Jayson Blaire said he wanted to join a fraternity before entering college — until he realized drinking heavily was one of the requirements to be accepted.
“It’s really not that uncommon,” said the 18-year-old UF family, youth and community sciences freshman. “Everyone does it. What’s crazy is that it’s bad in college, but in high school it was even worse.”
A study published Monday confirms the norm Blaire experienced, finding that one in 10 high school seniors are extreme binge drinkers. The study, which was published in JAMA Pediatrics, a Journal of the American Medical Association Network Publication, defined extreme binge drinking as consuming 10 or more drinks in one sitting.
It found that the percentage of high school seniors who report binge drinking has decreased from 22 percent in 2005 to 18.1 percent in 2011, but the percentage of extreme binge drinkers has remained virtually the same.
Young adults who binge drink can experience consequences, said Dollicia Green, a registered nurse who works on the neurosurgery floor at UF Health Shands Hospital.
“There’s a lot of damage that happens,” Green said. “It physically changes the brain and thins the prefrontal cortex. Really, you’re losing brain cells each time you do it. It’s important to understand that these are real-life effects. It’s more serious than we tend to think.”
Social drinkers who begin consuming alcohol at an early age have increased chances of addiction, said Maureen Miller, director at GatorWell Health Promotion Services.
“There’s been quite a bit of research that says that the brain is continuously developing well into the 20s,” she said. “So the issue of potentially becoming addicted even at a young age is an important psychological effect that comes into play when dealing with binge drinkers.”
But there isn’t a magical answer to getting young adults to slow down, Miller said.
“The environment — the culture we live in — promotes the message that teen drinking is OK,” she said. “It’s a billion-dollar industry. Think about the accessibility of alcohol. It’s cheaper than buying a bottle of water in some cases, and it’s right across from campus.”
Given the popularity of alcohol among a younger crowd, Blaire said, some things don’t change after high school.
“It’s like, if you didn’t drink you weren’t cool,” he said. “People wouldn’t invite you to parties. You were just weird. In high school, it was like that, and it’s like that now in college.”
A version of this story ran on page 8 on 9/18/2013 under the headline "One in 10 high school seniors are extreme binge drinkers, study says"
