Social Drinking Essay

Social drinking is defined as drinking in a social setting without the intent to get drunk, it usually seen during fine dining, special celebration and small get together. Social drinking has less to do with the act of socialization but more to do with how much alcohol is consumed during the event and what type of alcohol is consumed. A prime example is the difference between having wine with dinner versus drinking a shot of vodka with dinner. Social drinking also takes in to context if the individual is consuming dark liquor versus light liquor. High risk abusive drinking is characterized by gender, for females consuming more than one drink per hour or three to four drinks during the evening. For males, it is characterized by consuming more …show more content…
When it comes to alcohol, there are no risks free drinking. On the other hand, if we were to look at what college students describe as social drinking, we would find that they reported drinking more than one drink per hour regardless of gender. College students are the ones most at risk for high-risk drinking because of drinking games that often leads to binge drinking. Games such as Beer Pong, card games and keg stands are excellent example. In the book, Chris writes that she caught her sons with funnels in their cars trunks and she would often confiscate them whenever she saw one. Another example is when Toren’s brother calls home to ask his mom how to wash his linens because he had previously engaged in a binge drinking with his rugby club. A person drinking in a social situation does not mean that they drink on the regular but it also means that they may not be social drinkers. In fact, high-risk drinkers can partake in social drinking, but what separates them from social drinkers is that they might not always stop when they hit their limits. They might start out socially drinking but as the nights progress they less worried about maintain BAC and more interested in the pleasurable …show more content…
Reading his story makes me relieve that I currently do not know a friend that is currently in that situation, however, looking at it from Chris’s point of view I have been in that situation. Although I am not a parent, I do come from a very close family where it is impossible to hide such behaviors. Part of the reason that Toren’s parents never saw his problem during college, is the distance, when teens are away from their parents for long periods not a lot is shared. Some of those risky red flag behaviors are not seen because there is no one looking for it, when your around friends you are not looking to find risky behaviors, your looking to have a good time. However, this does not mean that there are some people who would not spot these risky behaviors, it has a lot to do with the strength of their friendship and if they were trained to look for the behavior. A close friend might catch on to risky behaviors because the see both sides of the individual. We all have a friend that acts and behave like Toren that we excused their behaviors because we believe that they are only acting that way because of alcohol. We ignore half of their behaviors because we believe that once they are sober they will change. We see those red flags but choose to ignore them because it is a lot easier to pretend that we saw nothing, but also we are afraid of getting in trouble. It was the ignoring of these