Binge drinking – is it a problem?

    What is binge drinking? Binge drinking is consuming 4 or more alcoholic beverages (for women) and five or more alcoholic beverages (for men).
    Statistic of the week: Among Aroostook County youth, 9 percent of eighth-graders, 17 percent of 10th-graders and 25 percent of 12th-graders reported binge drinking in the two weeks prior to taking the 2006 Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Use Survey.     So what? According to Dr. Dennis Twombly of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “many young people are smaller in size and have less body fat [than adults], so their blood alcohol concentrations can reach higher levels for any given amount consumed.” Higher alcohol blood levels put youth at greater risk of adverse physical or social consequences, including organ and brain damage. Recent experiments with laboratory animals revealed that animals occasionally exposed to high levels of alcohol more readily developed organ damage, as compared to animals exposed to more moderate amounts on a regular basis. Additionally, brain development in humans is not completed until age 25. Thus, exposure to alcohol during adolescence and early adulthood “could have a variety of negative effects” (source: http://cadca.org/CoalitionsOnline/article.asp?id=1642)
    What can you do? Parents and adults can take measures to delay alcohol consumption by underage youth by (1) starting to talk to children in grade school and middle school about the risks of alcohol use before 21, (2) avoid being intoxicated in front of children and youth, and (3) avoid telling funny stories from your youth that include alcohol use.
    Weekly resource: Web resource – Parents Empowered to Prevention Underage Drinking: http://www.parentsempowered.org/
    This article was brought to you by Aroostook Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP), a countywide substance abuse prevention collaborative. For more information about ASAP and its prevention efforts contact Clare Desrosiers, project director, at 521-2408. ASAP’s local partner agencies include Aroostook Band of Micmacs, ACES – LLC, Aroostook Healthy Maine Partnership, Aroostook Mental Health Center, Aroostook Teen Leadership Camp, Cary Medical Center, Celebrate Recovery, Community Alcohol and Drug Education Team, Community Voices, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Life by Design, Link for Hope Coalition, Maine Pretrial, Power of Prevention, STOP, The Aroostook Medical Center, United Way, and University of Maine Presque Isle.