Alcohol Help

All students included in the survey were former high school athletes, chosen because this group is considered at high risk for heavy alcohol use and its consequences, which include risky sex, driving drunk, and personal injury or death. (Credit: aceshot1 / Shutterstock)

PENN STATE (US) — New tailored interventions can help prevent dangerous drinking during students’ first few weeks of college, a new study reports.

“Research shows there is a spike in alcohol-related consequences that occur in the first few weeks of the semester, especially with college freshmen,” says Michael J. Cleveland, research associate at the Prevention Research Center and the Methodology Center at Penn State University.

“If you can buffer that and get beyond that point and safely navigate through that passage, you reduce the risk of later problems occurring.”

The researchers tested two different methods of intervention on incoming freshmen—parent-based intervention and peer-based intervention. Cleveland and his colleagues found that students who were non-drinkers before starting college, and who received the parent-based intervention, were unlikely to escalate to heavy drinking when surveyed again during the fall semester of their first year.

Students who were heavy drinkers during the summer before college were more likely to transition out of that group if they received either parent-based intervention or peer-based intervention. However, if a heavy-drinker received both interventions, there was no enhanced effect.

Cleveland reports the findings in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors that 8 percent of the incoming freshmen were heavy drinkers the summer before starting college. The researchers surveyed the students again during the fall semester and found 28 percent of the freshmen now drank heavily.

The results of the study were based on a study of 1,275 high-risk matriculating college students originally conducted in 2006 by Rob Turrisi, professor of biobehavioral health.

Turrisi and his colleagues randomly assigned students to one of four intervention groups—parent-based intervention only, peer-based intervention only, both parent- and peer-based intervention, or no intervention—and then surveyed the students on their drinking behaviors the summer before they entered college and then again during their first fall semester.

The parent-based intervention involved parents receiving a 35-page handbook outlining how to discuss the issue of alcohol and how to relate to their college student. Parents were asked to fill out an evaluation of the booklet, which also served as a measure to determine how many parents read the material. All parents completed the evaluations.

For peer-based intervention, subjects met one-on-one with a trained peer facilitator once within the first two weeks on campus. The meetings were 45 to 60 minutes long and included “perceived and actual descriptive norms for drinking, drinking consequences, alcoholic caloric consumption, and hours of exercise required to burn those calories,” the researchers report.

All students included in the survey were former high school athletes, chosen because this group is considered at high risk for heavy alcohol use and its consequences, which include risky sex, driving drunk, and personal injury or death.

In the new investigation, Cleveland and his colleagues approached the study differently. Rather than focusing on average levels of drinking—peak blood alcohol content, drinks per weekend, and drinks per week—Cleveland reanalyzed the data using a person-centered approach to determine students’ patterns of drinking as well as how the students responded to intervention.

This allowed the researchers to examine how drinking patterns varied throughout the week as well as how the interventions could be linked to students’ transitions from one sub-group to another.

“We found four sub-groups of drinkers, which is an important advance to understanding different types of drinking that were present in this college sample,” says Cleveland.

The sub-groups included non-drinkers, who did not report drinking alcohol at all; weekend non-bingers, who tended to only consume alcohol socially on Fridays and Saturdays; weekend bingers, who were likely to report binge drinking and getting drunk in the past month on Fridays and Saturdays; and heavy drinkers, who reported drinking every day of the week, most notably Thursdays.

Although neither intervention strategy appeared to influence the weekend drinkers, whether bingers or non-bingers, the intervention effects on the nondrinkers and heavy drinkers were promising, says Cleveland.

“From here we may be able to tailor the intervention to different types of students, identifying those students who are at different types of risk,” says Cleveland. “By figuring out a way to match the intervention to the individual you can also maximize your resources for intervention.”

Cleveland is continuing this work by replicating the results among another sample of college students and is also using the same methods to study the drinking behaviors of young adults who are not attending college.

Contributors to the study include additional researchers at Penn State as well as Rutgers University.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism both supported this research.

