ACA recognizes that drinking is a serious problem on college campuses. Binge drinking and underage drinking are two of the more serious calamities that plague campuses across the country. Once away from the watchful eye of their parents, young students often turn to drinking alcohol in order to rebel, to "fit in," or to relieve "boredom" at school. Lack of knowledge about the dangers of alcohol can result in sexual assault, academic probation, fights, careless accidents and even death. The biggest challenge for College Administrations is expelling the myths surrounding alcohol. It is all too often accepted on college campuses to pass out and "sleep it off," when in fact, passing out is your body's way of refusing to allow you to put any more toxin into your body by completely shutting itself down. A person who has passed out needs to be carefully monitored, maybe even hospitalized, and should never be left alone. Vomiting is also something that is widely accepted as normal behavior on college campuses. This is yet another way that your body is trying to rid itself of the alcohol so it does not necessarily mean that the drinker is going to be ok.

To avoid these and other problems, drink in moderation and on a full stomach. Do not drink to "get drunk" or drink when you are upset or depressed. Use the buddy system when you attend parties, and be sure to leave together to avoid potentially dangerous situations. Always choose a designated driver before going to a party, and ride only with someone who has not been drinking. Do not accept a drink that you did not see being made: watch the "bartender" prepare your drinks so that you know exactly what the contents are and how much alcohol is in it. Know your limits and be sure to stop drinking if you reach them.

Drinking has been and continues to be a large aspect of social life on college campuses. But it shouldn't be the only focus. If you are only having fun at college when alcohol is involved then you might have a problem.

Contact our toll-free Nationwide Helpline for more information to find out how to get help.
1-800-527-5344

Social Norms
By Meredith Wolfe
Previous ACA Program Coordinator

Being in the age group of 18-25 is typically pretty disparaging. It seems all the media ever says about us is that we all drink too much and too often, that we indulge in drugs, that we get into careless car crashes, do poorly in school, spread infectious diseases with little to no conscience, and generally single handedly ruin the world. Everyone aged 18-25 seems to be up to no good. This is a pretty grim outlook to have for yourself and you peers, but how can you avoid it? We are bad, bad, bad – it seems to be all that we ever hear.

College administrators and the news media try to scare and bully us into fleeing from risky behavior using many different methods. In the fight to prevent substance abuse among college students, tackling the problem has traditionally involved strategies such as counseling, scare tactics, education about pharmacological effects, and policy initiatives such as zero tolerance for under 21. However, studies show that these traditional methods do little to prevent substance abuse at the college level. Counseling is only effective after the problem has begun. Scare tactics carry little credibility because most young people feel invincible and they can often excite, rather than discourage, risky behavior. And public policy initiatives do no more than perhaps change the place where students drink. All of these strategies, much like the media, are focused on the negative.

Perhaps that’s why I find the "social norms" approach to substance abuse prevention so refreshing. No one is trying to scare me into behaving or shame me about how my peers are behaving. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

The social norms approach to alcohol abuse prevention is based upon the statistical fact that most college students don’t drink heavily. This comes as a surprise to most of us who have been hearing nothing but the opposite for years. Heavy drinking is a serious problem on college campuses, but it is not the norm. There is a general misperception about how much college students drink, and that misperception feeds on itself and carries several negative consequences. How much students think their peers drink directly affects how much they actually drink themselves– when there is a high misperception, actual use and abuse increases. The layers of the misperception compound into a self-fulfilling prophesy. The idea behind social norms is to make college students aware that their peers are drinking less than they think they are, and that in turn, will decrease heavy drinking.

Some people may think that there must be some merit to the misperception that the majority of college students drink heavily -otherwise, where did it come from? Why would everyone, even college students, assume that college students drink more than they do? There are many reasons for the misperceptions. There are psychological reasons (people tend to over-attribute negative behaviors in others), social reasons (conversations tend to revolve around extreme cases and because it is more talked about it is misperceived as the norm), and cultural reasons (news media and movies portray an inaccurate picture of the majority of youth by twisting the truth).

Regardless of the reason they exist, the goal of the social norms model is to change those misperceptions. In schools across the country, the model is being used and positive results are apparent. Finally, someone realized that we do not respond to being constantly scolded! Praising can be much more influential than chastising and sometimes it is nice to hear about the people that do behave responsibly and make good decisions. As it turns out, most of us do. That makes me feel better about my generation. And it makes me feel better about myself.

The highly successful drug courts offer a model for dealing with high-BAC and repeat offense drunk driving. What are drug courts? According to the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Drug Courts Program Office: a drug court "is a specially designed court calendar or docket..., the purpose of which is to leverage the coercive power of the criminal justice system: to reduce recidivism and substance abuse among nonviolent adult and juvenile offenders; and to increase the likelihood of successful rehabilitation through early, continuous, and intensive judicially supervised treatment, mandatory periodic drug testing, and the use of graduated sanctions and other rehabilitative services."

We can learn from the success of the drug courts and apply the concepts used to address the issue of high BAC and repeat offender drunk driving. How? By making treatment a central and integral part of the solution. We know from experience that treatment-based drug courts work. We know that people can recover from alcoholism and addiction. According to Judge Darrell Stevens in Chico, CA, the results are nothing short of "amazing". It’s time to take this proven concept of addressing drug addiction that incorporates treatment to help people recover, and apply it directly to alcoholism and alcohol abuse as it relates to drunk driving.

We need to understand that alcoholism and alcohol abuse is a significant part of the drunk driving problem. And we need to recognize that treatment works. If we do not treat the problem, then the seemingly endless and deadly circle of drunk driving will not be broken.

Some drug courts already include drunk driving as part of their docket. And NHTSA has funded a DUI treatment court project specifically for repeat offenders in Phoenix, AZ. This is a step in the right direction. But we need a larger and more comprehensive effort to develop and establish DUI treatment courts across the country.

If we’re going to stop the carnage of repeat offender drunk driving, we need to go beyond traditional prevention through education and education. We need to break the pattern of repeated drunk driving before the offender kills or injures an innocent victim. We need to treat the problem. That means using the broad range of available treatment programs, services, and approaches - from the AA 12-step program to inpatient treatment centers to pharmacological treatment such as naltrexone, just to name a few - to deal with the core problem of alcoholism and alcohol abuse as it relates to drunk driving. We need prevention through intervention.