What is your attitude toward underage drinking?

Parent Cafe
81

<p>Sorry, I posted before I read your response, Toneranger.</p>

<p>I am speaking only for myself, remember. Driving home after drinking has never occured to me as even a potential option, while sober or drunk. I guess I was trained well early on. As for tying sheets together 6 stories up in order to avoid the police… well, um, I don’t think I have to say that that’s never crossed my mind, either. The again, at my school all kids do is put down their drinks and leave the frat. I can’t think of anyone who’s ever been in trouble. I rarely go near the frats, anyway. If you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing, you’re obviously way too drunk, and you should have stopped a long time ago. When I know I’m drunk, I put my drink down (whether empty or full) and stop for the night.</p>

82

<p>corranged - yes, I know you’re speaking for yourself. Unfortunately, there are students who just keep on drinking until they vomit, pass out, or do something really stupid. I went to a “party” school over 20 years ago and blackouts were common - “What did I do last night?” So I know the scene and it’s pretty scary. And it was legal too since the drinking age was 18 at the time. So, yes, I drank, but drinking to excess got old very quickly for me. One horrible hangover was all it took. Looking back on it, I guess I’m blessed to have very little tolerance for alcohol. Now, I worry about my son. He admits that he drinks on the weekends, but like you, he says he doesn’t let it get out of control. I hope that’s true. I talk to him and share some of the threads on this board with him - but he really thinks it all just doesn’t apply to him. I envy the parents who have non-drinkers - they have less to worry about - (although I know that fitting in can be an issue for these students).</p>

83

<p>As far as social events go on the weekends, at least at my school, everyone takes advantage of the comedians/musicians/movie screenings/etc, but we take advantage of them DRUNK. I’m lucky that I’m on a small campus, where many people do not have cars, and everything is within walking distance, so there’s almost no legitimate reason for anyone to pull out their car keys on a Friday or Saturday night.</p>

<p>In addition, I seem to be in a similar situation with corranged - I like being drunk. I like alcohol - I like the warm fuzzies I get when it’s going down (and believe me, in the cold weather around here, it’s nice to go to a party with a little alcohol in your body - it warms you up during the walk!) I like to drink, I like the relaxed feeling I get, the lack of inhibition. Yeah, occasionally I do things I regret later on, but I just chalk it up to life experience. Also, in my group of friends, there really is an emphasis on staying safe. We notice when people pass out, we cut people off when think they’re already drunk enough, we grab cell phones out of hands when people drunk dial, etc. Apparently this is unusual?</p>

<p>Though I do agree with ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad - just last week my roommate went to the hospital with alcohol poisoning after taking six shots. Now I’ve seen her take six shots and be fine before, but something was different tonight. I think another thing that’s really important is not getting people in trouble for having to go to the hospital. I know at my school, if you’re sent to the hospital and you say you drank hard alcohol, you’ll get a strike (which is kind of bad). I don’t think people should be put into the position of having to weigh the costs of calling 911 with the benefits- people’s lives are at stake.</p>

84

<p>I do this stuff for a living. Put aside short-term consequences. About one-third (slightly less) of the students who engaged in binge drinking in the past two weeks will become alcoholics at some point in their lifetimes. It is not from the binge drinking per se, but that binge drinking once in the past two weeks often leads to heavy (near daily) drinking over a longer period of time. Another one-third of the binge drinkers won’t become alcoholics, but will be heavy drinkers as adults. And another third will stop and become moderate drinkers or total abstainers. </p>

<p>In other words, lots of folks who believe they can just stop, can’t.</p>

<p>Now the colleges all know this of course. What kind of educational institution is it that enables illegal behavior on its campuses knowing that it will endanger the futures of 15% or more of its students once they leave?</p>

85

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<p>No young female who cares about her own safety should be taking six shots. It’s insane that this is considered normal. I’ve seen people do it (and a lot more), but it’s really stupid. If you aren’t getting a kick from one shot, then stop drinking for a few weeks and your tolerance will come back down to safer levels. If it’s unthinkable to stop drinking for a few weeks, maybe that’s something to be concerned about.</p>

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<p>If you drink the same amount the next week, then what have you learned from the life experience?</p>

86

<p>"I enjoy drinking, but I certainly don’t go through life in a
haze. I’m on track to either double or triple major
plus get an MEng in 8 semesters, I run marathons for
fun, and generally live life to its fullest. I do not
drink myself into a stupor and waste days, months and
years. Drinking is a recreational activity that I very
much enjoy, but I keep it in its place - drinking only
with friends and only when it won’t interfere with my
other goals (I’m not Bode Miller, I don’t drink before
marathons or prelims). Alcohol hasn’t limited me in
any way, nor has it ever prevented me from achieving
success. I’m sorry that alcohol has caused you such
problems, binx, but I’m not telling you to drink. I’m
just counteracting the anti-alcohol posts that
everyone else seems to have and saying that it is
possible for alcohol to be a positive, enjoyable
thing. That, and also showing that liability wise that
drunk driving (or other dangerous activity after
drinking, like drunk jetskiing) is by far the biggest
problem because it is far easier and far more likely
that someone will drink and drive and kill
themselves/someone else than it is they will drink
enough to stop breathing.</p>

