College Women Drinking Alcohol Excessively More Often Than Men

In college, I did a fair amount of drinking, as did the majority of my friends. While I myself never grew a particularly high alcohol tolerance, I?did notice that the people I knew who had the highest capacity for alcohol in relation to their height and weight always seemed to be females ? something that I?ve found to be less true since I graduated. Apparently, this is a running theme: college women are consuming more booze than recommended, and they?re doing so more frequently than the males.

In a study for the?October 2013 issue of ?Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research,? incoming college students (both male and female) were given surveys from a team led by?medical researcher?Bettina Hoeppner regarding their drinking habits. The questionnaires were administered every two weeks regarding the student?s past seven days. The results showed that women and men differed:

In 1990, the?National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism?(NIAAA) issued guidelines that define low-risk drinking on a daily and weekly level. For men, 5 drinks a day and 14 drinks a week are considered low-risk. For women, 4 drinks a day and 7 drinks a week are considered low-risk.

Researchers found that, among students who drank alcohol, 85.4 percent exceeded an NIAAA drinking guideline at least once during their first week of college. More men than women exceeded the daily limit, and more women than men exceeded the weekly limit.

I?ve thought about why women might be more prone to over-drinking than men, but it?s hard to put a finger on (and, obviously, I?m no scientist so anything I speculate is just that ? speculation).?Most of the men and women I know drink both beer and hard liquor, but in college, it?s often all about what winds up being cheaper (and faster). You can get a handle of ?meh? vodka for, oh, $18, while spending the same amount on beer will likely not get as many people intoxicated nearly as fast. But then, this anecdote-based theory goes for both men and women ? so why are women drinking excessively more?

Could it be because women are recommended lower quantities of alcohol, but are still attending the same parties and are served the same amount of booze? Or that women feel more pressure to binge drink? While I never felt pressure to ?prove? myself to anybody regarding my drinking, I?m sure that plenty of college students ? male and female ? certainly have, and that can lead to downing a whole lot of shots, which is?definitely not safe.

Personally, I think that experimenting with alcohol and whatnot isn?t dangerous in itself, but there needs to be more discussions about drinking prior to college. As in, high school students need to be educated on what constitutes ?binge drinking,? how to tell the signs of somebody being dangerously intoxicated, how to limit yourself better, what to avoid?it should all be done when people are younger,?before they?re exposed to ice luges and the concept of strapping 40s to your hands (do the kids still do that?).

I realize that this isn?t the most popular opinion, as these talks would be administered prior to the legal drinking age, but the fact of the matter is that kids?will?exposed to alcohol before they?re 21; there isn?t some magical forcefield that keeps the booze demons away. A class that realistically talks about the choices students will face could potentially save lives and, at the very least, be far more relevant than that D.A.R.E. thing we all took in the fifth grade.

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Source: http://www.blisstree.com/2013/05/22/food/college-women-drinking-alcohol-excessively-more-often-than-men/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=college-women-drinking-alcohol-excessively-more-often-than-men

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