Alcohol Use Now Leads to Problems Later

After a senior bar party in the Radcliffe Quad, two roommates returned to their Mather House suite with a few extra items for the room. The two mananged, after consuming a large amount of alcohol, to make off with a number of pieces of Quad lawn furniture, carrying them home on the shuttle bus.

Harmless as pranks like this may seem, health educators warn that the relation between these stunts and alcohol may be more dangerous than most students realize.

Maura Valle, a health educator with University Health Services (UHS), and other prominent health researchers agree on two things. One, that a college atmosphere is conducive to heavy drinking and two, that excessive drinking in college can lead to more serious alcohol-related problems in the future.

"Traditionally, we see drinking in college as a rite of passage. It is condoned in a covert way," Valle says, adding that people who drink heavily in college should ask themselves, "`Is this something I'm going to grow up with?'"

"The word 'party' has become synonymous with drinking," says Henry Wechsler, a social psychology lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health.

But college drinking has to be placed in the total societal perspective, Wechsler says. "You have to look at what college students are bringing to college with them and what kind of society the college is in."

Wechsler says that 90 percent of American college students drink, but adds that that figure should not be surprising. Drinking increases as students approach their 20s, but decreases later, he says, making people between the ages of 18 and 24 the heaviest drinkers in the general population.

Wechsler says that in a study of high school drinking, 40 percent of high school males reported having had at least a six-pack of beer in the last two weeks.

"College drinking is a national follow-up of high school drinking," Wechsler says. "We shouldn't be surprised that there's a lot of college drinking, especially with men, because of high school drinking."

High school drinking, in addition to the independence that many freshpeople experience for the first time, helps to foster experimentation and habitforming use of alcohol.

Virginia Mackay-Smith, a senior freshperson adviser and proctor for Weld Hall, says she thinks drinking is a major problem for freshpeople. Most proctors, she says, "have the attitude that drinking is something freshmen do."

"I was an undergraduate in the mid-70s, and drugs were a big problem," Mackay-Smith says. "This year the drugs of choice are vodka and beer. I think that students now are misusing alcohol in the same way that students in the 70s were misusing drugs."

What is surprising, Wechsler says, is the number of heavy drinkers in college. "They drink it all at once and become intoxicated and are prone to get into the trouble intoxicated people get into," he says.

Wechsler co-wrote a 1981 study surveying 7083 New England college students about their drinking habits. The study showed that a high percentage of college students who drink excessively have suffered some of the consequences of alcohol abuse. The study shows that the 242 college males who were classified as "frequent-heavy drinkers" reported, on the whole, drinking more than four drinks or five cans of beer in one sitting.

Sixty-two percent of these heavy drinkers had been in trouble with authorities, and 53 percent had gotten into physical fights after drinking. About 29 percent said drinking had caused them to have an automobile accident and another 27 percent said they had been involved in other accidents as a result of alcohol use.

Although Wechsler and Mary Rohman, research associate at the Medical Foundation, Inc., conducted the study eight years ago, Wechsler says that more recent research indicates that the numbers have remained relatively unchanged.

The College Life Survey conducted last spring at Harvard found that 59 percent of students responding said they had one to four drinks when they drink. Twenty-one percent report having five to nine drinks at a time, while 3 percent have 10 or more. The survey found that 29 percent of those responding felt that Harvard students drink too much.

"Think of any problem on a college campus--a date rape, a racial incident or a brawl. Most of the time, this will be [related to] drinking," Wechsler says. "This is not strictly cause and effect. We cannot conclude that alcohol causes these problems. It could be that the same type of person who drinks gets into this type of trouble," Wechsler says. "But it certainly contributes."

Robert A. Matano, the director of the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center at Stanford University says that the problem with excessive college drinking is two-fold.

The first and most obvious set of difficulties arises as an immediate result of alcohol abuse. These short-term problems include conflicts in social relationships at home or at school, poor performance in the classroom, alcohol-related injuries and legal or disciplinary trouble resulting from acts committed under the influence.

