Alcoholism Among College Students
Alcoholism is referred to as a serious addictive disease. It involves compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcohol in spite of its negative effects on the individuals’ health, relationships, and social status. It is defined medically as a treatable disease unlike other drug addictions.
The biological factors underlying alcoholism are not known. However, it includes risk factors such as social environment, stress, mental health; genetic predisposition, age, ethnic group, and sex. Physical dependence and tolerance are among the long term alcohol abuse which produces physiological changes in the brain. Those chemistry changes in the brain tend to keep the alcoholic’s inability to stop drinking habits. There are diverse damages caused as a result of alcoholism to individuals. These include; damaging of the body organs such as the brain, due to the cumulative toxic impacts of the chronic abuse.
The alcoholic may also suffer a range of medical and psychiatric disorders. It also has hugely significant social consequences for the user and the lives of the people around them. Statement thesis Today, the abuse of alcohol among college students or the excessive use of alcohol is increasing exceptionally fast, posing as the most serious and threatening problem affecting the life socially, health, and learning on college campuses. The abuse of alcohol has become a social phenomenon in various college students because these students do not recognize the health risks associated with excessive alcohol consumption. In addition, college students have no enough knowledge concerning alcohol in general and its effects on the body.
They are also ignorant about the information provided to them by either their teachers or the people concerned. College students world wide, and particularly across United State, miss lectures, engage in premarital sex and unprotected sex, destroying property, and being injured as a result of excessive drinking of alcohol. Alcoholism among college students results into poisoning as well as many other health issues. For example, cancers and various diseases are connected with excessive drinking of alcohol, which may even result into death. For instance, cancer diseases associated with abuse of alcohol include liver cancer, cancer of breast, and even skin cancer. Other problems include both heart and liver diseases.
College students’ wellness keeps on decreasing dramatically because of alcohol abuse. Alcohol abuse is more rampant in colleges because the college environment embeds the custom that promotes excessive alcohol drinking in colleges. For instance, most students in colleges are more exposed to advertisements made by companies dealing with the production of alcohol. These advertisements are made on campus walls of sport areas, they get to witness the alumni drinking, and are, in most cases, surrounded by the developments close to campuses that serve and sell alcohol. These businesses rely on the college students for their financial achievement. Research shows that there is a high rate of peer pressure in colleges apart from the excessive exposure to alcohol advertisement all over the college premises.
Most college students are highly influenced by their fellow peers as a way of determining the adolescent behaviors. Excessive drinking of alcohol among college student is also in the increase because of the availability of the drinking games. For instance, according to different studies carried out, the rate of students who participate in drinking games was found to be around eighty percent among those aged twenty ones years. In most cases, these students tend to consume a large amount of alcohol more than those who do not play; however, the female students had less negative consequences than their male counterparts. Most colleges tend to promote the culture that alcoholism is a immensely essential ingredient for social achievement.
The studies reveal that this kind of custom is the one resposible for the excessive consumption of alcohol among college student’s attitudes, and behavior toward alcohol use. Most of the students in colleges who abuse alcohol include the first-year learners, athletes, the whites, and the members of fraternities and sororities (Garg, Wagener& Madans 45). College students tend to partakes in the habit alcohol abuse because of personality and gender. For instance, compared with non alcoholics, problem drinkers tend to be impulsive, engage in deviant manners, less concerned with academic issues, and more independence seeking and they abuse alcohol for escapist reasons. There is a conflicting problem on the increase and decrease of alcohol use with regard to the differences in gender.
However, high rates of drinking are found to be among the male students than females despite the fact that female students try to show massive resistance to abuse of alcohol than do male, except for those students who live in dormitories. Excessive drinking of alcohol in colleges can also be explained well by the ever increasing changes in society. For instance, the roles played by women, changing lifestyles, and intergroup relations. Although there is the raising of the legal age of drinking which has contributed to reduction in the rate of alcohol abuse, the legal prohibition against drinking for the young people may make automobiles a safe place for drinking. This means that automobiles provide the right and safe place where students under age can participate in drinking far away from colleges and other legal authorities. Increased excessive drinking of alcohol to hide the evidence may be the reason for the increase in hangovers and missing class sessions.
