I'M SHMACKED:
Alcohol Abuse in College It’s a Saturday morning. You’ve woken up with a dizzying headache, an aversion to light and sound, and a crippling desire to remain in bed
and sleep the pain away. “Are you ok” and “What happened last night” are blowing up
your phone, which of course is close to dead.
You haven’t changed your clothes from last night. Your dry mouth is begging for water, your body is begging for Advil, your mind is attempting desperately to remember….
Now change Saturday to Thursday. Or Friday.
Or Sunday. Does the rest still apply? If so, what is your drinking an excuse for, if anything?
Why is alcohol such an essential part of the
college social experience? Did you have fun last night if you can’t even remember it? How
frequently is alcohol abuse masked as “just having good ole college fun”?
Let’s have a conversation about binge drinking.
No, not the conversation between you and your parents, or via the automated lessons from
AlcoholEdu. Let’s talk more about the physical health
effects
of
alcohol
consumption that often go unnoticed until our college experience is over.
The fact that alcohol is a depressant means that it disrupts the balance of the chemical processes in
the brain. The relaxed feeling that comes with having a few drinks is the result of the depressive
nature of the drug, especially in the part of the
brain we associate with inhibition. (Mistakes when
drunk anyone?) However, increased alcohol use Instead of pleasurable effects increasing, it is
possible that negative emotional effects will take
over. If you have ever met someone who gets angry, aggressive, anxious or depressed while drinking, excessive consumption is likely the culprit.
Alcohol increases anxiety and stress.
Before someone encourages you to get “blacked”
mental
leaves a more permanent impact on the brain.
and
Alcohol alters brain chemistry.
tonight, think of how drinking alters your view of
your environment. Heavy drinking interferes with
the way we think. If we are prone to anxiety and
notice something that could be threatening, we’ll hone in on that single thing and ignore the less
threatening or neutral information. For example,
we might notice a crush talking to someone we’re jealous of instead of focusing on everyone else they’ve interacted with throughout the night.
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