<p>With the trial of George Huguely making big headlines and shedding light on the drinking culture of college campuses, it may come as a shock to some that even our finest universities are not immune.</p>
<p>Although this article is long, it goes so far as to recommend that parents not send their kids away to college and for parents to drop in regularly on their college kids.</p>
<p>Can't imagine that either of my kids would want me stopping by regularly on Saturday night...</p>
<p>Can’t imagine that either of my kids would want me stopping by regularly on Saturday night…</p>
<p>I know my D drinks occasionally,( she is 21) although there are rarely more than one or two wine/beer bottles in their recycling. ( she lives in a house off campus & we go to visit every other month or so)- </p>
<p>As someone who can’t drink more than one glass of wine before I really feel it, it is hard to comprehend the amount of liquor college students are supposedly drinking.
It does reinforce my belief that marijuana should be legalized for those over 18. I have never heard of anyone who overdosed on marijuana that had not been adulterated.</p>
<p>For a look at how an 18 year old drinking age affects a university campus, you may want to read this:</p>
<p>[Drinking</a> outside the box](<a href=“http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/38/01/drinking/]Drinking”>http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/38/01/drinking/)</p>
<p>Interesting, tomofboston. The funny thing is, it was not so long ago that the drinking age in this country was 18. It was when I went to school. Our college weekends involved going to whichever dorm floor had the keg. Most people got over the novelty pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Gap years seem to becoming more common at some schools & as both my daughters did so, I tend to think it is a good idea.
Also puts a damper on kids freaking out because their ability to behave responsibly unsupervised, had never been tested before.</p>
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<p>Wow. That really jumped out at me. I get really torn about the drinking age thing. I’m not convinced it’s really making a difference overall (except maybe DUIs). Kids still get alcohol and they still drink pretty much any time they want in HS and college. When I was in HS and college, I certainly knew people who drank heavily and it was often main thing to do but it was legal and I don’t remember any kids getting taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. My husband’s frat house even had a bar in it!</p>
<p>I live in a community of about 500,000. Every year a handful of our kids succumb to either a drug and/or alcohol related incident while at college. Every couple of years it seems like it is someone from my smaller circle (either someone who attended the same private school my son did or a friend of a friend type thing). It’s truly alarming. </p>
<p>I can’t tell you the number of talks we have had with our son about the warning signs of alcohol poisoning in himself or someone else. And about the need to be vigilant about mixing alcohol and medications. He was just telling me this weekend about how he is ‘so over’ the regular party scene at college and doesn’t feel the need to be constantly involved in it. Sure hope he means that.</p>
<p>I think it is more effective to talk to your kids about responsible drinking. We have told our kids as they go off to college just not to be stupid about drinking. Yes, I know it is not legal for kids under 21 to drink but it’s college, it is going to happen. Our oldest still doesn’t drink but he has figured out that being the designated driver can be very profitable and he is keeping his friends safe. I’m sure our other two will attend parties in college before they are of legal drinking age. We have talked to them about guarding their drinks (bringing along a sports bottle or something with a cover), not over indulging and NO driving, this all contingent on where they go and what penalties the colleges have for underage drinking.</p>
<p>The responsible drinking talk must include medications as MomLive suggests. So many young adults take meds for depression, anxiety, ADD, and other ailments; then they drink, and add in some Tylenol or other OTC meds. Before long, they have three or four different things in their systems.</p>
<p>We always had wine with dinner, and offered it to our kids, just like I grew up. They saw that we drank, but not to get drunk. This is what we told our kids about responsible drinking:</p>
<ol>
<li> Never leave your drink unattended, ever.</li>
<li> Never drink from a punch bowl at a party.</li>
<li> At a bar or party, do not let the guy go get you a drink. Go with him and watch the drink being made and handed to you.</li>
<li> Your first drink is water. Your second drink is whatever it is. Eat something. Your third drink is water. If you must have a fourth drink, make it the same as the the second, maybe smaller. Eat something. Your fifth drink is water.</li>
<li> If you have any doubts about a driver, call a cab. Always have $ for a cab.</li>
</ol>
<p>Can’t say they always followed it, I don’t know. But so far, so good. We always had a pretty casual attitude towards alcohol, and we didn’t have addiction in our family history. When D and S were staying with us over winter break, we served them kir and wine or whatever we were having–in moderation. D is not yet 21–she seems to be like me, a slow drinker, not quite able to finish the first glass by the end of the meal!</p>
