Dying to Drink Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses

Underage drinking and binge drinking are not harmless rites of passage. Rather than serving as some kind of bridge to adulthood, these illicit activities exact a senseless and severe price in blood and brain cells each semester. The proof is in the firsthand student accounts of out-of-control house parties and bar blasts, the testimonies of concerned health care professionals, and the tragic news stories related in this landmark book. The good news is that the damage, injuries, and deaths attributed to binge drinking are avoidable. The solutions offered in Dying to Drink will help schools to improve the quality of campus life, parents to ensure the safety of their sons and daughters, and our young people to get the most out of their college years-- without the beer goggles. ABOUT THE AUTHORS HENRY WECHSLER, Ph.D., is the director of the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Studies program and a lecturer in the school's Department of Health and Social Behavior. He conducted his first national survey of college binge drinking in 1993. BERNICE WUETHRICH is a science writer whose work has appeared in Discover, Smithsonian, Science, International Wildlife, and New Scientist magazines. "While American taxpayers fund a Just Say No anti-drug message, we continue to condone a Just Say Yes pro-alcohol policy that allows advertisers and promoters to recruit a younger and younger audience as the next generation of college binge drinkers. Dying to Drink lays bare the tragic cost of fraudulent policies that treat alcohol as a benign legal beverage."--Joseph P. Kennedy II "Henry Wechsler [in Dying to Drink] not only describes graphically the environmental elements of this unhealthy and dangerous reality, but he helps us to understand the price we pay as individuals, as families, and as educators. Even more importantly, he issues a call to action that can be confidently undertaken by schools, by parents, and by the surrounding communities."--Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C., president, University of Notre Dame, and cochairman of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) "That college students drink to get drunk is no myth. It is the simple truth....But being statistically normal doesn't make [binge drinking] right, and it certainly doesn't make it safe.... Keep nagging them, Henry Wechsler. Talk fiercely, Harvard. Keep right on calling it 'binge drinking.' At least it gets their attention."--Philip Meyer, professor of journalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in USA Today "Henry Wechsler is higher education's Paul Revere...."--George A. Hacker, director, Alcohol Policies Project, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI)Wechsler, Henry is the author of 'Dying to Drink Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses' with ISBN 9781579547776 and ISBN 157954777X.