Binge Drinking Reaches Disturbing New Low (A Story About Wine and Butts)
Written by Kevin Johnson, Posted on , in Section Teens & Tweens
There's nothing recreational about putting a bag of wine up your rear end to get drunk, and yet parents should be troubled to learn that's what it has come to for some young men. A recent story out of Tennessee highlights that some young men from the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of Tennessee were caught degrading themselves this way when one young man had to be taken to the emergency room to receive treatment for alcohol poisoning.
OK. Can we agree right here and now that this story is just beyond absurd to even have to be mentioning it?
Binge Drinking Is One of the Biggest Problems Facing Young Men
There's a serious binge drinking problem. We believe that when young men drink to excess that it's usually a sign of trouble, but this is a whole different level of problematic behavior.
What is binge drinking? It's an escape mechanism. Binge drinking is like hitting an ejector seat button on consciousness. The binge drinker can goe from crystal clear to blacked out in no time at all.
Why do young men want to escape?
It is often because they don't know how to handle the pressure in their lives, or they have poorly developed emotional maturity, or they don't have strong, internalized values that tell them when something is a dumb and dangerous idea (such as the idea undertaken by the young men at the start of this story).
Binge drinking is every bit as problematic as drug use. It leads to virtual incapacitation. Young men who are drunk as a result of binge drinking are often seemingly different people. That level of being out of control is frightening and dangerous. After all, what's the point of doing something you can't remember? At it's root, it's a simple argument against binge drinking. But look closer, and we have to admit, that there is a reason that these young men continue to engage in this behavior. We need to look closely at the reasons that the drive troubled boys to drink. We can't just concentrate on treating the drinking, we need to focus on treating the underlying causes.
At the end of the day, this is not really a story about a group of young men who debased themselves when they put bags of wine in their anuses, this is a story about a youth culture that favors extremity to temperance, that pushes for over the top even when a reasonable option exists.
There is absolutely no excusing this kind of behavior. But how different is it really from Johnny Quarterback who downs 40 beers on a Saturday night at a kegger? Truth is, it's not. Both of these young men have given up control over themselves, leaving themselves susceptible to making terrible, dangerous decisions, and running from their problems by failing to even try to understand them.
We need to help young men understand that binge drinking is a symptom of systemic problems in a young man's life.