The second, less prominent set of difficulties may not become visible for another 10 to 20 years after college. Excessive drinking may continue after the college years and result in serious health or social problems. "Patterns that are not really problematic now may become problematic later because of the constant use of alcohol," Matano says.

"It's just like smoking," says George E. Valliant, author of the book, The Natural History of Alcoholism, and a researcher at Dartmouth Medical School. "If you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day in college, you'll have a much greater chance of smoking more later."

"People in college do not [necessarily] get addicted, but they develop habits," added Valliant.

A report issued by UHS says that approximately 7 percent of Americans suffer from alcoholism--the most serious of these long-term problems.

Alcoholism is defined by the report as a chronic, potentially fatal disease.

Although the disease is very difficult to diagnose at the college level, researchers including Valle say that many drinkers develop traits characteristic of an alcoholic while in college. "I think that a number of people here are alcoholics and just don't know it," Valle says.

Valle says that there are a number of signals that may be indicating the presence of a drinking problem. She cites as symptomatic many of the same problems Matano identifies as day-to-day results of drinking: tensions at home, school, and the workplace, health complications and legal and financial trouble.

"Usually, problems will begin in relationships and work down, but they can appear in any of these," Valle says. Health problems can range from injuries incurred while intoxicted to gastro-intestinal problems and weight gain, she says.

The quantity of alcohol that an individual consumes can also be a sign that a dangerous drinking pattern is taking shape, Valle says. "You certainly want to consider quantity," she says, because high tolerance is a natural symptom of alcoholism. Valle says, however, that a person who gets "out of control" once or twice is not necessarily an alcoholic.

Matano cites a family history of alcoholism as another warning signal of increased risk for developing problems. While the rate of alcoholism is 7 percent for the general population, the rate is five to seven times higher among adult children of alcoholics, says the report put out by UHS.

While recognition of a drinking pattern that may lead to a problem later on is relatively easy, acknowledgement of a problem is rare among college students. Alcoholism is "a disease of denial," Valle says.

Wechsler's study of college drinkers found that college students were relatively unconcerned about their drinking habits. Sixty percent of the men in the study said they were not worried at all about their drinking, while 69 percent of the women said the same thing.

Valliant says that a study he began in 1940 showed that students who formed drinking habits in college and continued to drink heavily after school suffered from increased health problems.

The study followed 268 Harvard College sophomores through their college years and then through later periods of their lives, recording such factors as drinking habits, health problems and marital problems.

The sample was split into three groups--a group of moderate social drinkers, heavy social drinkers and alcohol abusers. When the members of the sample were 50 years old, 35 percent of the group that was characterized as alcohol abusers suffered from deteriorating health in the previous 10 years. This was compared to 10 percent from the group labelled moderate social drinkers.

Six percent of the alcohol abusers said they had "clearly good marriages," compared to 35 percent of the moderate social drinkers.

Helping students to avoid the development of habits which can lead to such problems later in life is one reason why groups like Project ADD (Alcohol and Drug Dialogue) are popping up.

Project ADD is a two year-old, student-run group committed to education and outreach. According to organizers, the project visits freshpeople proctorial groups in an attempt to generate discussion about alcohol and drug-related problems.

James B. Kresberg '91, a Project ADD organizer, says discussion about drinking in college is necessary if problems resulting in alcohol abuse are to be avoided.

"The years people spend in college are formative years and experimental years," Kresberg says. "You're probably going to form a lot of habits, and drinking habits are important to keep in mind." Troubling Figures About College Drinking

A Look at Heavy College Drinkers In trouble with the authorities:  62% In physical fights as a result of drinking:  53% In alcohol-related auto accidents:  29% In other alcohol-related accidents:  27%

A Look at 50-Year-Old Harvard Graduates Who Drank Heavily When in College now alcohol abusers   now moderate drinkers Experienced deteriorating health in last 10 years:  35%  10% Have healthy marriages  6%  35%

Sources: "Extensive Uses of Alcohol Among College Students," by Henry Wechsler and Mary Rohman in The Journal of Studies on Alcohol, January 1981, and The Natural History of Alcoholism, by George E. Valliant, 1983.