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[quote]
Nearly half of America's 5.4 million full-time college students abuse drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month, according to a new study that portrays substance and alcohol abuse as an increasingly urgent problem on campuses across the nation.
Alcohol remains the favored substance of abuse on college campuses by far, but the abuse of prescription drugs and marijuana has increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, according to the study released today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.
<p>The study says students have too much time, alcohol companies market heavily to college students, and administrators are distracted by fundraising.</p>
<p>My own .02: parents are reluctant to talk with their kids during the pre-teen and teen years about drug and alcohol abuse. They want to believe that everything is great, that their kid getting good grades who is involved with ECs is above all that. The truth is, it's everywhere. And the sooner you start talking to your kids about it, and about your own past experiences, and what they are facing the better. Otherwise, your kid is going to be facing peer pressure the likes of which you have no idea.</p>
<p>Also, my own completely unscientific observation as a former HS librarian: many suburban kids are now being raised in households where both parents work and they have little to no supervision. There's a lot of opportunity there. Suburban kids are a huge part of the college population. These kids are simply continuing behavior that started in HS, and combined with the little to none supervision found at college, it snowballs, given peer pressure and mob mentality.</p>
<p>Sorry to sound so dire. This is a big concern of mine for my own kid this fall, given that alcoholism and substance abuse runs in both sides of the family. We've been talking to him for years, and he already had one "learning the hard way" experience. </p>
<p>One good thing is that he has to maintain a good GPA with his merit award, and can't have any disciplinary violations or he loses the scholarship. Hopefully this will be big incentive for him not to go crazy. </p>
<p>Things were so different for me, in that I was an independent student who had to pay my own way. If I partied all the time and blew it, it was all on me. Plus the drinking age was 18 back then, so it wasn't such forbidden fruit.</p>
<p>Kids are going to experiment. If any of you have a D/S that never drank in high school, don't be surprised that they will start in college. </p>
<p>My recommendation?</p>
<p>You should be having a few drinks at home with your DS. Give them wine with dinner. 16 years old is old enough to do that.</p>
<p>Give them a beer when the family gathers to watch football. Associate alcohol with relaxing family activities. Teach</a> them alcohol moderation.</p>
<p>If their first encounter with alcohol is in a party setting where everything is binging, how are they ever going to see alcohol as anything BUT a drink associated with partying and rowdiness??</p>
<p>Also one more thing, don't let the media lie to you about what's really happening on college campuses. Concerned parents are highly vulnerable to distorted statistics that confirm their fears.</p>
<p>I'm sorry, but I use alcohol to relax after studying all week. I will probably never ever get the opportunity to have this kind of freedom to drink this much ever again, so I'm going to take advantage of it. In a couple of years I'm going to have to get an actual job where I won't be able to function with a hangover (unlike homework, which I almost exclusively do hungover), so until then I'm doing what I can to make college college, and not a job.</p>
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[quote]
I'm sorry, but I use alcohol to relax after studying all week. I will probably never ever get the opportunity to have this kind of freedom to drink this much ever again, so I'm going to take advantage of it. In a couple of years I'm going to have to get an actual job where I won't be able to function with a hangover (unlike homework, which I almost exclusively do hungover), so until then I'm doing what I can to make college college, and not a job.
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<p>You aren't ready to take advantage of the rare opportunity that college provides. You are wasting your time and your parents' money. Take some time off, drink yourself silly, and go back to college when you are ready to appreciate the opportunity to engage in a learning environment.</p>
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[quote]
Donald Harward, president emeritus of Bates College in Maine, says drinking and drug abuse are a symptom of students' disengagement from academic and civil life on campus.
<p>Sklog, in four years time, when you have that job, what will you do to relax? You'll do the only thing you've learned to do to relax in 4 years at college: drink.</p>
<p>There's a huge difference between having a couple drinks to relax on a weekend, and drinking to the point where you are always hungover. Seems like kind of a waste of time, no pun intended.</p>
<p>Very simply, as a parent I'm funding the large portion of your education.</p>
<p>I've told you that up front. I also told you that I would treat you as an adult provided you behaved like one. I also told you when you got your driver's license you are now licensed to kill. I've repeated these caveats as often as I felt it necessary.</p>
<p>I understand that in college you will have more personal freedoms, and therefore more personal responsibilty than you've ever had. I also trust you will make the proper choices.</p>
<p>If I have to divert financial resources that would have been allocated to your education to instead pay for legal needs, increased vehicle insurance rates, drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs, etc., it is very simply your education and potential that will suffer.</p>
<p>Students escaping the world via binge drinking and drugs because of distracted college administrators, marketing and too much time on their hands???? Come on now. The reasons are far more complicated, deep and dire than that imho.</p>
<p>Alcohol and drug abuse are the result of far more serious psychological/emotional issues. Why do so many of our young people choose such self-destructive behavior? In our area some of the wealthies districts have some of the most serious substance abuse problems. Drug od deaths have been spiking in recent years.</p>
<p>And the study blames it on college administrators??? Yeah sure, its their fault.</p>
<p>I am not disputing the study but rather how is that persistence/retention/graduation stats seem so high from this same population? I don't quite know how to evaluate much of this. Anybody?</p>
<p>For what it's worth, (1) I will admit that my child and her friends are part of the problem here, and (2) they are not in the least disengaged from academic and civil life on campus. In my daughter's case, she is very intellectually engaged in her courses and works pretty hard at them (at least the ones she likes), and she writes for two publications, has a weekly radio show, is on the station's managing board, is a member of a campus feminist group with weekly meetings and regular projects, tutors elementary school children as a volunteer, and works a fairly responsible job in a university office 8 hours a week. She also has a lot of friends who are involved in drama, and thus attends a huge number of plays, either with them or to support them, and occasionally helps with sets, props, and other production tasks. And, unfortunately, she likes to drink, sometimes too much.</p>
<p>I'm certainly not saying it's OK. It is a problem. But it has nothing to do with disengagement.</p>