you're reading...
Student Life

Binge drinking prevalent on college campuses

Posted by ⋅ ⋅ Leave a Comment

Binge drinking is a problem happening at college campuses across the country. Some college students can’t tell how much is too much.

“I’ve fallen, and sprained my ankle after drinking way too much. I felt like an idiot that night, but I still drink. It’s apart of college life. It’s my time to be free,” said University of South Florida student Crystal Evans.

The Center for Disease Control defines binge drinking as the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by males and four or more drinks in a row by females.

According to a study done by Harvard University, 44 percent of students surveyed from over 140 colleges were binge drinkers. Of those binge drinkers 47 percent experienced a drinking-related injury, unplanned sexual encounter or driving incident since the beginning of the school year.

USF Nursing student Shelby Hardee said binge drinkers are damaging their liver and brains. Heavy alcohol consumption can confuse or kill brain cells in both the nervous system and memory. Hardee explained studies have been done suggesting binge drinkers could be increasing memory loss later in adulthood.

After losing a friend to drunk driving in high school USF student Heather Ravioli has vowed to stay alcohol free. However, she is concerned about her other friends, and their drinking habits.

“I’ve had friends black out and forget what happens when they drink too much. They laugh and act like it’s normal but it scares me,” said Ravioli.

Tampa freelance personal trainer Sebastian Flores believes drinking is okay in moderation.

“With the holidays coming up it’s especially important for everyone to know their limits and know what moderation means, you know. When you drink too much you start to make poor choices in all facets of your life. I like to decide before going out what I‘m going to drink and how much. Make a plan and stick to it,” said Flores.

Discussion

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Digital Bullpen on FB

Blog Stats

  • 50,816 hits

Our Reporters

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 71 other followers

Powered by WordPress.com