Alcoholics

Alcoholics Anonymous

Introduction:

I decided to research alcohol, because of the large numbers of lives that alcohol ruins not only in the short run but also for the rest of peoples lives. Growing up I have witnessed many people who have developed alcohol problems at a young age and allowed it to take control of the way that they live their lives. It is obvious that alcohol has become a dangerous problem for college students in and out of the classroom.

Research Methods:

To understand why alcohol is a problem for college students, I decided to survey a random sample of 26 students here at SRU. I designed the survey to be a quick and effective way to obtain the drinking habits of college students in order to discover where possible alcohol problems may arise. I chose to survey a random sample of students in order to get a complete response from older students as well as some of the younger students.

The first questions I asked in my survey where how many days of the week do you drink, and what is your favorite drink. I asked these 2 simple questions just to get a feel for how often this person goes out and what this person usually drinks. I then wanted to find out whether or not students pre-game before they go out and party, so that was my next question. This will be an important question, because when students pre-game, they usually get hammered, then they will go out to a party and drink even more. In order to find out if students are also getting into drugs, I asked if a student has ever mixed alcohol with drugs. This question will be helpful in showing why students become attached to alcohol easily. Drugs will only make the need for alcohol increase. Drinking to relieve depression and to relax are also key points that go along with alcoholism, so it was almost necessary to ask those questions as well. Once a person begins to drink because of depression, it can swallow him/her right up, because alcohol will seem like the only way out for a person who is depressed. When students want to get drunk quick, they will usually use a beer bong to drink as many as 2 beers at a time. In order to find out which students do this, I asked how many students have ever used a beer bong.

Finally, my last 2 questions involve drinking and driving as well as receiving an underage. As everybody knows, drinking and driving is a problem and must not be tolerated. I felt it was very important to ask if students usually drive drunk. I feel this question will be extremely influential due to the already high numbers of deaths caused by drunk drivers.

My other method of research that I took advantage of was the interview. When I went home this past weekend, I was able to interview my high school nurse who has professional knowledge about the problems that alcohol causes. I wanted to interview the nurse, so she would be able to provide me with important facts and statistics that dealt with young adults and alcohol. In order to make sure that both she and I were prepared, I gave her a list of my questions ahead of time so that she was able to find the proper information needed for my paper. The questions that I asked were:

1. What is the average age that young people begin drinking?

2. Where does alcohol rank in terms of causes of death each year?

3. Are people who start drinking at an early age more likely to become dependent

easier?

4. What kind of role does alcohol play in rapes near a college campus?

5. How many teens were in crashes where alcohol was involved?

I feel as if these questions will be of great use to show how alcohol can affect students throughout their lives, especially when they start to drink at a young age.

Findings:

After conducting my survey, the results were as follows:

The first question on my survey asked how many days of the week do you drink. When I looked at the results, the average number of days was four. In a place like Slippery Rock where there is not much to do, 4 is a rather expected number for amount of days that one drinks.

When surveyed on where a person drinks at, either the dorms or their house, answers varied from never and always. There were not many in between answers, either you drank in your house or dorm all the time, or you never did.

The next set of questions dealt with drinking to relieve stress and depression. Of the 26 students who filled out my survey, 92% of the students that filled out my survey answered yes. Drinking to relieve stress and depression is definitely on of the more common reasons as to why students drink. When students begin to drink away their sorrows and relieve stress with alcohol, they start a dependency with alcohol because they feel there is nothing else that can take away those problems. I've discovered that this is the main reason why people drink extremely hard and then eventually becomes addicted to alcohol. Not only do they become addicted to alcohol, but they can become addicted to drugs as well. Seventy-four