College Blackout Drinkers Face More Risks

2/20/2003

USA Today

Accidents, Injuries are More Common

By Kathleen Fackelmann

A small but significant number of college drinkers have experienced memory problems, including alcohol-induced blackouts, according to two new surveys.

In one, 18% of nearly 30,000 college students on 300 campuses nationwide said they had experienced memory difficulties or had forgotten what had happened to them at some point while drinking.

A second report by Duke University researchers found that 1 in 10 college drinkers said they had experienced a memory blackout during the two weeks prior to the survey; 40% said they had experienced at least one such blackout in the previous year.

In the first survey, released today by Outside the Classroom, a Boston firm that has an online alcohol education course for students, nearly 24% of students said they had attended class with a hangover at least once in the two weeks before answering the survey.

The findings, together with previous research, suggest that a significant percentage of college students drink enough to put themselves at risk for poor grades, car accidents, injuries, fights, sexual assaults and sexually transmitted diseases.

People experiencing a memory blackout can talk, have sex, drive a car or get into a fight -- and not remember the event the next day, Duke researcher Aaron White says.

The Duke researchers surveyed 772 undergraduates and found that 74% said they had consumed alcohol in the two weeks before the survey, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of American College Health.

Of the students who had blacked out, men drank an average of nine to 10 drinks per sitting, and women had four to five drinks, White says. Women may be at greater risk for blackouts because of their smaller body mass, he says.

Blackouts can occur when the blood-alcohol concentration rises quickly and shuts down memory-forming cells in a brain region known as the hippocampus, says Duke researcher Scott Swartzwelder, also of the Durham (N.C.) VA Medical Center.

Previous research by Henry Wechsler at the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that about 25% of college students drink heavily and quickly. That drinking style puts them at risk of a blackout, he says.

Wechsler, author of the book Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses, says parents should get help if a college-age kid seems to have a problem with alcohol. Heavy drinkers also can fall behind on their schoolwork and miss class, he says.