Students on most colleges use alcohol to show their emerging adulthood, manage stress, and increase their social gatherings. The sell of alcohol at colleges is most cases cheap and readily available for access by the students. This may be through the exposure by the media which lies to students that drinking is a social norm.Effects of alcoholism on college students The major effects that college students encounter from alcoholic behaviors include the occurrences of blackouts which make the user lose time. Research reveals that about five million college students experience alcohol dependence.
There are various dangerous aspects when college and alcohol combine though there are some that have no doubt. For instance, many college students aged between eighteen and twenty four are claimed by accidents and ignorance. Many deaths are encountered each year because of alcohol -related unintentional injuries, including automobile crashes. This happens because most of the time these students who abuse alcohol think that they are in dreamless sleep, yet to other people who are somber they see him or her awake and behaving like they are fully conscious and alert (Berkowitz & Perkins 45). The more the college students drink, the less they try to use protective measures during sexual intercourse (Dowdall 89).
This, as a result, exposes them to dangerous diseases such as HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies among young college girls. Furthermore, the rate of college students who used to over drink was almost the same from the freshman to the senior year students, despite the fact that alcohol drinking was prohibited from young people aged below twenty one years. Through the abuse of alcohol, while still young, college students are developing a unhealthy habit of becoming alcoholics of the future. The main reason for this is that, large numbers of students who drink do so when they are depressed, stressed because of their school coursework, and basically as a form of having happy times. If not treated early enough, drinking may easily progress to alcoholism.
Alcoholism may also lead to lowering of student’s grades at colleges hence poor performance academically, hardships in management at areas of hall residdence, and college property destructions. For instance, college managers know that alcoholism leads to violent actions among students, campus policy violations, physical injuries, and emotional disabilities. According to research, about twenty five percent of alcohol caused behaviors have failed academically, and about twenty two percent of students do not stay in school because of alcohol problems. Students fail academically because excessive drinking makes a person to forget what they had learned in class. Impaired students are likely not to memorize or even remember what they read. Alcoholism is considered to be an overpowering disease because it holds control over an individual’s mind, body and actions.
This leaves them impaired even when they are not drinking, they start to think that they cannot perform without having a drink. During hangovers without taking a drink, a person is likely to become drained and nauseated and all that occupies their mind is to get a sip so that they can ease the pain (Johnston 67). Excessive drinking or alcoholism to college students is likely to cause damages to the nervous system and also destroy cells of the brain. Various parts of the brain are exceptionally tender and sensitive to alcohol that other areas. The transmission of nerve impulses in the brain and nervous system is badly affected by alcohol because of its toxic nature. Chronic abuse of alcohol leads to the destruction of organic body parts leading to physical, psychological and change in the behavior of the college students.
In physical terms, it may manifest itself through a person having no balance, feels numbness in the feet and hands, tremor and may also lead to blindness. A student may be affected psychologically and behaviorally by losing their intellectual abilities, becomes mentally confused, and his or her ability to learn becomes impaired. All this conditions may be a result of delirium tremens a condition caused by the abuse of alcohol (Hanson 74).According to medical review board, abuse of alcohol by college students may also lead them to acquire infections and inflammation of the stomach and digestive systems which results into ulceration. This may be a dangerous condition because inflammation of the digestive system leads to foot not being digested or even absorbed well.
Stomach and intestine perforation are considered to be a life threatening problem. Poor diet, malnutrition, self neglect, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and changes in lifestyles are related to inflammation and infections. Malnutrition may be as a result of lack or inability to absorb different types of vitamins in the body. Too much alcohol intake leads to cardiovascular problems such as high blood pressure, damaging of the heart muscle and hence destroying the cardiovascular system which increases the risks of heart failure of stroke. In male students who abuse alcohol, they may encounter some sexual problems in the future such as erectile dysfunction problem. Conclusion Alcohol abuse among college students is one of the biggest and challenging issues that many families and society at large are facing currently.
Research indicates that nearly fifty percent of the student in colleges’ use or abuse alcohol just for leisure purposes. Others look at alcohol as away to have fun at parties or other social events. However, alcoholism can lead to deaths from poison. Students fail academically because of alcohol, as it leads to long life alcohol issues which may consequently lead to negative impacts for students’ future life. Many alcohol drinkers get infected from various diseases such as cancers, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and AIDS, diabetes and heart failures. In female students, they may be forced to become young mothers because of early and unplanned for pregnancies.
Therefore, alcoholism is a serious and a deadly addiction that requires serious solutions like educating the students on the negative impacts of alcoholism.
