New book explores College Drinking Beyond pathology

As students we always ‘heard/ and hear’ from the world (elders, friends etc.) that alcohol is Bad.

But still, hundreds of college students drink too much.

And even after too much drinking and partying, many among them still get best grades and later, best jobs. [another variant of this college drinking is -- Take Two Pegs and pull an all nighter to study].

So are the views held regarding Alcohol are too one sided?

Thomas Vander Ven, author of the book Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard, says that although binge-drinking and drinking culture has been examined before; the history of alcohol research is the history of pathology. That’s there’s too much focus on addiction, and the ways in which alcohol destroys lives and destroys families; and when the world starts talking about college drinking, then these long lists and inventories of alcohol harms collated all these years and decades, indoctrinate the world.

Although the author acknowledges the bad effects of drinking and the not so good consequences; he says that too much focus on the bad effects, made past researchers miss the other side. The other aspect of drinking in college is covered by Ven in his book. --------

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