Alcohol And College Students

Alcohol and College Students

Excessive drinking by college students has become a social phenomenon in which College students do not acknowledge the health risks that are involved with their excessive drinking habits. Furthermore, college students do not know enough about alcohol in general and what exactly it does to the body or they do not pay attention to the information given to them.

There needs to be a complete saturation on the campuses, with the help of businesses and the media, expressing how excessive drinking is not attractive and not socially accepted. A report from GSU seeks to explore all aspects of alcohol abuse related to college students through definitions and statistical problems of alcohol abuse in hopes of ultimately providing solutions to increasing the wellness at Georgia Southern University. One of the biggest problems with educational institutions in the United States is alcohol abuse among college students. College students across the United States end up missing class, having unprotected sex, damaging property, and getting injured as a result of abusing alcohol. Also the health risks involved with binge or excessive drinking is very prevalent and risky for any college student who chooses to abuse alcohol.

Besides alcohol poisoning, there are many cancers and diseases associated with alcohol abuse that ultimately lead to death. Liver cancer, breast cancer, and skin cancer can all be associated with alcohol abuse. Also heart and liver disease can be associated with alcohol

abuse. Ultimately the over all wellness among Colleges and Universities in the United States drops dramatically when alcohol is abused.

The abuse of alcohol among college students has a direct correlation to socialization. Students who go to college believe that binge or excessive drinking is a social norm. That when you go off to college it's time to not only get a degree, but also a time to drink and socialize at parties. In the end, alcohol is glamorized and often enough abused. Ultimately alcohol becomes so much of a social norm that students do not realize how and when alcohol is abusive. Therefore the problem is how to inform students in a socially acceptable manner of how and when alcohol becomes abusive to their own well being.

Most college students think of alcohol as that cheap high they get to obtain on the weekends at social events called parties. Knowing what alcohol really is and what exactly it can do to your body in excessive amounts over time and in any one sitting is one of the main problems with why college students abuse alcohol. The social norm of binge or excessive drinking in college is prevailing over the social fact of what alcohol really is and what it can do to a person’s health!

There are many definitions associated with alcohol and alcohol abuse in general that need to be clarified. The actual definition of alcohol is a “liquid distilled product of fermented fruits, grains, and vegetables used as a solvent, antiseptic and sedative”.

The possible effects of alcohol would include intoxication, sensory alteration, and anxiety reduction. Symptoms of overdose would include staggering, loss of coordination, slurred speech, dilated pupils, and nerve and liver damage. Indications of possible misuse would include confusion, disorientation, convulsions, shock, drowsiness, respiratory depression, and possible death.

College students are confused as to what is considered alcohol abuse and simply alcoholism. The confusion between the definitions of alcohol abuse and alcoholism leads to many misconceptions or myths among college students about alcoholics. College students who abuse alcohol seem to be able to drink excessively each and every weekend and consider themselves not to be alcoholics or not in endanger of becoming alcoholics. College students who are binge or excessive drinkers are able to avoid being labeled an alcoholic because it’s so socially acceptable in college to drink and drink often. The distinction is that “when drinking begins to interfere with any aspect of a person’s life it’s considered alcohol abuse. And when drinking becomes addictive, either psychologically or physically, it’s considered alcoholism. Alcohol abuse, if left untreated, can very easily progress into alcoholism”.

Most college students believe the myth that people who are morally weak or have emotional problems are the ones who can become alcoholics. Whereas the truth is that “studies show there are no particular personality traits that cause alcoholism to occur.

What’s important is how much and how often someone drinks, not what kind of person they are”.

Ultimately college students are setting themselves up to become the alcoholics of the future because they drink when their depressed, stressed about school work, and to simply have a so called good time. The social acceptance of drinking alcohol in college statistically makes alcohol abuse among college students one of the biggest problems among educational institutions in the United States.

Statistically alcohol has caused a wealth of misfortune and death across the United States just among college students. “According to the Core Institute, an organization that surveys college drinking practices, 300,000 of today’s college students will eventually die of alcohol-related causes such as drunk driving accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, various cancers, and heart disease”. In addition “drinking and driving has been reported by 60% of college men and 50% of college women who are binge drinkers”. Also “75% of male students and 55% of female students involved in acquaintance rape had been drinking at the time”. “Between 75% and 90% of all violence on campuses is alcohol related”. “Alcohol is a factor in 66% of student suicides and 60% of all sexually-transmitted diseases”. Besides just misfortunes and deaths among college students who abuse alcohol there is plenty of academic statistics that shows how alcohol affects a student’s performance in the classroom.

It is a miracle how some students can go out and drink as much as they do and still get their work done and eventually graduate. On the over hand some students are not as fortunate as to survive drinking alcohol excessively for five years of their college career and still graduate. An alarming “159,000