This paper explores the true effects of alcohol abuse on the lives of college students. Although alcohol abuse is a major social issue in most developed countries, it has become a huge problem for many colleges as well. Many college students are being influenced by their peers to drink excessively without being aware of the effects alcohol has on them. Governments spend a lot of time trying to change drinking behavior through legislation, publicity and education. The journal entry, “College Students Experience High Rates of Alcohol Abuse, Mental Health Issues” heightens our awareness of the ongoing issue with alcohol abuse which we continue to still experience today. In “Alcohol Consumption and Abuse among College Students”, we are demonstrated a survey taken at two colleges that show …show more content…
It has caught the attention of the people, faculty at the schools, parents, media and the government. Many students are underage drinking and are putting their lives at risk when doing so. In college, most students are being out on their own for the very first time and having freedom they never had at home can contribute to their decision making. Many students have never had a drink in their life because they are underage to get alcohol so when they have access to them at fraternity houses, they drink excessively. There are students in college that are occasional drinkers but then there are select groups that will drink more nights out of a week than others. They will drink heavily in order to get drunk which is a risk one is taking with their life and health. Those that drink heavily experience problems caused by alcohol consumption because it impairs their ability to get things done. They are also affecting their health. Consuming too much alcohol can affect our liver by deteriorating it and our brain by impairing the way we
Alcohol has long been a problem for society, and college students are no exception to this problem, especially when it comes to binge drinking. Binge drinking is classified at 5 or more drinks for men or 4 or more drinks for women within 2 hours. According to a study by Ikes, “more than 40% of college students have engaged in heavy episodic drinking (HED)” or binge drinking (find pg number) and “19% engage in frequent binge drinking” (Iconis 243). There are very large implications for college students drinking this much alcohol. First of all, there is a huge health risk when drinking at such an alarming rate and a young age. According to a study done by the Office of the Surgeon General, when exposed to large amounts of alcohol, college students run the risk of developing long term biological change. Sustained binge drinking can affect both the brain’s and body’s biology. Young college students can develop adverse mental symptoms, such as anxiety and depression. Sustained binge drinking can also “affect memory, alters sensitivity to motor impairment, and damages frontalanterior cortical regions” (25). There is also evidence that sustained binge drinking has detrimental effects on the liver, endocrine system and bones (Office of the Surgeon General 26). Not only is this a health issue, it has become a social issue as well. Students who regularly engage in binge drinking have increases in risky behavior as a result of their impaired judgement, and this risky behavior has many
In Henry Wechsler’s, “Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking”, he discusses the issue of binge drinking. Binge drinking is an extensive problem on college campuses. The majority of colleges merely focus on the student, rather than what encourages students to drink. Fraternities, sororities, and athletics are huge sources of the students on campus who drink. There are many approaches colleges can take to decrease the problem, and many colleges are already getting a head start. It is also important to not ignore how often colleges indirectly encourage students to drink (20).
The consumption of alcohol as a habitual behavior has long been associated with the American collegiate experience, despite the many known negative consequences a student who partakes in drinking can encounter. Because of the danger drunken students pose to a college’s reputation and the safety of its surrounding areas, much research has been done concerning the collegiate party and drinking scenes. This research mostly studied the demographics of the student body, so strategies developed to curtail the illegal or overconsumption of alcohol could be targeted towards the specific groups that demonstrated the highest likelihood of participating in these acts. When the strategies were implemented, however, there was little decline in the number of college students who chose to party and drink (Vander Ven 2011). This failure did not point toward a flaw in the research data, but instead a lack of research into the benefits a collegiate drinker receives that are rewarding to the point he or she cannot resist. This is the topic of Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard by Thomas Vander Ven.
