Introduction
It’s
early in the morning and you’re on your way to work and catch traffic. You
notice that the traffic isn’t moving, it’s bumper to bumper on the highway. You
are hit from behind, which causes you to rear end the person in front of you.
You get out of your vehicle to check on the others involved in the accident
just to find out the person who had hit you from behind stood up all night
binge drinking with his friends from college a few miles away. Binge drinking
can cause you to be imprecise when making decisions and while driving. Drinking
and driving not only affects the one behind the wheel that has been drinking
but the others who are around them, as well. Binge drinking is absurd because
of all the things it will cause you to do.
History
Binge
Drinking has multiple causes that also come with the effects. The history of
binge drinking started in the 1990’s mostly coming from students on college
campuses. The Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, surveyed
119 different colleges (“Fact Sheet: Binge Drinking on College Campuses”).
While they were doing the research of binge drinking amongst college students,
they found out that drinkers drink to get drunk, lowers the amount of stress,
peer pressure, and some even say it’s really fun. The effect of the people who
binge drink does not only effect the drinker, but it also affects the ones who
encounter the drinker (1) Some of the effects of binge drinking are: missing
class, low grades, drinking and driving, being hurt or injured, engaging
unexpected sexual activity, as well as unprotected sex.
Binge
drinking is nationwide. Jeffery J. Sacks and his researching team found out
some of the expenses that were spent on drinking or damages caused by drinking
(Sacks). Drinking too much or too often costs the United States $249 billion,
in 2010 and the government paying for $100.7 billion of these costs (1). Not
only was that all that drinking has cost them, because they paid for all the
damages, health care, crime and other expenses. Binge drinking was responsible
for 77% of these costs, or $191 billion (1).
Examples
People
who drink often tend to wear their bodies down. Although it may not always show
on the outside but it does show on the inside. Kidneys will start to fail,
alcohol effects the way your heart works and how your body functions.
Everyone’s body is different. Some people when they abuse alcohol will start
looking older, won’t be able to do as much as they can or could at one point.
They start to loose hair, or their hair is a different texture then what it
used to be and looks like its unhealthy, sometimes resulting in it changing
colors or turning gray. Your skin will begin to change, it will become more
easily to be bruised and you will often get wrinkles faster that what you
normally would’ve got if you didn’t abuse alcohol. Some who abuse alcohol
doesn’t care what they look like or how they act. When you drink everyday, your
mood begins to change, it could be that your happy or it could be that you get
angry when consuming different amounts of alcohol at one time and your not the
same person that you know you are, and that everyone else once knew.
Symptoms
of binge drinking can have you hospitalized and sometimes injured. They
include:
·
Depression/Anxiety
·
Kidney and liver failure
·
Weakened heart
·
Mood and personality changes
·
Death
But
how does your body react after you binge drink repeatedly?
Alcohol
can cause your neurotransmitters to relay information too slowly, so you feel
extremely drowsy. Long-term heavy drinking weakens the
heart muscle, causing a condition called alcoholic cardiomyopathy. A weakened
heart droops and stretches and cannot contract effectively. As a result, it
cannot pump enough blood to sufficiently nourish the organs. There
probably isn’t a more vital—yet underappreciated—organ in the human body than
the liver. While we may recognize, in the most general terms, the role that the
liver plays, many of us don’t fully understand its many functions or
vulnerabilities, particularly with regard to alcohol. And yet the alcohol-liver
connection is critical, as more than 2 million Americans suffer from liver
disease caused by alcohol. A pancreas unaffected by alcohol
sends enzymes out to the small intestine to metabolize food. Alcohol jumbles
this process. It causes the pancreas to secrete its digestive juices
internally, rather than sending the enzymes to the small intestine. After
ingestion, alcohol travels down the esophagus into the stomach, where some of
it is absorbed into your bloodstream. The unabsorbed alcohol continues to move
through the gastrointestinal tract. The majority of it will enter the small
intestine and get absorbed into the bloodstream through the walls of the small
intestine, or it can stay in the stomach and cause irritation. Binge
drinking or chronic alcohol consumption can interfere with kidney function
directly, or indirectly as a consequence of liver disease. (“Interactive Body
Content”)
Binge
drinking cost you, your friends and everyone around you. You also may wonder
how a person who doesn’t drink feels when encountering a party that involves
alcohol. Coming from experience, while you’re at a party, you are surrounded by
people who are drinking, and you are one of the ones who doesn’t drink. You are
then being peer pressured to “just have one sip because it won’t do anything”
and you are also brought around a lot of drunk people who do dangerous things
to themselves as well as others. You may think that you are “not cool” because
you’re the only one at that party that doesn’t drink but really you are the
better person at that party because you don’t drink and end up making the wrong
decisions.
Solutions/Evidential
Support
When
reading many different articles, websites and surveys no one classified
themselves to be a binge drinker. It is also hard to find solutions because
there is not medicine that people can take orally to heal them, nor a vaccine
that is a requirement for the people to have. However, there is a possible way
to curve the effects on society. According to Robert A. Hahn and his team of
researchers say that if the states, local and national polices limit the hours
of selling alcohol it will prevent excessive alcohol consumption and related
harms (Hahn). I also agree with this
because if there was a hold on the time to buy alcohol, I believe that not as
many people would be able to fit that particular time in their schedule to buy
alcohol. Another reason we could lower the binge drinking rates and numbers if
more counties would be “dry counties.” To be a dry county, there will not be
any liquor stores in the area. Although that isn’t eliminating all of the
possible ways to buy alcohol in the county because grocery stores could still
carry and sell beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages not containing liquor.
