Recent findings by a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism study: Students with a history of binge drinking and who play drinking games tend to have higher blood-alcohol content at parties.

Well, duh.

Here’s something less obvious: not only is there more drinking at “themed parties,” but women actually out-drink men at such events.

The study, “Person and Environment Predictors of Blood Alcohol Concentrations: A Multi-Level Study of College Parties,” has been hailed because researchers actually ditched the office and, Dianne Fossey-style, tracked college students in their natural habitat: They followed 1,300 partygoers around 66 parties at San Diego State University, testing attendees’ blood-alcohol content on the spot. Assuming the researchers didn’t kill the mood with white coats and clipboards — unless it was a “dress like a scientist” theme party — it’s a stronger methodology than asking students to ‘fess up about their drinking habits days or weeks later (the traditional strategy).

One of the big conclusions: do away with drinking games, say the authors, since they cause dangerous amounts of alcohol to be consumed too quickly. The authors also claim to be testing “interventions” hosts can use to cut drinking games. Like… not having a party in the first place.

Truly, more power to the San Diego State research team, but how many party hosts will hear these findings and decide to ditch beer pong this weekend? (Better odds that someone’s thinking, “Wait — drinking games and theme parties get people drunk faster. We are so throwing an Ally McBeal marathon tonight!”)

(Apologies for the semi-dated reference: Ally McBeal was a “legal drama” in the same way that Kellie Pickler is a “celebrity”; it ran on Fox during my college career and all you need to know is here. Perhaps current Penn students have similarly awful television to build drinking games around, but I hope not).

Anyway, the best-intentioned research studies almost never change consumer behavior — I challenge you to name one study that has. Besides, when it comes to ingrained drinking culture, what could?

A death at a frat party?

Not really. Following an alum’s drinking-related death on campus in 1999, Penn implemented strict new policies that included suspending alcohol at registered undergraduate parties; while the change sparked a massive protest rally on College Green and a dry Spring Fling — as well as fears that Penn would no longer be “the social Ivy” — most fraternity parties just went underground in the short-term. Nearly a decade later, I’d suspect that alcohol abuse is as widespread among Penn undergraduates as ever.

So long as alcohol is a social lubricant — and it’s been one for a long, long time — games to get it into our bodies aren’t going anywhere. With some self-moderation, is that such a bad thing?

(Responsible alumnus answer: Yes. In fact, under-21 readers… just play the games sober. It’s still plenty of fun — worked out okay for Conan!)

Tags: Ally McBeal, drinking

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Penn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.