The headlines are full of the horrific story of the Penn State Hazing incident, which left one boy, Timothy Piazza, dead and 18 – yes, 18 others charged in his death. As a drug counselor, as a mom of a boy about to embark on his own college journey to Baylor University, and simply as a human being that works in a field to help others, this binge drinking story is rough to read. And to comprehend.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of a person to 0.08 percent or above. This typically happens when men consume 5 or more drinks, and when women consume 4 or more drinks, in about a 2-hour time span.
My own binge drinking story took place in a dorm room at Snyder-Phillips Hall, on the campus of Michigan State University. I was 19. We planned “Century Club Night” with my brother floor on a Saturday. For those unfamilar with this game, Century Club consists of everyone sitting with a shot glass (typically 1.5 oz), and filling it with beer. Every minute for 100 minutes, you take a shot of beer. Sounds easy, right? Think again. This equates to just short of 9 cans of beer in just over 1.5 hours.
As a small person in stature (at the time, I was 5’2″ and clocked in at about 110 pounds) and not much of a drinker, I remember dropping out after about 21 or so shots. (For the record, that’s about 3 beers. In 21 minutes. Smart, right?) And I was wrecked. Completely, utterly wrecked. It could have gone way, way worse had I tried to keep up. I could barely walk after 21 shots of beer. Thank goodness I didn’t try.
But I still remember the peer-pressure. I remember people calling me “lame” and “light-weight” and goading me to continue. I honestly don’t remember who (if any) finished our Century Club Night. I just remember I felt horrible the rest of the weekend and vowed never to undertake in any more drinking “games.” Of course, at the time, I wasn’t thinking about binge drinking. All I know is we were college kids, doing what I thought college kids were supposed to be doing, buying shot glasses and calculating how much beer we would need for one shot per person for 100 minutes.
According to the CDC, about 90% of the alcohol consumed by youth under the age of 21 in the United States is in the form of binge-drinking. I have a client that tells me that her friends at school (a large Southern University) drink to the point of blacking out. On the regular. I shudder to think of these girls passed out, semi-conscious, on couches, beds, and God-Knows-Where-Else with their cognitions distorted, their inhibitions down and possibly no one watching out for them – or in some cases, not even knowing where they are located.
Over the past weekend, I was speaking with another college student home for the summer, and she told me that some of her friends – male and female – always, and she said always, plan to “drink until they pass out” on the weekends. She and I talked candidly about the dangers involved with this planned behavior. We discussed how many drinks are appropriate to consume within a particular time frame, the importance of drinking water with alcohol, eating enough before any alcohol is consumed and knowing, quite frankly, when to say when.
Parents, I beg you to warn your kids: binge drinking is no joke. Consuming many drinks in a short amount of time can have deadly consequences. The difference, literally, between life or death could be that one extra drink. Encouraging others to do so is just plain wrong. Watching others do so, without intervening (as the 18 charged at Penn State), could land you in jail.
These conversations need to be held, early (in elementary and middle schoool) and often (during high school and college).
I think about the Piazza family and how they’ll never get to watch their son Timothy graduate college, land his first job, walk down the aisle, start a family and so much more. I think about my decision to drop out of Cenury Club back when I was 19, the same age as Timothy, and what might have happened if I had not.
Lives can be ruined, cut short and everything in between by binge drinking. This needs to stop before another tragic headline emerges.
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