<p>Well, if you’re going to use facts!!! That is a bit underhanded to fight speculation with reality. Actually, I am sorry, about the misinformation, I was kind of sleeping one off this morning.</p>
<p>Joking aside, my point remains the same. Subtract two beers, or add some more time, either way drinking a large quantity of beer over the course of a long party will not necessarily result in a large person becoming legally drunk. The danger is for the people without the same mass trying to keep up, and for the increasing mass of someone who drinks that much beer regularly. Even if eleven beers over that time frame means the hypothetical large bro is over the legal limit for driving, most people with some experience with alcohol function pretty well in other respects at the .08 range. Even after eleven beers, a large dude who is pacing himself would not be falling down drunk or puking, or even close.</p>
<p>I believe that the legal limit should lower and believe that one should not drink and drive at all, because most of us are guessing at how close to the legal limit we are. Any impairment can prove critical while driving if the circumstances are just wrong. We always have a designated driver.</p>
<p>Not to muddy the waters any, but don’t some researchers use another definition for binge drinking? Seems like at one time the definition was 5 drinks for men/4 drinks for women within 2 hours:</p>
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<p>from the 2004 proposal by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism</p>
<p>I really does not matter how you call it binge or not. The fact is that nobody can do anything about it, no matter what label you use. You can have a law on a books to expell them, but then what? It will become a police campus more or less. Study as irrelevant as it could be in a process of solving the problem which is a personal/family problem. There is a way to avoid being with people who drink heavily. What you call heavy drinking is entirely your own definition and nobody else’s. You create your own criteria and it is up to you to follow it or not.</p>
I agree with this–the study helps us understand why kids want to binge drink. It’s what the cool kids do. And it makes you “happier,” at least in terms of fitting in better. I very much doubt if there’s much a college can do to make binge drinking uncool. It may be able to make it costly, in several different ways, and that may have an effect.</p>
<p>It seems to be an academically flawed study. “Happier with their college social experience” is ill-defined and not correlated to anything beyond the “social experience.” Reading a paper at a conference is small potatoes.</p>
<p>Btw, you can attend the parties, fill your red cup with water, and have a good time. Unless the goal is the loss of control. Or, achieving your high in the way the rest of the group has- which is then about herd mentality, not personal happiness.</p>
<p>ps. just look at all the media attention she’s getting. As if this were authoritative.</p>
<p>This is from Atlantic.com:
Before you start losing hope for future generations of college students, it’s important to remember that Hsu and her team were only looking at one, small liberal arts college. "Since [the study] is descriptive and not experimental, the two end points may not be linked, Dr. Fulton T. Crews, director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told ABC News. “It is possible drinking reflects satisfaction for some, [but] changes mood, creating dissatisfaction for others.”</p>
<p>Miami is exactly right. Each person has to create their own criteria about what “heavy drinking” is - and decide whether that’s something they want to do or be around on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I also agree with lookingforward. There were many times I went out and had one beer - and then filled up the cup with water the rest of the night. I didn’t have to drink to have a good time - but it didn’t bother me to be with people who were drinking.</p>
<p>Knowing that binge drinking is not something we should be encouraging, why would anyone want to measure a happiness index? What are a bunch of 18 year olds who are not supposed to be drinking to start with going to say - we dont like it but people keep pouring multiple drinks down our throats?</p>
<p>There is a kid in Berkeley complaining about his roommates showing up drunk everyday and really concerned about his own quality of life. I guess no one cares about binge drinkers raising the unhappiness index for their roommates.</p>
<p>In my experience, students who come from strict or conservative families are the most likely to go overboard experimenting with alcohol, drugs and sex once they first get out of the house and on their own. Undoubtedly, such students are also going to characterize themselves as being much happier when first freed of the need to follow strict behavioral rules.</p>
<p>lets just say before I started drinkin, my grades were down the toilet. I started drinking a lot, my grades magically shot up A LOT and I had harder schedules. Also started to tolerate college somewhat and helps to just get past these 4 years</p>
<p>Well, I’m sure the researchers aren’t saying, “Binge drinking is awesome, go out and do it!” They asked a question, are binge drinkers happier, and the answer was apparently yes. Knowing this, people can start looking at ways to improve the quality of happiness of non-binge-drinkers or looking at why binge drinkers are happier. (Self-medicating due to stress? Not enough fun social options for non-drinkers?)</p>
<p>^I think they asked first about happiness, noticed it was rich, white frat boys who scored best. That poorer, non-affiliated kids were less happy- except the sub-group that took on binge drinking. From there it gets very odd.</p>
<p>What bugged me was this, quoted from another doc: “For the price of a six-pack or two of beer, a minority or poorer student can feel as if they have become a member of the Beverly Hills Country Club,”</p>
<p>As if you can explain problem drinking as country-club envy.</p>
<p>I think the “scientists” just wanted an excuse to party at a bar. Didn’t read the original study but I’m sure the next one will conclude that adding an order of wings will make students even happier.</p>