<p>My daughter came home yesterday and said most of the students she knows drink every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Many get drunk all three nights.</p>
<p>These are 18, 19, 20 year old students. Many are very good students. </p>
<p>I wonder how many of these students end up with serious alcohol problems?</p>
<p>Because they didn't learn responsible drinking when they were younger.</p>
<p>Nothing new here. Drinking to excess was acceptable when I was in college. So were drugs. I didn't end up with serious problems with either. ;)</p>
<p>Right or wrong, I think many college kids indulge in risky behaviors for three main reasons: (1) as a way to demonstrate that they're "adults" now, free of parental control (2) as a way to demonstrate that they're "cool" to their peers and (3) because they can. Simple as that.</p>
<p>I remember going to school at a time when the legal drinking age was 18. As a result many students drank. But I think there was a proclivity toward functions where drinking was included but was supervised. I think the problem on campuses is that the 21 year cutoff forces drinking "underground" and hence to an unsupervised environment where there is more chance for abuse.</p>
<p>Besides, the possible health issues, I see opportunity lost. Instead of going to sporting events, concerts, plays, museums, lectures, partaking in many activities, and learning social skills, three nights a week are spent in a daze. </p>
<p>You don't have to go to college for that.</p>
<p>How do these people not get busted? Sometimes I forget that there is a minimum legal drinking age because no underage drinkers ever seem to get caught.</p>
<p>Some do. But the vast majority do not. Most kids have ID's to get into the bars or just go to house parties. Cutting a female out of a group and getting her interested in a loud place is a very important social skill. Then you can go to all the concerts and lectures you like--as a couple. Plus most of those events are over by 10 pm anyway--just when the bars and parties get warmed up so it's easy to do both. Museums are for rainy Sunday afternoons.</p>
<p>I agree with DStark about the loss of opportunities. I certainly did my share of drinking as a college student neither I nor my peers ever fell into a Thursday-Friday-Saturday "blotto!" pattern of drinking.</p>
<p>It's not as if a lot of these kids aren't already binge drinking in high school, either, so the novelty factor isn't in play.</p>
<p>I'm convinced that the alcohol w/meals, no-big-deal approach leads to better attitudes.</p>
<p>"Cutting a female out of a group and getting her interested in a loud place is a very important social skill". :) :)</p>
<p>I think carolyn is right and - fair warning, carolyn - there are other behaviors that crop up to demonstrate "that they're adults now." For example, my DS sashayed in at 3:00 am this morning after his first get-together with his old gang during Thanksgiving break. <em>Even though</em> he let me know he'd be late, <em>even though</em> I knew he was at a friend's home and safe, <em>even though</em> I am not much of a worrier, he created that touch of worry and I truly believe it's all, consciously or unconsciously, part of demonstrating to themselves, as much as to us, that they are adults now.</p>
<p>Still, I'm thinking there's a difference in the danger level now, although I'm not sure, as I was not part of a drinking scene in college. It seems to me there's more of the quick consumption of extreme quantities as part of drinking games, etc. Thus, more danger of alcohol poisoning. But I could be wrong about that. Maybe we just hear of it more, measure it more, etc.</p>
<p>I didn't know, until my son was already enrolled and on campus, that his university had a reputation as a party school. (probably for the best that I didn't know. I would just have worried.) My son says that occasionally someone will get in trouble for drinking in the dorm, but only if he or she is too obvious about it--leaving the door open or bottles in the hall, making too much noise, etc. The biggest parties, however, are at the frats or off campus houses. He feels a lot of it is kids being away from parents for the first time and trying out their new freedom. It also is a way to fit in with a group of people and "belong."</p>
<p>Fortunately it only took my son a few weeks to realize that drinking had more negative than positive consequences. He has strong goals in his life, and drinking will not help any of them. So he has stepped back from the party crowd and found friends with interests more in line with his. Some kids, like my son, will try it out just to see what it is like and then drop it. Others--I suspect especially those who don't really know yet what they want out of life--will continue and can develop real problems.</p>
<p>A friend enrolled her daughter at UCSD. Her daughter later reported that on drop-off day, within 30 minutes of the last parent leaving, all the freshman girls in that dorm suite had piled into a car and were headed for Tijuana (where the legal drinking age is 18). This was on the very first day at a school with a reputation to not be a party school. They hadn't even finished unpacking yet. Didn't even know each others' names with any certainty.</p>
<p>Coureur, there goes UCSD's reputation.</p>
<p>My daughter says there is huge drinking at almost every school. (Actually she says every school, but I find that hard to believe).</p>
<p>As the writer Annie Lamott said to her adolescent son, "There is a time and a place for drinking and drugs. It's called college!"</p>
<p>The vast, overwhelming majority of college students - like their non-college-going counterparts - do not drink to excess, and certainly not on a regular basis. They also do not come from families in the top quintile, with incomes in excess of $100k; they do not attend "prestigious colleges", and the majority do not attend residential colleges. Many of them commute, and the higher drinking age has saved tens of thousands of their lives, the lives of their passengers, and the lives of other drivers. They do drink, on the whole moderately, and alcohol doesn't rule their lives or their social environment. It IS like Europe or the Carribean, except they will not be served in restaurants, etc. The vast majority couldn't AFFORD the bingeing one sees at many prestigious colleges.</p>
<p>Within the prestigious colleges, about a quarter are total abstainers, and about half of the rest - overweighted toward the poorer ones, the churchgoers, and ethnic and racial minorities, and to a lesser extent, females - do not binge drink, or drink only moderately.</p>
<p>Let's not assume as universal what is in fact a prerogative of a preciously small privileged few. Why is it that we are so quick to assume the colleges we generally speak about on this board are so atypical (in their academics, etc.) but are so slow to recognize that these same colleges may also be atypical in their alcoholic behaviors?</p>
<p>"I wonder how many of these students end up with serious alcohol problems?"</p>
<p>Roughly one-third, according to the national data. In my professional capacity, we see them all the time.</p>
<p>I'm a student, hope you don't mind my input. I think it stems from the fact that throughout high school, drinking is something that is not considered allowable by the majority of parents. Therefore, it is done at parties and in secret from parents. When kids get to college, they are suddenly away from parents and can do it all the time.</p>
<p>I really wish the US was more like Europe in that drinking is not considered a big deal. I have to admit, the first time I drank I was really excited and thought it was some great thing and so cool because my parents didn't know. A few months later, I went to the Carribean with my parents, where the legal drinking age is 16 and never really enforced anyway, and they let me drink if I wanted to. Once it was allowed, I realized that it wasn't that big of a deal and most nights I turned down offers of drinks. Alcohol is a very once-in-awhile thing for me, and should really be for everyone.</p>
<p>Dawn, do most of your friends drink? How many like to get drunk?</p>
<p>Mini, looking at your numbers, about 10% of the students at prestigious schools end up with alcohol problems?</p>
<p>What is the percentage of adults with alcohol problems?</p>
<p>11%. (including both "alcohol dependent" and "alcohol problems", according to the National Household Survey). Lower among African-Americans and Hispanics, and females. (My numbers would indicate that the percentage of students at the prestige schools who end up with alcohol problems later is a little bit higher, roughly 13-14%, which is not surprising, as they are more likely to be white and relatively wealthy. But, again, it would be too easy to overgeneralize - not all the schools are the same, and I've provided the factors most closely associated with heavy drinking previously.)</p>
<p>mini, so the numbers are very similar?</p>
<p>Ok I see you answered my question.</p>