<p>We made it very clear that we expected good grades and hard work on their part, since we are paying for school. They knew the $ spigot would stop if they didn’t produce results. They do appreciate it, since they have many friends whose parents would appear to have a lot more money than we do, but are not paying much if anything for their kids’ education. </p>
<p>These statistics on alcohol poisoning are scary. I believe that in America we have a weird attitude towards alcohol, it’s totally forbidden before 21, then glamorized and not connected with meals. Then, with the problem of mixing it with prescription drugs, I wish we would take the same approach as we did with cigarettes. The huge push for education against smoking has really reduced the number of smokers, and has made smoking indoors, even in private homes, very rare. I hope we see a change in approach to drinking/prescription drugs soon.</p>
<p>I have also given oldest DS the advice about alternating alcoholic drinks and water. For many college kids, having a drink in their hand at all times protects them from someone seeing them with empty hands and thrusting a drink in them. DS was a designated driver until he turned 21, and the experience of being the only sober person at parties was, well, sobering. It gave him a better understanding of how alcohol makes you stupid. </p>
<p>In addition to always having cabfare, it’s also a good idea, especially for girls, to have the cellphone numbers of several reliable cabbies on hand. DS and his friends had several “regular” cabdrivers they could count on if a designated driver was not available. This works better in smaller towns than in big cities, obviously. </p>
<p>One final observation is that many of the worst alcohol incidents involve young women, who have never gotten the message that they CANNOT “keep up” with their male friends in alcohol consumption. Parents of daughters should make sure that they completely understand this point, because it is not necessarily stressed in the mandatory college alcohol sessions.</p>
<p>claremarie–I think the point about having “something” to drink in their hand is good. No one really has to know that it is just Coke and not a rum and coke. I knew my limit was 2 drinks and like you, I would alternate water and my drink so I always had something to hold on to. I also found that you could say no and not really be ostracized. I still don’t like beer to this day, I know weird, but even back in college if you said you didn’t like beer, there was always other options, usually a soft drink or water.</p>
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Ooohh, I don’t know about that…</p>
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<p>I disagree. It’s not just about size either. I rarely drink, but when I do I can more than hold my own with a guy. High tolerance for alcohol seems to run in my family. It takes me quite a bit to even get tipsy and trust me, I can out drink more than most guys. Yes, women need to realize that they often can’t keep up with men, but it is far more important for them to know THEIR limits rather than generalities. </p>
<p>I’m not a big drinker. Never have been. I’ve probably seen my dad drunk 3 or 4 times in my life- and yet, he always seems to be the life of the party. My mother, on the other hand, likes to drink. She has a glass of wine every night and probably gets drunk one night a month or every other month. She knows when to say when though and I’ve only seen her <em>really</em> drunk only a handful of times. </p>
<p>My parents raised me around alcohol. My mother is a European immigrant so alcohol has never really been off limits to me, as that is how she was raised. I started sipping beer when I was probably 10 when my mom drank it. I started drinking a full beer when I was probably 14 or 15. I rarely, even to this day, drink more than a beer. I’m usually the DD. I’ve probably only been drunk 4 times in my life (if that) and I’ve yet to get drunk since I turned 21.</p>
<p>The vast majority of people I know and know of that “go wild” when they go to college are people that were kept from alcohol in high school. Most students that were exposed to it early on know their limits and know how to better “cope” with alcohol. I wish parents would expose their children to alcohol and teach them how deal with it responsibly rather than just setting it completely off limits.</p>
<p>DH and I were discussing this today and something that we think is different is that kids today do shots. If you are drinking beer or wine, you can get pretty full before you get really drunk unless you are just slugging them down. With shots, you can drink several before you feel full or feel the effects.</p>
<p>“Ooohh, I don’t know about that.”</p>
<p>YOU may not know about that, but it’s true. Do some research. You can start here. </p>
<p>“According to the World Health Organization, alcohol is one of the most significant risk factors for diseases including chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.* Compared with men, women become more cognitively impaired by alcohol and are more susceptible to alcohol-related organ damage.*** Women develop damage with less intake and* over a shorter period of time than men.** When men and women of the same weight consume equal amounts of alcohol, women have higher blood alcohol concentrations.** This is due in part because women have proportionately more body fat and a lower volume of body water compared with men of similar weight. This leads to women having a higher concentration of alcohol because there is less volume of water to dilute the alcohol.
