Binge drinking common in teens and adults (makes you want to cry)

[ensho]

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/05/binge-drinking-common-in-teens-and-adults/?hpt=T2


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More than one in four high school students and adults aged 18 to 34 years had at least one episode of binge drinking a month, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Specifically, 2 out of 3 high school students and almost 1 in 3 adults who drink alcohol also binge drink, the CDC said. Binge drinking is a serious health problem no matter how often people engage in the practice according to Dr.Robert Brewer, study author and alcohol prevention expert at the CDC. "Binge drinking at any level is associated with increase harm to health– similar to smoking– any is undesirable," he said.

"90 percent of the alcohol consumed by high school kids is consumed in the course of binge drinking and more than half of the alcohol consumed by adults is consumed in the course of binge drinking," said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.

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Excessive alcohol use, including binge drinking, is the third leading cause of preventable death in America, according to the CDC. More than 79,000 lives are cut short by alcohol each year.

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79,000 deaths each year!!!!

yet comics like Chelsea Lately talk about drinking all the time and the audience claps and approves. her guests sometimes give her bottles of liquor as gifts.

bizarre

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I'm starting to think the American lifestyle encourages orgies in food and alcohol.

Excessiveness is the rule rather than the exception.

[Donnachaidh]

2. and how many movies in the past decade have been *party till you puke* stories?

Marketing and Hollywood make drinking *glamourous* on screen and in magazines. The reality of binge drinking is, at the least, spending an evening hugging the porcelain bus and being sick the next day. At the worst is a metallic belt wrapped around a tree that was once a car. And that car contained the remains of the binge drinking buddies.

Our kids have been spoonfed this lifestyle since they were born. If parents don't pay attention, the kids believe the lie.

[TheKentuckian]

3. They consider five drinks a binge. Heads would explode at the sight of a hooch night in the day

[Hosnon]

5. Yeah - the definition has always seemed off to me. Almost as if a non-drinker came up with it.

But, excessive drinking is a problem in our society.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. Agree. What they call 'binge' drinking I always just called 'drinking'.

I mean, who the hell quits after two beers?

The entire point of alcohol is intoxication. It's what humans (and monkeys and elephants and many, many other mammals) have always done. The problem comes from people not understanding their own limits. Nobody WANTS to drink until they die - nobody INTENDS to drive into an oncoming SUV. It's just the overall excessiveness of our society as expressed through alcohol.

[Hosnon]

10. I agree - except

with your statement that the entire point of alcohol is intoxication (unless you're defining that very broadly). Generally, alcohol should be used as a social lubricant, not to get shit-faced (although there are times when I think it's fine, e.g., "occasionally", weddings).

[KurtNYC]

23. 5 drinks = blood alcohol of 0.1% = drunk driving standard

and many states have lowered it to 0.08% (4 drinks)

alcohol has an anesthetic effect at low levels but a narcotic effect at higher ones. the goal of binge drinking is to get the narcotic effect. the narcotic effect is what leads to depression, belligerence, violence, car crashes, passing out, alcohol poisoning and other stupidity.

[MH1]

12. 'consumed quickly over about 2 hours' - big diff to 5 over the course of an evening

[Dulcinea]

19. We used to call that "partying."

In our society, your life is expected to revolve around your job, or around looking for a job if you don't have one. (Good luck with that.)

Smoking, while unhealthy, relieves stress. But Corporate America decided smoking was bad, because it costs them money. So, we can't smoke to relieve stress anymore.

What's left? Food and booze. That's what we do for escape and stress relief.

5 drinks? Sorry, but that's not that much!

[KurtNYC]

4. over 100 people are killed every day by drunks in cars

Used to live next door to a drunk driver. He became an insurance agent so that he could keep his insurance and his license after too many busts in too little time. He would buy big cars like older Cadillacs because he knew he was going to be driving drunk and he was going to hit someone with the car. Sober people in smaller cars pay the price with spinal cord injuries or worse while he would get his car fixed (if it even needed it) and go right on crashing.

I wonder what percentage of police calls between 11pm and 6am are the result of alcohol?

Less than 20% of drunks beat alcoholism. For the rest it is mental illness or death -- doesn't seem like fodder for humor (unless of course the audience is drunk). I hear they can't eat much of the food that comes off the set from Emeril because he pours in bottles of booze while the audience cheers.

[ensho]

7. kick

nt

[krabigirl]

8. The alcohol companies must love this.

[svsu]

9. These drinkers do not have personal control or they did and lost it.

[MH1]

13. I think almost all people are susceptible to alcoholism (loss of personal control over alcohol)

if they drink too much, too young, and/or too often.

