National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week: The "Buzz" About Binge Drinking
LessThanUThink (LTUT), a student-run anti-binge drinking campaign, expanded its campaign last year to extend nationally. With growing popularity on college campuses spanning from Alabama to California, the campaign continues to grow each year. This expansion to Orange County, California, was a milestone for this student movement, which was just three years old.
In honor of National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week (NCAAW), a group of students at The University of Alabama gave their opinion on why they think college students binge drink. The most common reasons given include :
Many people lose count of how many drinks they have consumed, because they are busy socializing and not paying attention.
- They think that, by binge drinking, they avoid dealing with awkward situations.
- Some students feel pressure from friends to keep drinking.
- They feel like they are more sociable and outgoing as they drink more.
- Many continue drinking to avoid getting tired after losing their “buzz”.
When the students were discussing what they thought caused college students to binge drink, one student remarked that the reasons seem “silly” when they actually verbalize them.
This recent focus group echoes the findings of the original campaign focus groups in Spring 2009 that launched the LTUT movement. When one student in the 2009 focus groups learned that binge drinking is defined as consuming 4 or 5 standard sized drinks in a two hour period, he said, "Man, that sure is less than you think it takes."
Furthermore, this week is a perfect time to announce that LTUT is preparing to go international. We will be working with students at the Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina, to help curb binge drinking there as well. Watch this space in the next few months!
LTUT hopes to continue to spread coast to coast and overseas to inform students that the embarrassing social implications of binge drinking are not worth the consequences. During this NCAAW, keep the campaign's message of safe drinking in mind and visit ltut.org for more information.