As high school seniors gathered their diplomas and celebrated a long-awaited graduation, they began preparing for a new, exciting stage of their lives – college. Many of these students-to-be leave home for the first time in their lives, making their own choices and enjoying freedom from their parents’ judgments. But along with the new freedom, also come new dangers that they should know about. A common and harmful one is drinking.
Often pressured to fit in, new students may easily be influenced by others and may be naive to the dangers of alcohol. While drinking and partying is typically considered as a part of college culture, students need to understand the risk of consuming this addictive substance.
Some interesting statistics about college binge drinking
Alcohol problems cause academic problems
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, about 1 in 4 college students report academic consequences of drinking, including missing class, falling behind the class, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall.
Based on the national survey conducted by the same institute, binge drinkers who consume alcohol at least three 3 per week were 6 times more likely than those who drank but never binged to perform poorly on a test or project and 5 times more likely to have missed a class.
But this is not as bad as it gets.
Death from alcohol poisoning
Consequences of college drinking don’t only affect the grades but also students’ families, and college communities at large. Researchers from NIAAA estimated that each year about 1,825 college students between the ages 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor-vehicle crashes.
Assault
Another data showed that about 696,000 students between ages of 18 and 24 were assaulted by another student who has been drinking.
Sexual assault
97,000 students of the same age range reported alcohol-related sexual assault or rape.
Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)
According to U.S. National Institute of Health, about 20 percent of college students meet the criteria for AUD. AUD is a chronic relapsing brain disease characterized by compulsive alcohol use, loss of control over alcohol intake, and a negative emotional state when not using. In other words, alcohol addiction. Becoming an alcoholic in college is surely not the best way to begin your life.
Other consequences
Aside from those described above, other consequences include suicide attempts, unsafe sex, vandalism, driving under the influence of alcohol, property damage, and involvement with police.
Alcohol and Heart condition
You cannot surprise anyone by the fact that heavy drinking damages health. However, not everyone knows exactly the extent to which drinking affects the body and especially how much damage it does to the body’s main organ – the heart.
The heart is comprised of four chambers. In a healthy person, all of these chambers beat in an organized rhythm, constantly pumping the blood through the body’s circulatory system. Health concerns arise when the pace of a heartbeat becomes erratic or irregular. And this is when the dangers of atrial fibrillation come in.
Atrial fibrillation
Atrial fibrillation is irregular heartbeat that typically leads to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and many other heart-related complications. According to the information provided by the Elevate Addiction Services, alcohol abuse increases person’s risk of atrial fibrillation by about 60 percent.
Complications from atrial fibrillation.
According to the American Heart Association, about 15 to 20 percent of people who suffer strokes have atrial fibrillation. That is because if a blood clot breaks loose and enters the bloodstream, it can lodge inside an artery that leads to the brain, which causes a stroke.
Recovering from alcohol addiction
It’s never too late to choose a right path. And path might lead right to the Elevate Addiction Services, which is dedicated to transforming the despair of addiction into a purposeful life of confidence, self-respect, and happiness. Elevate has two beautiful locations – one in the very private Santa Cruz mountains and another near Lake Tahoe Basin, both of which are perfect places to overcome addiction and face the mental health issues that go along drug and alcohol abuse.
Elevate’s flexible addiction treatment programs challenge clients physically and emotionally sending the back to the world as sober, productive members of society.
Sources:
Northern California Holistic Based Drug and Alcohol Rehab Centers
Alcohol Abuse and Its Link to Atrial Fibrillation and Cardiac Arrhythmia
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-use-disorders
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2701090/#
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/