It changes the brain and I don't think anyone knows how to change it back.

Having a close personal friend who was once a wonderful guy and is now ... something else ... due to alcoholism, it is an incredible tragedy.

[svsu]

14. once it takes a hold of someone, its hard to give it up...

[KurtNYC]

26. it is like an internal beast that grows larger when fed alcohol

the beast must be starved to death. And that is far easier said than done.

To everyone else the alcoholic's problem is that they drink too much and too often but to the alcoholic the problem is everyone telling them to stop drinking. Alcoholism is the one disease that tells the afflicted that they don't have a disease.

[Taitertots]

11. Start holding bars accountable for making sure drunks get home

Drive past any bar parking lot at night and it becomes obvious what is causing drunk driving deaths.

Other than that, if people want to drink themselves to death they should be free to do so.

[ensho]

15. interesting that there is not one rec for this thread

very interesting

[AngryAmish]

16. Someone has to say it - Drinking is awesome

I love drinking. I do it most days. Booze is my friend.

[ensho]

17. I feel sorry for you

nt

[AngryAmish]

18. No worries.

Have you ever had to suffer through a boring conversation, meeting or presentation? If you know these things are coming up, just have a couple pops first and they get more interesting - or at least the suffering is dulled.

Do you ever notice that all the great stories you tell almost always start with "...and by the time we got there we were loaded"? Or are your stories just dull?

[Dulcinea]

20. Sometimes it's just fun.

It dulls the pain of existence sometimes.

[kenny blankenship]

27. Booze will listen when no one else will, right?

You may want to reconsider your relationship with our mutual friend. He and I were closer during the 8 years of the Bushler putsch. I still keep in touch, but I came to recognize that he couldn't be relied upon for aid and comfort past a very low threshold. A little more than a little quickly gets to be too much. We still get together to have some laughs, we still commiserate, but we're not going home together.

[Bugenhagen]

28. Yay booze! (nt)

[ieoeja]

30. Hear, hear! This thread is just another example of American Puritanism.

It shocks me how much anti "demon rum" we run into on DU. I expect this from the Religious Right. But from the Liberal Left?

This is one of those issues where Liberals and Progressives seem to part ways.

[Xithras]

31. Thank FSM....I was getting worried for a moment.

I was just waiting for someone to break out with a thread calling for a repeal of the 21st Amendment.

There's nothing wrong with drinking. Heck, there's nothing wrong with getting drunk. The fact that SOME PEOPLE behave poorly while drunk is no reason to whip out the pitchforks. Punish those who behave badly, and leave everyone else alone.

Xith <--enjoys watching the sunset off his patio every day after work, with a martini in his hand.

[bemildred]

21. Read the comments.

" If Binge drinking is defined as 4 or more drinks for women and 5 or more for men, consumed quickly over about 2 hours," then literally everyone i know, including myself, binge drinks."

"We need better recreational drugs. Tobacco kills over 2 million people a year. Alcohol abuse kills half a million. Street drugs kill about 25 thousand. Americans are going to use drugs. We have fought the war on drugs for forty years, and during that time any high school kid with money in her purse could buy any drug in any city in America 24/7. Our current policy is just not working, to put it mildly."

[JonLP24]

22. Unfair to single Chelsea Lately out for this

A lot of hosts talk about drinking time-to-time.

[Name removed]

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[bullwinkle428]

25. You go into a grocery store after work, and you see these guys

buying 12-packs or cases of beer ALL THE TIME, along with a bag of Doritos or something like that. You KNOW they're going through most of that, if not the whole fucking thing that evening! I just pray they pass out for the next several hours following that consumption...

[KurtNYC]

29. there is a reason that alcohol is sold in 12 drink packages

a fifth of vodka is 12 drinks btw.

The reason is: One could drink all 12 drinks within a short period of time and not die. And you can't get up and buy more alcohol tomorrow if you are dead so it is packaged in a less than lethal dose. No one knows better than alcoholic beverage makers that alcoholism is "the overwhelming compulsion to drink" so the only thing that will stop a binger is running out of alcohol. Only a smaller percentage of the population will die with a blood alcohol level of .24% or below.

One metabolises one drink every 2 hours so 12 drinks is a 24-hour supply of drunkeness. For those who are habituated to alcohol a liter (16 drinks) and then 1.75 liter bottles are less than lethal doses.

[marions ghost]

32. most serious alcoholics

start with youthful binge drinking. It's not cool. It's pathetic.

Find other "highs." They do exist...is all I can say.

Couple of drinks once in a while, no problem. Regular bingeing--BIG problem.

[Name removed]

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