Drinking issue at Dartmouth!

mini
Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:19:24 +0000

The most expensive drug out there is the old, unreformulated OxyContin, with a street value of $80 per 80 mg pill. In our state, as unreformulated OxyContin gets scarcer, we are seeing both high school and college students turn to heroin (black tar heroin in our state is very cheap, about $10 per). Our treatment admissions for those under age 18 for heroin are at an all-time high; and our publicly funded treatment programs for heroin/opiate treatment are totally full. The largest group receiving such treatment are now ages 18-24; and probably double that number are receiving buprenorphine treatment through private docs and agencies.

This is my professional field of expertise. Roughly 50% (actually a little more) of Dartmouth’s student body binge drank in the past two weeks. If Dartmouth is like other schools, first-years actually drank a little less than upperclassmen. Binge drinking is 5 or more drinks in one “episode” - the reality from what we know from the experimental data is that the average is likely closer to 8 or 9.

Of that 50%, roughly 6 out of 10 (or 30% of the student body) are heavy drinkers - either three or more binge episodes in the past two weeks, or more than two drinks a day near daily. Of those, roughly two-thirds (16-18%) of the student body will end up with either a significant problem at some time in their life with alcohol, or alcoholism. This will include MANY currently high achieving students, with good internships and excellent job opportunities. (Alcoholics aren’t stupid: they are alcoholic.) (It should be noted that there is not a direct relationship between alcoholism and binge drinking; there IS a direct relationship with heavy drinking.)

And NO, not all schools are the same - in fact they aren’t even close. When anyone suggests that, it’s a copout. The rates at schools that might on the surface seem very similar can be quite different.