Essay, Research Paper: Binge Drinking

My report is on the disease binge drinking. Binge drinking is a dangerous drinking
problem that many people have. A binge is defined as five or more alcoholic drinks in
one sitting for a man, and four for a woman. Binge drinking is extremely common among
American high school and college students. In fact, one-third of high school and college
students admit to a binge in the last 30 days. I think that this high rate is reasonable since
drinking is still seen as a popular activity in many colleges as seen in the horrible accidents
in the newspaper or on television. On television shows and in movies binge drinking is
rarely shown as a dangerous and horrible thing. Alcohol is more commonly shown with
friends, beauty, and enjoyment. I researched a survey which said that children who are
surveyed recognize the Budweiser frog slogan as often as they do “Bugs Bunny's."

Many people today have this problem of abusing alcohol; many of them being
teenagers. Someone can develop this problem by starting a habit of drinking or
alcoholism. One drink a night can lead to two. Two drinks a night can lead to three.
Three drinks a night can lead to a serious binge drinking problem. The only real way to
transmit this disease is through genes. Scientists have known that alcohol problems can be
hereditary. The baby of this mother may have an initial craving for alcohol and may feel ill
without alcohol in its system. That is why drinking when you are pregnant can be a very
dangerous thing. Binge drinking will definitely cause the person to feel without control
over his or her body. They will be very dizzy and crazy. This can be dangerous for the
drinker and dangerous for the people around him or her. This is why drinking and driving
can be so perilous. Some people have been killed because of a heavy drinker while the
drinker walks away unharmed. The effects of binge drinking are that as you get more and
more obsessed with alcohol, there can be many more long term effects. Your body can
only drink so much alcohol. Over time your liver becomes damaged by torn tissue and
maybe some other problems. This is called cerocious. Binge drinking can also lead to
poverty and a loss of job.

The only way to prevent binge drinking is by not abusing alcohol and drinking too
much. To prevent binge drinking completely you must simply not drink alcoholic
beverages. If you do drink every once and a while, you will be fine. As long as you keep
your alcohol consumption pretty low, you won’t get liver disease. The only treatment for
this problem is to get help on how to stop drinking.(and stop drinking) After you do this it
may be very easy to get addicted to alcohol again so you should probably stop altogether.
If you do get a liver disease from drinking, the only way to cure it would be surgery with a
replacement liver which may be hard to find.

I think that parents should to start sending the message about alcohol abuse early
to their kids, and make sure that their children get the message. They must not just say
that “It’s bad to drink” but make sure the kids have an example so they don’t do it either.
Parents can control their kids decisions. Therefore, it is the parents choice if the kid will
drink alcoholic beverages. I believe that we should have more help-lines or websites to
help people with this problem. We need to start teaching people about the hazards of
binge drinking when they're children, and they need to hear the message frequently. Binge
drinking is a horrible disease that can change a person’s whole life in one night. If people
do something to help people stop bingeing it can make a difference in our families' lives.



Bibliography


Bibliography
CD-ROM
“Fetal Alcohol Syndrome” Encarta Encyclopedia 2000
CD-ROM. Microsoft. 2000
“Binge Drinking” World Book 1999
CD-ROM. IBM. 1999
Internet
Home Page. 14, May 2000


Word Count: 653