive a car. There is clear evidence that impaired judgment actually begins at lower BAC levels, about 0.04 percent.

How Common Is Binge Drinking?
The statistics are alarming. According to the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, about 20 percent of Americans aged 12 and older are binge drinkers (that is, they had at least five drinks in a row at least once in the past month). Even more specifically:
 About 30 percent of high school seniors binged in the past two weeks, according to the University of Michigan’s 2001 Monitoring the Future Study.

 About 40 percent of people aged 18 to 25 are binge drinkers, with the highest rates among 21-year-olds (48.2 percent) and full-time college students (43 percent) engaged in binge drinking in the past two weeks, according to a survey from the Harvard School of Public Health. College binge-drinking rates are highest among men, whites, students at four-year colleges, residents of fraternity or sorority houses, and athletes.

 In good news, however, up to 65 percent of college students — the group with the highest rate of binge drinking — don’t binge. In fact, about 20 percent of college students don’t drink at all.

What Are The Consequences Of Binge Drinking?
Some of the most extensive data on the consequences of binge drinking come from studies by Henry Wechsler, Ph.D., a Harvard researcher Wechsler found that alcohol’s effects are most extreme for frequent binge drinkers (his term for those who have binged at least three times in the past two weeks). Associated risks of binge drinking:
• Drunk driving
• Sexual assault
• Blackouts (memory loss)
• Alcohol poisoning
• Unplanned or unprotected sex
• Accidents and injuries
• Property damage
• Academic problems

How Can You Avoid Binge Drinking?
If you go to a bar or a party where you know that alcohol will be served, try these tips to avoid excessive drinking:
• Volunteer to be the designated driver, and don’t drink any alcohol. Stick to soda, water, or other nonalcoholic beverages.
• If you want to drink alcohol, decide in advance how many drinks you will have, and stick to your limit. To avoid a significant BAC, consume no more than one drink if you are female or two if you are male.
• Pair up with a friend who also wants to avoid drinking too much. Remind each other to stop or switch to soda when you hit your limit. Remember, just one more” may impair your judgment and make it harder to stop.
• Sip slowly — don’t exceed one drink an hour if you are having more than one drink. Your body continues to absorb alcohol for up to 90 minutes after your last sip, so you may not realize right away how it’s affecting you.
• Never drink on an empty stomach.
• Try not to participate in drinking games or rituals such as drinking through a beer bong or funnel. The intended result is always excessive drinking—and alcohol easily can reach dangerous levels.
• Finally, remember that most of the pressure you may feel to drink alcohol is internal. If you don’t want to drink, people who care about you will accept that decision. You don’t need to drink to have fun.