in women, alcohol metabolizes slower in their stomachs and upper intestines allowing more alcohol to reach the blood stream and other organs than in men, leading to increased organ damage.* Women have more severe complications related to alcohol abuse than men including developing alcohol dependency more quickly.** Damage resulting from alcohol dependency* that is more severe in women includes liver damage (hepatitis/cirrhosis), premature death from cardiovascular conditions, cognitive and motor function decline,* and fertility issues.”</p>
<p>[Sex</a> Differences in Alcohol Metabolism – Institute for Women’s Health Research Blog](<a href=“Women's Health Research Institute | Science to Care”>Women's Health Research Institute | Science to Care)</p>
<p>Some universities do better jobs than others at getting this message across, but, sadly, political correctness sometimes seems to dilute it. There are some women who are convinced that they can “keep up with men” in EVERYTHING, and, with respect to alcohol, it’s simply not true. There are biological differences that cannot be wished away.</p>
<p>This is an article I found about the State Patty’s Day “tradition” at Penn State. Add this to the turmoil surrounding the Sandusky/Paterno situation, I would not want to be a Penn State administrator these days:
[State</a> College, PA - State Patty’s Day: Is a Catastrophic Event the Only Way to End the Drinking Holiday?](<a href=“http://www.statecollege.com/news/local-news/state-pattys-day-is-a-catastrophic-event-the-only-way-to-end-the-drinking-holiday-1001227/]State”>http://www.statecollege.com/news/local-news/state-pattys-day-is-a-catastrophic-event-the-only-way-to-end-the-drinking-holiday-1001227/)</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that you put 30,000 undegraduates on a campus in the middle of nowhere, you can expect problems. I wonder if there have been studies done about the level of problem drinking at “college town” schools versus urban schools?</p>
<p>The article that is linked in the first post says 80 percent of college students drink, and half of those binge drink. To me, those are pretty big numbers.</p>
<p>It’s pretty close (it is the data reported in annual Monitoring the Future Survey), but, in fact, we know from experimental data that it is a significant underestimate. </p>
<p>“I wonder if there have been studies done about the level of problem drinking at “college town” schools versus urban schools?”</p>
<p>Being rural is one of 9 known, studied, and documented risk factors for higher than average binge drinking.</p>
<p>I come from a European family as well. Drinking is, to say the least, something we do every day. By the time we hit 10, we’ve all had a massive hangover and realized that hangovers are no fun. Hence, lots of us know to avoid them.</p>
<p>Also, drinking from a young age gave me an incredibly high alcohol tolerance. I cannot get drunk. Or at least, I would need to drink much more than my bladder can hold. As for alcohol poisoning, my system burns alcohol incredibly fast, so I’ve never had that problem.</p>
<p>I think the whole 21 years-old law is utter nonsense. Why?! It’ll make drinking seem as a way to be rebellious. Just get rid of the law altogether, and make drinking a social experience. Once people realize that getting drunk is not “cool,” they’ll stop doing it.</p>
<p>But then again, many will disagree with me here. But I grew up in a place where there was no legal drinking age. I turned out all right. I don’t get drunk, yet I still go to quite a few parties. It’s all about the culture associated to it. And in the U.S. the current culture is toxic.</p>
<p>aahs, I agree with you 100% in theory. In practice, alcohol culture is way too entrenched in American culture and getting rid of the laws could cause very serious problems. I want the age lowered to 18/19.</p>