Throughout the years, drinking alcohol in excessive amounts has become somewhat synonymous with the college experience. It has become an expected occurrence for college-aged students to drink and party regularly, and overtime has transformed into an accepted social norm of college life. Extreme drinking has been a consistent social problem that has substantially grown on college campuses all around the United States for the past few decades. In fact, binge drinking is consistently voted as the most serious problem on campuses by collegiate presidents (College Binge Drinking Facts). Thus, most campuses have recognized binge drinking as a serious problem, yet this epidemic continues on, and many seem to
Since the early 1990s, substance-free housing has become an increasingly popular option for campuses across the nation. Substance-free housing has been implemented in universities and colleges in hopes of reducing rates of binge drinking among college students. Binge drinking can be defined as, “men drinking five or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting and for women four or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting.” (Feldman 271). Even though many know college binge drinking is a problem in our country, many are shocked when they hear that, “more than 75% of college students have consumed at least one alcoholic drink in the last 30 days. More than 40% say they’ve had 5 or more drinks with in the past 2 weeks, and some 16% drink 16 or more drinks per week. Nearly half of all male college students who drink are binge drinkers, and forty-one percent of female college students are binge drinkers” (Feldman 270). Statistics prove that college binge drinking is a problem to not only the students drinking but the ones that are staying sober, since “two-thirds of light drinkers reported having their sleep or studies disturbed by drunken students. Around a third had been insulted or humiliated, and 25% of women said a drunken classmate had made unwanted sexual advances” (Wechsler et al. 199). College binge drinking has many consequences associated with it such as poor academic performance, injury, assault, sexual abuse, property damage and drunk driving (Willenbring 238). The problem of
According to Collins, Koutsky, Morsheimer and Maclean Alcohol use is a serious problem on college campuses (2001). ). In a given 2-week period, 40% of college students drank heavily at least once, and 22% did so 3 or more times (O'Malley & Johnston, 2002; Wechsler, Lee, Kuo, & Lee, 2000). Serious personal, peer, and institutional consequences accompany this type of drinking (Knight et al., 2002). Student alcohol use is associated with absenteeism, poor grades, regrets, relationship difficulties, unwanted sexual behaviors, personal injury, legal troubles, alcohol overdose, assault, and suicide (e.g., Engs, Diebold,& Hanson, 1996). Many students who present at college counseling
techprogram/paper_40822.htm)." Some other effects that can happen from drinking is that students get in trouble with police, vandalism, get injured, or even worse, death. Over 1,400 students are killed annually because of their alcohol use, according to researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health. This survey also claims that over 600,000 students a year are assaulted by other students who have been drinking. Additionally, over 70,000 are the victims of sex assaults or date rapes in similar circumstances. These are very disturbing figures. Thirty-one percent of college students met criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and 6 percent for a diagnosis of alcohol dependence in the past 12 months, according to questionnaire-based self-reports about their drinking. Drinking heavily seems to bring out more difficulties in a person's life and can only continue the same way as an adult. One starts to rely on alcohol to solve problems and may continue throughout their life because their body becomes dependent on alcohol to make them feel good again.
The Change and Forces That Changed Peter Pan Most of the main characters in J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan taught Peter to care about others and not just himself. This paper has been written to show the different forces that caused change in Peter. J.M Barrie showed many ways characters like Wendy, Tinker Bell, and even Captain Hook brought forces of change upon Peter in her novel Peter Pan. Wendy Darling brought about the most change in Peter, and examples can be found all throughout the book, although some might not have changed him right away by the end of the book they had. In the beginning of the book Wendy wakes up to find Peter at the foot of her bed, she asks him “Boy, why are you crying?” Peter responds saying “I was crying because I can’t
Underage students drinking on college campuses has been a problem for countless years. Parents and professors look over the problem of students drinking and look at their college life in a positive way. They understand the students to be studying, making new friends, or working. Instead, an abundance of students are partying and drinking at these parties. The transformation from high school to college causes stress to the students. Therefore, instead of the students looking towards studying more, they start partying to solve their problems. Once they start partying, it gets harder for them to stop and they become depressed. Students drinking at college has become a provision for them, thinking it would help with their stress and problems rather than causing other predicaments.
The most significant issue with underage college students and binge drinking is to first acknowledge the recurring problem of a plaguing universities nationwide regardless of its campus size and influence. A more in-depth
Twenty-one percent of those students had done so within the last thirty days. In 2014, roughly sixty-five percent of college students had self-reported alcohol consumption within the last thirty days. Approximately half of those students had exhibited symptoms of an alcohol use disorder (Ward, 2016). Also, more than seventeen hundred alcohol-related injuries happened in 2001. Alcohol and its Negative Effects on College Students
When the health behavior within a population of students has the result of less than desirable consequences, the promotion of behavioral change that will improve this type of conduct must have consideration. The high use of alcohol that has become rooted in college culture, with particular attention to binge drinking, is a destructive practice of concern. Despite this high-risk indulgence being one of the major sources of physical injury among college students (Karam, Kypros & Salamoun, 2007), it would be remiss not to ponder the toll this takes on students academically as well. Through missed study time, absenteeism and poor effort on assignments, course work will invariably suffer. Perhaps worse of all, from an academic standpoint, binge drinking results in cognitive dysfunction (Kotler, 2005).
The Gods Will Have Blood a novel by Anatole France. It is a fictional story set during the French Revolution. The story of the infernal rise of Évariste Gamelin, a young Parisian painter, involved in the section for his neighborhood of Pont-Neuf, it describes the dark years of the reign the Reign of Terror in Paris. The long, blind train of speedy trials drags this idealist into a madness that cuts off the heads of his nearest and dearest, and hastens his own fall as well as that of his mentor Robespierre His love affair with the young watercolor-seller Élodie Blaise heightens the terrible contrast between the butcher-in-training and the man who shows himself to be quite ordinary in his daily life. Justifying this dance of the guillotine by
“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college
On college campuses across America, the use of alcohol has been an topic in need of explanation for many years. The concept will be explaned with emphise on the negative effects of hooch. Alcohol in cardio-sport athletes is especially harmful. But at any rate the negative concepts apply to all student. Besides the fact that a large number of students are underage when they drink, alcohol can put students in dangerous situations and give them a headache long after the hangover is gone. The short and long term effects alcohol has can impair students physically and mentally, impacting their education and health.