Binge Drinking Common on College Campuses

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Binge drinking on college campuses is common all around the U.S. While some schools may be considered "party schools," it's safe to say that binge drinking takes place on nearly every college campus. Many students, especially Freshmen, see their time in college as a time where they can break free and disregard the rules they may have had at home without any consequences. While many of these students who participate in binge drinking may calm down after college, a fair number go on to have problems with alcohol dependence. The Mark Houston Recovery Center in Texas offers a minimum 90-day recovery program for men with an addiction to alcohol or drugs. If you're one of the college student binge drinkers who've had your life slowly deteriorate from too much alcohol use, our program can get you back on track and start a life of sobriety.

Binge Drinking Statistics

College presidents agree that binge drinking is the most serious problem found on their campuses. In 1999, Harvard University’s School of Public Health College Alcohol Study surveyed students at 119 colleges. Here are some of the findings:

• 44% of U.S. college students engaged in binge drinking during the two weeks before the survey

• 51% of the men drank 5 or more drinks in a row

• 40% of the women drank 4 or more drinks in a row

• Students more likely to binge drink are white, age 23 or younger, and are residents of a fraternity or sorority. If they were binge drinkers in high school, they were three times more likely to binge in college.

• The percentage of students who were binge drinkers was nearly uniform from freshman to senior year, even though students under 21 are prohibited from purchasing alcohol.

• Over half the binge drinkers, almost one in four students, were frequent binge drinkers. This means that they binged three or more times in a two-week period.
  

Students cited many reasons for binge drinking. Nearly half claimed that they had been drinking to get drunk. Other reasons were the status associated with drinking, culture of drinking on campus, and peer pressure or academic stress. There are also many alcohol-related problems that can result from such heavy binge drinking. Frequent binge drinkers were 21 more times likely to have missed class, fallen behind in schoolwork, engaged in unplanned sexual activity, gotten in trouble with campus police, damaged property, and driven a car while drunk.

Recovery from Alcohol Addiction with Mark Houston

Beginning college can be stressful for many people, and they may turn to drinking to fit in on campus or become less anxious about the pressures of schoolwork. Before they know it, some of these students are drinking heavily and frequently, and these habits don't always go away after leaving college. However, there is hope. Treatment and recovery centers like the Mark Houston Recovery Center can help those addicted to alcohol get their lives back on track. We can help bring those addicted to alcohol into sobriety.