Just in time for spring break the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University has released this report on binge drinking among college students: Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities
The report notes nearly half of full time college students binge drink while one fifth meet the criteria for substance abuse or dependence.
Forty-nine percent (3.8 million) of full time college students binge drink and/or abuse prescription and illegal drugs, according to Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities, a new report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
The study also finds that 1.8 million full-time college students (22.9 percent) meet the medical criteria for substance abuse and dependence, two and one half times the 8.5 percent of the general population who meet these same criteria.
The study defines binge drinking as “…five or more drinks on any one drinking occasion in the past two weeks.”
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I never understood the binge drinkers in college. What is the appeal of getting so smashed, week after week? Is it the hope that you’ll end up naked and shamed on the internet, having sex on camera with someone you’ve never met?
We were watching The Real World this week (I’m not sure why they call it “real”), and each evening when these people sit around, they are so drunk they can barely speak. I wonder if that’s what many college students view as a true and accurate picture of what the world is like.
Jason,
Your comment reminds me of an old Bill Cosby routine where he questioned the wisdom of working hard all week just to make it to a weekend you couldn’t remember and from which recovery took too long.
it has been 15 years since i was in college and back then i went to the rank #1 party school my freshman year — so as i’m very familar with binge drinking past, what’s the difference a decade and half later…kids for some reason, get stupid when they leave home….the ones that are “pro’s” usually don’t make it to their sophomore year.
actually, i think it’s harder now to drink so much because of all the ‘close’ campus policies on acohol. it’s not like animal house either, i think more drinking is being done at the jr high/high school level then it ever has…they start younger and therefore are pro’s before they turn 18.