<p>There are plenty of teens who are capable and
competent enough to handle themselves and don’t need
much, if any, supervision; the amount of supervision
necessary depends on the kid. "</p>

<p>"I am ignorant? I can tell you, both statistically and
anecdotally, that it is very rare and comparatively
hard for someone to drink themselves to death. Me and
my friends are all very experienced drinkers, and we
all know exactly how we get when we drink too much, so
we go by those signs. For those we don’t know as well,
we ensure that they throw up (so they don’t absorb any
more alcohol from their stomach) and are responsive
and reasonably coherent to make sure they won’t die.
Given the huge number of teens who drink, and the
amount that many teens drink combined with the risky
drinking patterns inherent in teen drinking (chugging,
taking lots of shots before you can even fully feel
the first one, the list goes on and on), and the
relatively small number of pure alcohol (i.e. stopped
breathing) deaths compared to both the number of
drinkers and the number of people who die from
drinking and driving, it is clear that drinking is
usually only problematic when combined with driving.
Honestly, that’s why I like drinking with experienced
drinkers - it is MUCH harder for someone with a
tolerance to drink themselves dead than it is for a
drinking novice who has no idea of how to drink and
also has no tolerance.</p>

<p>Don’t try to intimidate me with medical facts; I know
most any alcohol related fact backwards and forwards.
I don’t take blind risks, and I’m fully aware of the
risks I take with drinking. In my mind, the benefits
of drinking - the fun, the camaraderie, the burn of
that first shot - vastly outweigh the costs (I’ve paid
my dues for drinking in a number of ways). I learned
as much from drinking/partying during high school as I
did from classes (and I took 14 APs), not to mention
that while a lot of the things I learned in HS I’ll
never really use again (i.e. chemistry), I’ll always
use the skills I learned from drinking/partying (how
to read a situation, a lot about people in general,
etc.) "</p>

<p>corranged, </p>

<p>does this sound reasonable to you? This is the kid that died of alcohol poisoning last December.</p>

87

<p>Mini, do you have any cohort studies that support you 0ne-third argument or is that taking one set of studies and applying it to another group that may well binge in college and then stop and return to a normal pattern??</p>

88

<p>

I’ve never felt an affect after one drink, including the first time I ever had alcohol. Tolerance levels aren’t based solely on drinking habits.</p>

89

<p>I read that last December, nngmm. </p>

<p>Did you think I didn’t know that good people die from alcohol poisoning? That this is new information that will make me suddenly swear off drinking? I’ve never been anywhere close to that level–I’ve never even vomited from drinking before. Alcohol poisoning doesn’t just happen. There are steps leading up to that point, including many times during which a person can make the decision to stop drinking or a friend can make that decision for the person. I’m not going to say that it won’t happen to me because that would be stupid; however, I think it is a very unlikely event given my drinking habits. I make the decision to drink knowing that it has dangers, and though I take steps to prevent those dangers, I realize that it’s not a generally safe activity. </p>

<p>[edited to expand]</p>

90

<p>If your natural tolerance means that you can’t enjoy alcohol without taking six SHOTS (and you don’t weigh 300+ pounds), then perhaps you can’t safely drink to drunkenness.</p>

<p>Kind of like how I can’t safely play tackle football. I just wasn’t designed for it. So I find other ways to have fun.</p>

91

<p>“Mini, do you have any cohort studies that support you 0ne-third argument or is that taking one set of studies and applying it to another group that may well binge in college and then stop and return to a normal pattern?”</p>

<p>No, these are longitudinal studies, reported in JAMA and JAPHA. There have in addition been some very interesting smaller studies following fraternity members for 15 years to see how they turned out. It’s not really “an argument”; just data.</p>

<p>Dawson & Grant have for years been doing some interesteing work with a very long term national longitudinal alcohol epidemiology study on the relationship between age of first use and future dependence. Some new work being done out of my office has been plotting the percentage of 12th graders (in-school youth only) in Washington who, in the past 30 days, drank 6+ days, or had 2 or more bingeing (5 or more drinks in a setting) episodes - 18.1%. What we would like to do is follow-up studies once they get to college and beyond, but alas, no money.</p>

