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September 13, 2004
Drinking poisons students
Heather Cutler
Mesa Legend
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College life holds many expectations of students, such as doing well in school, going to class, getting a job, and participating in extra curricular activities. But when “drinking almost every night” makes that list, the other expectations are sure to go straight down the drain. Taking shots of hard liquor and chugging beer is more and more becoming an everyday part of college. It has almost turned into a rite of passage for the average college student. These students, however, are not drinking a few drinks and calling it a night. They’re falling victim to alcohol poisoning and becoming classified as binge drinkers.
Alcohol abuse is confused with alcoholism in the sense that they both entail alcohol dependence. Alcohol abuse is different because it is projected as a pattern of alcohol consumption that can and will result in failure to fulfill major responsibilities at work, home and school. Alcohol abuse can also result in a person driving a car or operating heavy machinery while intoxicated. Alcohol abusers continue drinking, disregarding their past infractions.
Heavy drinking effects each person differently, and reportedly, gender plays a part. For a man to be considered a binge drinker, he must consume five alcoholic beverages within two hours. For a woman, it is four drinks over the course of two hours. This approximation may vary due to the persons’ weight and height. A “drink” is classified as a twelve-ounce beer, a standard shot of hard alcohol, such as tequila or vodka, or a six-ounce glass of wine.
College students across America are consuming even higher levels of alcohol more than once per week. Robert Zucker, Ph.D., head of the U-M Health System’s Addiction Research Center, said, “Among full-time college students, about 45 percent binge on alcohol occasionally or often, compared with 25 percent of the general public.”
These statistics are proving to be true according to the alcohol-related incidents reported across the nation. Including vehicle crashes, approximately 1,400 college students ranging between the ages of 18 and 24, die each year because of incidents involving alcohol. This is also not including the 500,000 who become injured, 600,000 who are assaulted, or the 70,000 who claimed to have been sexually assaulted while in a situation involving alcohol, which lead to the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases.
Thirty-one percent of college students have such a serious alcohol abuse problem that it barely falls short of addiction and dependence. According to Anthony Alexander, a student, “There are a lot of students who are addicted to alcohol. College students need to at least cut down on their drinking if they don’t want it to catch up with them physically in the future.”
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