A recent episode of the wonderful NPR program, This American Life (which not only offers entertainingly quirky slices of life each week but can also be so much more informative than most of what we get from any media), trained its radio lens on the college drinking scene, and on the college deemed the nation's "#1 Party School." I recommend it to everyone. (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1330)
I have often noted that it is difficult to impossible to accurately diagnose Alcohol Dependence (colloquially, “alcoholism”) in college students – to identify those young men and women who will go on to function alcoholically long after college. Or, in other words, those who won’t radically curtail their drinking after moving on to the next chapter in their lives. Part of the problem is that, since so many college students so often choose to get very drunk -- because it has become normative! -- it is hard to know which individuals are losing control of their consumption, and which ones are choosing to drink like someone who has lost control.
The NPR program describes how one attempt after another to reduce college drinking through education, offering alcohol-free alternatives, etc. has failed to make a difference. What's so bad about binge drinking among the college crowd? The worst consequence is the recurrent deaths, through alcohol poisoning and dangerous (often unintentionally so) behaviors. And of course there is also collateral damage -- to property, people's jaws, private parts, or integrity, friendships, driving privileges, and, oh yeah, one's education.
I can't say I got the maximum benefit from my own college education. At that time, we were very distracted by the war in Vietnam and the many-faceted “Revolution” But I have to say I feel lucky that the drug of choice, at that time and place, was marijuana. It certainly presents multiple dangers of its own, and I'm not recommending it, but it does not approach alcohol in the potential havoc it wreaked on one's body, behavior, brain, legal status, family life, etc. Of course, most people engage in “normal” drinking in a way that produces little or no harm -- but it's hard to find anything like it at college, at a time of life when the brain is still developing. So, happy new year, and here's to those of us who somehow manage to survive our educations!
