What's Your Relationship?
Whether or not you use alcohol, most of us have a relationship with alcohol
Non-users are surrounded by alcohol through advertising, media, drinking peers and sometimes alcoholic family members. Abuse of alcohol by others can stir up feelings from annoyance and disgust to anger and fear. For drinkers, the relationship with drug alcohol is more obvious.
As a depressant drug, alcohol has strong mood altering effects. When using in excess, feeling of remorse, depression and confusion are often coupled with physical hangover symptoms of nausea, headaches and jitters. The first step toward understanding your personal relationship with alcohol is to be HONEST with yourself about how it works for you and how it works against you. Create your our own list of pros and cons of alcohol use.
The safest approach to alcohol is no-use at all; however, researchers have identified 0, 1 or 2 drinks as low-risk drinking. Considering a drink equivalent is a shot of liquor, a 12 oz beer or a 4 oz glass of wine then when 0, 1 or 2 drinks is consumed chances of negative consequences are greatly reduced. Heavy episodic drinking or BINGE drinking is consuming 4-5+ drinks in a two hour period. Such high-risk drinking behavior will increase your BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) to .08 and higher which is legal intoxication.
Think about which environments influence your drinking behavior and increase your risk factor. How about your friends … do you tend to drink more with some friends? Consider all the associations you may have with alcohol use and then examine honestly what the risk factors are.
Students suffer severe, long term effects of alcohol abuse and overdose every week on college campuses across the country, from assaults, car crashes, sexual violence to brain damage, death and everything in between. All these consequences are 100% preventable.