Taking away liquor in certain counties could decrease the amount of people
drinking, and the amount of people encountering alcohol and alcohol related
injuries. If that plan were to work, I think it would be a very good idea to
ban liquor stores in counties that have big major colleges. You would probably
see more people showing up for class, that campus being less rowdy. Things wouldn’t
get as destroyed, less people would be getting hurt, and more people would
probably finish school if the distraction of alcohol was eliminated. Now,
people could still have parties and gatherings but some people refuse to drink
beer and refuse to drink wine. So if those people heard that where they’re
attending a college that is in a dry county, they might be more successful in
the path of furthering their education.
“We
could also force a greater plan to stop people from buying alcohol once they
are drunk or have been drinking (Coleman).” If we were to give a Breathalyzer
for every customer buying alcohol at the liquor store and grocery store it
would have to read 0.00, meaning that they have not consumed alcohol to
purchase the alcohol they are trying to buy. If that were to be a requirement
in order to buy alcohol, I think that it would help slow down the amount of
people who are binge drinkers. I also think that if we had a chip in our Id’s
that limited us to the amount of alcohol we purchased each week would slow down
each individual until they outsmart the system. If that were to be the case,
and you already bought all the alcohol you could buy for the week, then you
would have to wait until the next week to purchase more alcohol. There is many
different ways you could stop people from getting alcohol, but it’s just a
matter of time of when it is being enforced, and if they will ever consider
enforcing those rules.
The
dram shop liability is an example of a successful solution to decrease the numbers
of binge drinkers because “Dram shop liability allows the owner or server of a
retail alcohol establishment where a customer recently consumed alcoholic
beverages to be held legally responsible for the harms inflicted by that
customer. Examples of such harms may
include death, injury or other damages as a result of an alcohol-related car
crash. Historically, the term dram shop
referred to any establishment where alcohol was sold; a dram was a measure of
alcohol. (R, Elder. et al)” Since the dram shop liability came in effect, the
servers are more careful about how much they serve the drinkers and know when
exactly to cut them off.
Eleven
studies qualified for the review. Studies were conducted in multiple states in
the United States. Studies assessed the effects of state dram shop liability
laws on diverse outcomes, including motor vehicle fatalities overall,
alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities, alcohol consumption behaviors,
alcohol-related violence, and alcohol-related diseases. Most found reductions
in alcohol-related outcomes associated with the presence of dram shop liability
(11 studies). Alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities: median decrease of 6.4%
(interquartile interval: 3.7% to 11.3%; 6 studies). One study assessed the
effects of two high-profile dram shop liability suits in Texas. Estimated
effects on single vehicle nighttime crashes (closely associated with excessive
alcohol consumption). 6.6% decrease as a
result of one suit. 5.3% decrease as a result of the other. These results were
based on a systematic review of all available studies, conducted on behalf of
the Task Force by a team of specialists in systematic review methods, and in
research, practice and policy related to excessive alcohol consumption. (R,
Elder. et al)
If every state were to
be involved with the dram shop liability I think there would be less binge
drinkers because the servers would be getting in trouble for the actions of
others and hopefully they wouldn’t want to be involved with that. Not every
state has passed the dram shop law because they say that anything could happen
on the way home. “It is often hard to prove that the liquor bought or served
was the specific cause of an accident (such as an automobile crash while
driving home), since there is always an intervening cause, namely, the
drunk.(Gerald and Kathleen Hill)”
Camus’
Absurdity
Camus’
beliefs relate to my topic by not having a purpose to drinking rather than to
“have fun.” Even though you don’t have to drink to have fun, some people think
they do in order to fit in with others, or whatever their case may be. He also
might think that it would be absurd because why would you drink to get so drunk
and then it cause you to be sick and hung over the next day often it can even
make you sick within a few hours of consuming the alcohol and sometimes within
seconds of drinking it.
Conclusion
In
conclusion to binge drinking, there are many causes and effects it has on
people including solutions that may or may not work. You don’t have to drink to
have fun. There are plenty of alternative things you can do before turning to
alcohol to solve the problem. You can find many different solutions and if you
feel like you are beginning to drink more often than you normally would, you
could talk to your friends, family, counselor, or even consider about talking
to a therapist. Hopefully the binge drinking epidemic will die down, or decrease
in numbers within the next few years to save on money, and lower the amount of
accidents related to alcohol.
Works
Cited
"Fact Sheet: Binge Drinking on College
Campuses." Fact Sheet: Binge Drinking on College Campuses. N.p., Mar.
2000. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
"Interactive Body Content."
<i>Examples of Alcohol's Effect on Organ Function</i>. N.p., n.d.
Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
Sacks, Jeffery J., Katherine R. Gonzales, Ellen E.
Bouchery, Laura E. Tomedi, and Robert D. Brewer. “2010 National and State costs
of Excessive Alcohol Consumption.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
Elsevier Inc., Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
"Alzheimer
Fact Sheet." PsycEXTRA Dataset (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
Hahn,
Robert A. et al, "Recommendations on Privatization of Alcohol Retail Sales
and Prevention of Excessive Alcohol Consumption and Related Harms."
American Journal of Preventive Medicine 42.4 (2012): 428-29. Web.
Coleman,
Lester, and Suzanne Cater. "Changing the Culture of Young People's Binge
Drinking: From Motivations to Practical Solutions." Taylor & Francis
LTD, 2007. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
R,
Elder. et al. "Preventing Excessive Alcohol Consumption: Dram Shop
Liability." The Community Guide-Summary-Excessive Alcohol Consumption:
Dram Shop Liability. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2016.
Hill, Gerald, and Kathleen Hill. "Legal
Dictionary - Law.com." Law.com Legal Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May
2016
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