Today, American colleges have become a place for students to continuously get wasted, obliterated, hammed, and destroyed. Even after experiencing embarrassing, unpleasant, or violent incidents due to overdrinking, students still continue to socially drink past their limits. In his book, “Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink too Much and Party so Hard”, Thomas Vander Ven successfully explains why drinking has become so trendy on college campuses and why college and drinking have now become synonyms with one another. To achieve this understanding, he collected 400 student accounts, 25 intensive interviews, and over 100 hours of field research on the topic. What he found was that college students continue to engage in binge drinking as a
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This timeline begins with the “big three” then moves on to address the impacts the prohibition era, the introduction of Greek life, and current trends have on the increased popularity of college drinking. Over the years, the popularity of binge drinking on college campuses has been on the rise. In the next chapter, “Getting Wasted”, the author addresses the intoxication process and the various reasons college students use to defend why they drink. These include to celebrate a birthday, the end or beginning of a semester, game days, or simply because they went to class or accomplished an everyday task. In order to get intoxicated, students begin “pregaming” in dorms by playing games and then continue to drink once arriving at parties or bars. “Being Wasted”, the next chapter describes the state of being intoxicated and what it encompasses. Vander Ven presents the idea of alcohol acting as a “social lubricant” to foster the creation of friendships and bonds among students. In other words, students are more carefree, talkative, and flirtatious when they have alcohol in their …show more content…
The major “drinking crisis’s” include becoming sick, getting alcohol poisoning, getting caught, becoming part of a verbal fight or physical altercation, and engaging in risky sexual behaviors. Correspondingly, he expresses the importance of social support during these crisis’ in order to save friends when they’re sick, ensure they don’t get caught, or “cock block” them from sexual predators. In the next chapter, “The Morning After” Vander Ven describes the effects of hangovers and regrets. Frequently students find themselves engaging in drunken behaviors that cause them shame and embarrassment the next morning. Therefore to deal with this, they rationalize their behaviors using the reinforcement they receive from friends. More often than not, students use alcohol as an excuse for their actions and therefore, they should not be shameful because it was the alcohol that made them act that way not their own decisions. Additionally, students overcome the physical effects of drinking (hangovers) using techniques such as denial or treatment. Students don’t admit to having hangovers as long as their laying in bed all day doesn’t interfere with other responsibilities they have that next day. The final chapter, “Using Drunk Support”, addresses how social support encourages individuals to continue to drink even after they face trouble. Persistent drinkers use
This timeline begins with the “big three” then moves on to address the impacts the prohibition era, the introduction of Greek life, and current trends have on the increased popularity of college drinking. Over the years, the popularity of binge drinking on college campuses has been on the rise. In the next chapter, “Getting Wasted”, the author addresses the intoxication process and the various reasons college students use to defend why they drink. These include to celebrate a birthday, the end or beginning of a semester, game days, or simply because they went to class or accomplished an everyday task. In order to get intoxicated, students begin “pregaming” in dorms by playing games and then continue to drink once arriving at parties or bars. “Being Wasted”, the next chapter describes the state of being intoxicated and what it encompasses. Vander Ven presents the idea of alcohol acting as a “social lubricant” to foster the creation of friendships and bonds among students. In other words, students are more carefree, talkative, and flirtatious when they have alcohol in their …show more content…
The major “drinking crisis’s” include becoming sick, getting alcohol poisoning, getting caught, becoming part of a verbal fight or physical altercation, and engaging in risky sexual behaviors. Correspondingly, he expresses the importance of social support during these crisis’ in order to save friends when they’re sick, ensure they don’t get caught, or “cock block” them from sexual predators. In the next chapter, “The Morning After” Vander Ven describes the effects of hangovers and regrets. Frequently students find themselves engaging in drunken behaviors that cause them shame and embarrassment the next morning. Therefore to deal with this, they rationalize their behaviors using the reinforcement they receive from friends. More often than not, students use alcohol as an excuse for their actions and therefore, they should not be shameful because it was the alcohol that made them act that way not their own decisions. Additionally, students overcome the physical effects of drinking (hangovers) using techniques such as denial or treatment. Students don’t admit to having hangovers as long as their laying in bed all day doesn’t interfere with other responsibilities they have that next day. The final chapter, “Using Drunk Support”, addresses how social support encourages individuals to continue to drink even after they face trouble. Persistent drinkers use