Binge Drinking on College Campuses

Most students are introduced to a whole new world when coming to college. For many, it is the first time we are on our own. College is a very different culture than high school. It takes time for us to get used to the college lifestyle. For many the college lifestyle often consists of; partying multiple nights of the week, consuming excessive amounts of alcohol and a lack of sleep. Consuming excessive amounts of alcohol in a short period of time is the definition of binge drinking, and this is what college students do all the time.

While drinking in college doesn’t sound like a big deal. However, I have personally experienced the effects of binge drinking in college and I have isolated some of the causes.

One factor for binge drinking in college is the challenge of being independent. Students starting college are no longer having the parental guidance that we are accustomed to before starting school. Therefore, students are forced to make their own decisions, and this makes us responsible for our own wellbeing. Being responsible is hard at times, although it can be fun at times, but when I first came to college, I would stay up late, play on my ps4, forget to do my homework and waist my time socializing. I had an issue of being responsible and handling my independence. This played a role in my alcoholism because I didn’t make the right decisions with my new freedom. When I was offered the opportunity to drink in high school I didn’t turn it down because I wanted to be cool and fit in. When I got to college and realized that nobody was looking over me anymore, the amount of opportunities I had to drink were especially high because there is more alcohol.

College has a lot of alcohol that is readily available to students such as myself. Therefore, when i got to college I made friends with guys that were three years older than me and so them being three years older they were able to get alcohol. On the other hand, I also found out that I can buy a fake i.d. that says I’m 21, and all it cost was 50 dollars. Thus, access to alcohol was easily available when we would go to friends’ houses or sometimes, I would just go to get my own if I had the gas money. This contributed to my binge drinking because of the excess amounts of alcohol I could get my hands on. Now with alcohol and peer pressure to participate in the party culture I was on my way to more dangerous drinking habits.

The actual start of my binge drinking began with peer pressure from my older friends and the older girls that I liked, also the influence of the party culture. We all get that feeling where we want to be apart of something, so we will do anything to look cool and fit in. My first college party was with some friends and we were playing this drinking game called quarters. The object of this game was to get the other people drunk by bouncing a quarter in a cup that had alcohol in it. When I was sitting there drinking the cup, because of the game I found out that I ended up liking the game and that ended up leading me even further down my drinking habits. After that night it ended up becoming a routine for us to grab alcohol and play such games as quarters. These games contributed to a lot of binge drinking, it also lead to me driving drunk back to campus one night and I ended up doing four hundred dollars of damage to my car. Some nights I would try to tell my friends that we should not drink tonight, but they would insist that I would be missing out on the college experience. Unfortunately, when I was trying to have just a few beers, those few beers turned into us getting blackout drunk.

Eventually, this became a normal part of my college experience, drinking heavily and partying during the week nights. The routine partying and binge drinking led to several consequences. Initially my binge drinking affected me financially and physically. A night of heavy drinking was not only expensive but also physically draining. I would have hangovers with headaches that made it hard for me to get out of bed. Therefore, these hangovers would also interfere with my training because it lessoned my focus and output. Recurring hangovers eventually kept me from waking up for class and not studying when I should have been. This later trickled into me not doing well on my academics.

Academically binge drinking hurt my overall success as a student. Had I been drinking less I could have had more time to study increasing my understanding of the class material. I also would have missed less class than I did because I would not be hungover. Not to mention the time that I spent drinking could have been used for essential sleep. Proper sleep is necessary for focus in particularly the classroom. My first semester at college I was binge drinking almost every day and it really showed in my academics. With my academics going downhill I was not motivated to bring them back up. I just let my grades drop and I just constantly drank every day, that was the only thing that was getting me through. Therefore, my actions of me drinking every day and not getting my grades up, I was put on academic probation and couldn’t play rugby the whole next semester. When my academics start going downhill, I also noticed my mental health also going down; I started treating other people with disrespect and I was acting up and getting in trouble by campus security.

While most people think that binge drinking helps masks the depressing feeling or the anger we have, it will only increase those feelings and make us more aggressive. I have personally been diagnosed with depression and I have had suicidal thoughts. I have tried drinking to get away from those bad feelings and all drinking does is make me even sadder than I was before. Therefore, mental health is one of the biggest problems in the world for college students having depression and suicidal thoughts. Mental health also cause stress and messes up our social life by making us more likely to get mad at someone or something easier and end up either starting a fight or breaking something.

Consuming excessive amounts of alcohol in a short period of time is the definition of binge drinking, and this is what college students do all the time. However, i have personally experienced the effects of binge drinking in college and I have isolated some of the causes. One factor for binge drinking in college is the challenge of being independent. When I was offered the opportunity to drink in high school, I didn’t turn it down because I wanted to be cool and fit in. When I got to college and realized that nobody was looking over me anymore, the amount of opportunities I had to drink were especially high because there is more alcohol. College has a lot of alcohol that is readily available to students such as myself. Thus, access to alcohol was easily available when we would go to friends’ houses or sometimes I would just go to get my own if I had the gas money. This contributed to my binge drinking because of the excess amounts of alcohol I could get my hands on. Now with alcohol and peer pressure to participate in the party culture I was on my way to more dangerous drinking habits.

The actual start of my binge drinking began with peer pressure from my older friends and older girls that I liked, and the influence of the party culture. The object of this game was to get the other people drunk by bouncing a quarter in a cup that had alcohol in it. When I was sitting there drinking the cup, because of the game I found out that I ended up liking the game and that ended up leading me even further down my drinking habits. Had I been drinking less I could have had more time to study increasing my understanding of the class material. When my academics start going downhill, I also noticed my mental health also going down; I started treating other people with disrespect and I was acting up and getting in trouble by campus security. While most people think that binge drinking helps masks the depressing feeling or the anger we have, it will only increase those feelings and make us more aggressive. I have tried drinking to get away from those bad feelings and all drinking does is make me even sadder than I was before."

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