THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2009
NEWS
5A
Students at a house party on Friday play drinking games during which individuals can drink 3 to 4 beers in 30 min. Approximately 25 percent of college students nationwide have self-reported a poorer personal academic performance because of excessive drinking.
Andrew Hoxey/KANSAN
**Anwar Hoseky/KANSAN**
Students who binge drink regularly may begin to lose brain function. According to a 2008 survey, more than half of undergraduate at the University binge drink.
"Especially in college, everyone thinks, 'I'm young and I'm only doing this in college so it isn't going to happen to me.' The internal effects are things you don't really see, but they're happening."
BRIDGET HEINE Peer Health Educator
grass roots student efforts, is a lingering challenge, Tuttle said. She said currently the only organized student group she knows of formally trying to combat binge drinking on campus was the Peer Health Educators.
Jenny McKee, the director of the group, said although it has a series of topics it tries to bring to students' awareness, alcohol abuse is one of its central focuses.
"It's a national epidemic." McKee said "It truly is"
One of the 25 Peer Health Educators this fall, Bridget Heine, said she typically spends 12 hours a week trying to educate her peers on alcohol abuse and other health related subjects. She also said she recognizes, however, that the group still had a lot of awareness to raise and common misunderstandings to disprove
"There are physical effects, but not a lot of people really think about those too much," Heine said. "Especially in college, everyone thinks, I'm young and I'm only doing this in college so it isn't going to happen to me.' The internal effects are things you don't really see, but they're happening."
regarding alcohol.
HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
Brown said as she and other researchers at UCSD continue uncover results about these effects and that she hoped they could soon provide guidelines for how much a person could drink before causing damage. She said that, even more importantly, she hoped they would discover what the recovery process is for those who have already suffered brain damage from
"I would say probably within the next year, we will have enough cases studied longitudinally where we'll be able to submit something to one of the scientific journals," Brown said. "Certainly we want to get this information out as quickly as we can."
Karen Hansen, doctor of psychology for the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health Care System and co-researcher with Brown on alcohol abuse research, said a good test students could try now to determine whether they are damaging their brain is to check for hangover symptoms after they drink. She said common hang-over symptoms — which include headache, thirst, fatigue, depression, difficulty sleeping, irritability, nausea and vomiting — are usually indicators of underlying brain damage.
binge drinking and what, if anything could expedite healing.
"If you're a heavy drinker that has regular hangovers or withdraw symptoms, there's a 95 percent chance that your brain is affected," Hansen said. "The more hangovers, the heavier the symptoms, the more times you have blackouts, the more the damage is occurring."
Hansen said any brain damage from drinking is particularly dangerous for young adults because the human brain continues to develop through age 30. She said misconception that only older adults need to worry about brain damage couldn't be more false.
"It's really the opposite, that the adolescent brain is more vulnerable to the effects of heavy drinking than the adult brain," Brown said. "That's a little scary because typically when adolescents drink, even though they don't drink as often as adults, they drink on average about twice as much."
Teresa King. Lawrence gastroenterologist, said other negative effects, such as liver disease, normally arise in older patients. She said she has seen patients younger than 30, however, who drank heavily before, during and after college and are already showing symptoms of organ damage.
"I have seen it in young people." King said. "You can have things happen long before it's diagnosed because it doesn't
Andrew Hoxey/KANSAN
Andrew Hoxley/KANSAN Drinking games have become a common occurrence at parties, but the consequences of such excess drinking can take its toll. Students who experience hangovers after a night of drinking may be showing signs of brain damage.
What is binge drinking?
Binge drinking is defined as bring a person's blood alcohol content of .08 percent or more. In the past 30 years, binge drinking by U.S.college-aged women has increased by 40 percent.
.08 BAC = five or more drinks
Women:
Drink less and still get drunk
Suffer more damaging affects on the liver
Have a greater likelihood of becoming addicted
... and in fewer years of heaving drinking, develop:
1. Nerve damage
2. Cirrhosis of the liver
3. Reduced heart strength
Sources: Kathryn Tuffie, associate vice provest, and the National Institute on Alkohol Abuse and Alkoholism Web site.
"If you're a heavy drinker that has regular hangovers or withdraw symptoms, there's a 95 percent chance that your brain is affected. The more hangovers, the heavier the symptoms ... the more damage is occuring."
cause any outward signs."
"I didn't walk into the program necessarily wanting to stop using and drinking." Ben said. "I walked in wanting to stop hurting. And then, after a while, I finally found out I couldn't do both. I couldn't live a better way of life and use."
Hansen said she eventually hoped her findings could help deter the mental and physical self-destruction among high school and college students.
Brown said she thought in the college setting in particular, where students work to develop their minds, learning about the tremendous step backward binge drinking could be in this process couldn't help but have an affect.
In the three sober years since Ben quit
"People change their behavior when they know what they do causes problems for them," Brown said. "There is such a thing as designated drivers now because people know drinking affects their driving. If people knew drinking affects their thinking abilities, maybe that would help them make better decisions when they drink."
A STORY OF RECOVERY
Ben said it eventually took legal trouble and a 12-step fellowship, through a diversion program, to bring about his first dry day in more than a year when he was a freshman. By then, he said, it didn't matter any longer that the others in the fellowship were all older than he was. Their common struggle fostered the support he needed to start stripping alcohol use from his life, despite his resistance at first.
KAREN HANSEN Doctor of psychologv
Ben recognizes that he is not a typical junior. He is older, and so are most of his friends from the 12-step fellowship he has joined in Lawrence since he arrived. His new hobbies of harmonica, reading and exercising are atypical weekend night activities for undergraduates, some of whom might prefer to slam shots or frequent the college bar scene instead.
In Lawrence, he attended the University for three straight semesters, starting in the fall of '07, but took a year off to work before enrolling to return this spring.
drinking, he has taken a roundabout rout eto arriving at his junior year of college. He brought his 1.8 GPA up two entire grade points by the following semester but then moved to Lawrence to find a new setting without a personal history of regret.
But he also knows he lives differently now, in part, because he has a darker past, a past that will always be a part of him that he calls disease without a cure. Ben said he has accepted that he will have to continue to fight that disease for the rest of his life. But he said one of his greatest hopes was that his story would affect others who binge drink before they too suffer like he has.
"There's no cure you can give me to make me never want to use again." Ben said. "There's no magic formula. There are no magic words."
Follow Ray Segebrecht at twitter.com/
renebrecht.
— Edited by Abbey Strusz