92

<p>Hannah, you said that a tolerance level isn’t safe if the person does not get a kick from one shot. I responded saying that I (and I’m assuming many other people) have never been at the level to get an affect from one drink. An average person should of course feel an affect after six shots.</p>

93

<p>It just seems excessive to predict that about 20% of the grads of most serious drinking schools (60% + binging) would become alcoholics.</p>

94

<p>It’s a little bit less than that (closer to 18%). And, mind you, those are lifetime rates. (A goodly number of that 60% are heavy drinkers currently, and of those, a percentage will meet the DSM-IV criteria of alcoholism now.)</p>

<p>Be aware of course that binge drinking at PSU and UColorado are at the extreme high end of the spectrum (Dartmouth and my alma mater, although very high, are still significantly lower, in the 50-55% range.) More common is around 40%, which would net a 12% lifetime alcoholism rate, give or take. And there are many, many schools - especially urban ones, commuter ones, non-residential, religious, or women’s colleges where the rates are much lower than that.</p>

<p>Which students become alcoholics and which not is highly genetically linked, and we are learning more about that all the time. (So far, no fewer than 7 alleles have been isolated.)</p>

95

<p>Frankly, I can take six shots/drink six beers, and be drunk, but nowhere near throwing up/passing out, let alone serious alcohol poisoning. There’s nothing wrong with me, that’s just my tolerance level. Everyone is built differently. There is a place between being drunk and having alcohol poisoning. You don’t have to choose between being sober and being in the hospital - there’s a happy medium in there.</p>

<p>As far as my friend goes, it was Trick or Drink night at my school, which meant we were having a lot of different kinds of mixed drinks, and EMS was pretty sure that she had had something slipped into her drink, or her body simply wasn’t equipped to handle all the different types of drinks. Not the safest, but not necessarily because of the alcohol.</p>

96

<p>“Which students become alcoholics and which not is highly genetically linked, and we are learning more about that all the time. (So far, no fewer than 7 alleles have been isolated.)”</p>

<p>Just wanted to clarify that the alcoholism rate is NOT linked to binge drinking, but to heavy (near daily) drinking. At issue is the degree to which students at a particular campus who binge drink then become heavy drinkers. I was rather surprised, frankly, that at both Williams and Duke, it is about 60% (according to their own student surveys.) Of the “heavy” drinkers, roughly half (a little bit more) will become alcoholics.</p>

97

<h1>96, so is the theory that people who become addicts do so because of 1) self esteem, 2) peer pressure 3) physical/psychological relief 4) cheaper than the other available alternatives 5) cultural thing with Williams and Duke?</h1>

98

<p>They do so because there are environmental factors (i.e. easy availablity of alcohol, and social acceptability of its use in large amounts) that trigger the already existing genetic possibility. At meetings sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse that I attended two weeks ago, it was clear that there is still some difference of opinion as to whether alcohol/drug addiction can be triggered without an underlying genetic predisposition, and the jury is still out on that one (but moving in the genetics direction.) (Similar questions are being asked about obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.)</p>

<p>As noted, Williams and Duke are NOT the highest (nor really close to the highest - PSU and UColorado would be well higher) in binge drinking, though they would be among the highest among prestige colleges. They, and a range of other prestige colleges that you could easily name, have those elements associated with high rates: rural (not Duke), non-religious, coed, heavy on spectator sports, higher income, residential (few commuters), well below the national average in median age (which is 24.5 for undergrads), fraternities (not Williams), higher numbers of white students. I know of no nationwide data source on “heavy” as opposed to “binge” drinking, though more recent national surveys have begun to ask how many times one has binged in the past two weeks, as opposed to simply whether. </p>

<p>The genetic science is far too young to let us know anything about college self-selection bias.</p>

99

<p>My 2cents on under-age drinking:
there is no need for high schoolers to be drinking. No excuses.
Over-18s in college, that I can understand. I think the partying and excess is stupid, but moderate drinking sounds fine to me. I know people who pull that off, but sadly I know a lot more who are the typical college students.</p>

100

<p>Local anecdote:
Bright, way-too-pretty local girl caught in several “incidents” through HS, and parents rationalized their through, only really getting angry when she turned up at Senior Honors Convocation and was so excited to receive her award that she hugged the vice principal with vodka breath. Oh, well, going through graduation ceremony is overrated anyway.</p>

<p>Parents pulled her home from flagship school before classes started, as she ended up in ER with dangerous blood alcohol level. Girl is getting help. Maybe it’s not just a phase; maybe not everyone does it.</p>

<p>Mother’s solace: little sister is a much easier child. Little sister (HS sophomore) passenger in SUV rollover last week. Alcohol in vehicle.</p>

<p>No, no, no, don’t kid yourself about teens & drinking.</p>