In a recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol, shows the widespread and harmful “binge” drinking has become by college students. The study showed that 84 percent of all students surveyed reported drinking during the school year and nearly half of all the students qualified as binge drinkers and 19 percent as frequent binge drinkers. One third of all the schools surveyed qualified as high-binge campuses, which meant more than half of the responding students were binge drinkers. (Wechsler) Binge drinking is defined as the heavy, episodic us

• Individual physical-genetic predispositions toward drug dependency;

e of alcohol, which in other words is the consumption of five or more alcoholic beverages in a brief period of time. Everybody may have their own reasons for drinking, so there is no one answer to why students drink. Researchers suggest a combination of factors which include:

• Large numbers of young adults are concentrated in a social settings like fraternities, sororities, athletics, and other organizations;

So what are the effects alcohol has on students? Each year it kills 40,000 Americans. It can damage and destroy every organ in the body, scarring and pocking the liver until it looks like a lump of drying lava, laying waste to the heart, pancreas, arteries, throat, and stomach, snuffing out receptors in the brain. Every year, alcoholism costs our country over 80 billion dollars, is implicated in 30 percent of suicides and 46 percent of teen suicides, and is a factor in one of four hospital admissions. (Back from the drink) More closely related to college students and their communities, alcohol can contribute to more “deaths, injuries, sexual assaults, rape, poor grades, interruptions in study, irregular sleep patterns, property damages, and unwanted sexual activities.” (Keeley)

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