Yes, I remember reading that binge drinking as defined as drinking 4 or 5 drinks per x time period has remained constant or dropped, but binge drinking defined as drinking 10 or more drinks per x time period has skyrocketed. If that is true, it’s not hard to believe that blackouts are more common now.
The Alcohol Blackout In the war against campus sexual assault, why are we not talking about drinking
I’ll admit to having had a handful of blackouts and brownouts back in the day. And I was (and still am) a relatively wimpy partyer.
All of mine occurred when drinking hard liquor and consuming a bunch of drinks in a short period of time. Since I’m a big guy, I guess I can’t get the pre-requisite BAC spike by drinking just beer and wine.
Much easier to turn out the lights where a 120 pound girl pre-games vodka or tequila. Especially on an empty stomach.
“Pre-gaming” wasn’t a thing in my day, we simply had drinks when we got there. It was legal for us to do so from 18 on.
I suspect that a good number of the cases where young women think they have been roofied are situations where the backlog of rapidly consumed alcohol starts flooding into the bloodstream.
A lot more kids are being brought to the emergency room for alcohol poisoning nowadays, something that was rare in my day. Seems to me the evidence is clear that students who drink are consuming much more alcohol now than drinkers did thirty years ago.
But how many of those kids being brought to emergency rooms actually have alcohol poisoning, and how many of them would simply sleep it off if put to bed? I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be taken to the ER, but it may be that kids are more likely to call for help now than in the past.
I am inclined to think, though, that blackouts may be more common now because of pre-gaming, and what I perceive to the hard liquor replacing beer in many college situations.
It’s my impression-- I don’t have data to back it up right now-- that more college students are dying of alcohol poisoning now than died thirty years ago (adjusting for the numbers of students now versus thirty years ago, yadda yadda). Which, if true, would suggest that a significant portion of the students brought to the hospital for alcohol poisoning were at risk for death or brain damage.
Some manifestations of this like an alcohol-laden house/apartment party is highly dependent on opportunity, regional peer culture, and to some extent SES.
Where I grew up, there wouldn’t have been the opportunity to have such house parties unless the parents were participating themselves and there was enough money/willingness to prioritize spending on large stashes of alcohol**.
Most families lived in comparatively tiny cramped apartments* in a neighborhood where older neighbors/adults and local business owners and cops would be like multiple boolaHIs ready to clamp down or even shut down the party before it begins.
Also, several neighbors were military vets from WWII/Korea/Vietnam who were no-nonsense about it…especially the 20 year career Marine Vietnam Vet and former drill sergeant who was superstrict with his son and a “Tiger parent” who wanted to push his then 7-8 year old son to attend one of the FSAs…preferably Annapolis.
- Not exactly the accommodations even kids in our old neighborhood would regard as good ones to hold a house party. Especially when there were multiple watchful neighbors ready to come to shut such parties down before they began.
** Been getting lots of free bottles/cans of beer/malt liquor from friends and neighbors lately after parties or casual social gatherings. Even the supposedly cheap stuff like Budweiser or Olde English 800 caused me sticker shock…$1.79 per bottle for the former and nearly $3 for a 40oz bottle of the latter?!! And the 6 pack of Sierra Nevada IPAs goes for around $12 and that’s considered reasonable/cheap for higher end beers.
Dude, I’d rather save up my money for other things or for special occasions…a large bottle of sangria I can share with family and friends during the holidays. Also, there’s no way most of my childhood friends or HS classmates could have afforded to buy enough beers/liquors for a small gathering of 2-3…not to say a party with 30+ teens.
I really think the difference is drinking beer vs hard liquor. At least in Ohio, when I was growing up it was legal to drink beer at 18/19 and then hard liquor at 21. Typically there was no reason to break the law and drink hard liquor when you could get drunk on beer. The beauty of that is you can absolutely feel the buzz coming on with beer and not so much hard liquor. I REALLY believe the drinking age for beetpr should go back to 19. Learn to drink alcohol with beer. Honestly, I drank my fair share in college but never felt the need to drink hard liquor. Just drank from a keg all night!!!
I don’t remember anyone blacking out either, though there were the occasional drinking and vomiting and I am sure there were hangovers. I never had hangovers, and never threw up, I know I’d occasionally have six or seven mixed drinks over the course of an evening - which would be a good four or more hours. We used to make a killer punch for parties in grad school that occasionally did the unwary in.
I never had a good sense of what the local kids were doing since neither of my kids likes liquor. I don’t understand where that came from since both their parents do, though we stick mostly to wine and beer these days.
Part of this is the need for the subset of undergraduates heavily into the drinking subculture on some campuses…especially young males to “prove how tough they are” by showing they can down more hard liquor than others.
Never really got the appeal of that mostly due to the fact I grew up in a neighborhood where the presence of alcohol and drug addicts who were homeless and acting dubiously* were widespread enough that drinking/drugging was associated by many of us kids with ending up like them. Something which wasn’t exactly an appealing prospect for most of us kids.
- Mugging people, burglarizing homes & businesses, etc to feed their addictions.
28 "I really think the difference is drinking beer vs hard liquor. The beauty of that is you can absolutely feel the buzz coming on with beer and not so much hard liquor. I REALLY believe the drinking age for beer should go back to 19. Learn to drink alcohol with beer."
I’ve been saying this for a long time.
A case of beer is 288 total fluid ounces that contains 14 ounces of alcohol.
A handle of vodka is 59 total fluid ounces that contains 24 ounces of alcohol. Costs the same (or less) than the beer. It is by far the better mousetrap for pre-gaming and underage drinking on the DL.
Just saying thank you, @cobrat, for pointing out that what’s generalizable across one group is not necessarily generalizable across all groups.
(Doesn’t mean we’re not going to do it, of course, it just means it’s kind of a pointless exercise.)
There was plenty of parties back in the early seventies when i was in high school in my neighborhood. Parents had large and stocked liquor cabinets and were often away, beer was easy to get since 18 year olds could buy it. Pot wasn’t easy to get. My first drink was a martini, my parents always had a pitcher of them in the bar fridge and I don’t drink much and never did because I don’t like feeling out of control. That said, I don’t recall anyone blacking out or being taken to the hospital, but we also didn’t drink whipped cream flavored or any flavored vodka either, mostly beer. And most of “us girls” weren’t all that worried about calories, my youngest son says the girls drink Vodka because it has less calories than beer. In their crowd the buys may do some shots, but most of the guys drink beer. Lots of it.