Binge Drinking Among Young Adults And Older People

According to Psychology Today, binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks in a short amount of time. For men, it equates to five or more drinks and for women, it equates to four or more drinks in a short time frame.

The average drink contains almost a half ounce of pure alcohol. This is equivalent to a 12 ounce beer or a four to five ounce glass of wine. Binge drinking among college students is a huge concern and often college age students report drinking more than five drinks when they do binge.

60 percent of binge drinking among men in this age range consume 10 drinks or more per binge. About one third of college women drink eight or more beverages during their binge. One report even showed that nearly seven percent of freshman males in college consume 15 drinks or more per binge.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that differences in behaviors of binge drinkers do vary by age group. The prevalence of drinking binges and number of consumed drinks does decrease with age but the frequency of binging does not.

Ironically, the highest group of binge drinkers was 65 years old or older with an average of five and a half episodes each month. Some serious complications among binge drinkers are called a memory blackout which means the person was awake and performing complex tasks but has no recollection of the event.

The risk of blackouts relates to the person’s alcohol blood level and the increase in their blood alcohol level. Since these blackouts occur when a person is extremely intoxicated, a lot of scary things can happen during their blackout. The person often shows poor judgment and less impulse control.

The scary bottom line is that the CDC reported that over 50 percent of the 80,000 yearly deaths are attributed to alcohol use that is a result of alcohol-related binges.