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The UMC’s General Board of Church and Society last year debuted an alcohol-free Lent campaign, and will be pushing it a bit harder this year.

“We had a rather soft launch. It wasn’t a big buildup,” said the Rev. Cynthia Abrams, director of the agency’s Alcohol, Other Addictions & Health Care program.

Only 42 churches signed on to participate. But the campaign generated quite a few news stories, some in national outlets.

And Ms. Abrams said she heard from numerous individual United Methodists who decided to try going without alcohol for Lent, with some surprised by the experience.

“They didn’t how much alcohol influenced their lives until they actually stopped using it socially,” she said.

Ms. Abrams said her agency’s website will have a place where individuals, small groups or churches can register their participation. She expects to offer a weekly meditation or article about addictions issues, as well.

The campaign was suggested by one at Myers Park UMC in Charlotte, N.C. Following that church’s example, Ms. Abrams encourages participants to donate the money they would have spent on alcohol to local charities focused on addiction issues.

Methodists were in the thick of the U.S. temperance movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the UMC still battles the alcohol industry on regulation issues and on marketing to young people.

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This is the first in a two part series on drugs and behavior by Sammy Trick, Andrea Rognlien, Karina Johnson, Karlee McCoy, students at Concordia College for Psychology 324.

The following are snippets of information pertaining to the risk factors for potential alcoholism, information about alcohol consumption, and the categories of alcohol consumption. There are many facts out there about alcohol, but did you know:

It takes 30 minutes for the body to feel the effects of alcohol. Alcohol is eliminated slowly through the body. The liver can process about 1 ounce of alcohol in one hour. One standard drink is eliminated in one hour. Individuals with a higher risk of alcoholism may exhibit a higher tolerance to the effects of alcohol. That is, at a BAC where others may stop drinking due to feelings of intoxication, these persons are likely to continue consuming alcohol.

Since men and women metabolize alcohol differently, their advised behaviors of alcohol intake differ slightly.

Moderate drinking for women is no more than 1 drink per day and for men no more than 2 drinks per day. Binge drinking for women, is defined as 4 or more drinks on one occasion and for men is defined as 5 or more drinks on one occasion. Heavy drinking for women is categorized as, on average consuming more than 1 drink per day and for men on average, consuming more than 2 drinks per day.

Alcohol is a peripheral dilator which causes the blood vessels near the skin to enlarge. This may cause the feeling of warmth. However, it actually causes the body to lose heat more quickly.

Beginning alcohol use at a younger age increases the likelihood of an alcohol-related problem later in life. Scientific evidence has shown that the likelihood or risk of developing alcoholism has been correlated with both genetic factors, such as family history, and environmental factors. Some people exhibit unhealthy drinking habits in response to life stressors. A tolerance to the effects of alcohol may develop due to consistent excessive drinking from a young age. This can lead to harsh effects on the body later in life. A general tolerance to the effects of alcohol (not developed from excessive drinking) has been correlated with alcoholism risk later in life.

Children of alcoholics are about four times more likely than the general population to develop alcohol problems.

One can assess individual risk factors for possible alcoholism based on family history, alcohol tolerance and environmental factors. Those identifying themselves as having risk factors for alcoholism are encouraged to explore prevention approaches such as abstinence from the consumption of alcohol.

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Jenna Johnson is right to point out that the binge drinking problem isn’t just about college students anymore.

Ask any college student you know about alcohol on campus. You won’t hear them answer with a number as if playing a game of trivia. College students get hammered, wasted, bombed or blitzed, but they wouldn’t use “binge” to define their behavior. Adults who “binge” would doubtfully use that term nor would they say, “I over consumed last night” at the water cooler the next morning.

The Century Council’s recent efforts to learn about college binge drinking specifically examined the definition of binge drinking from college students. Among students who go out socially at least twice a week and drink at least once, binging happened, yes, but they’d never use that term. Their definition, and there isn’t one they’d all agree to, is closer to “too many drinks too often.”

Consequences from overconsumption, as identified by the students, tend to be those with short term effects such as hangovers or social consequences such as regretted texts or humiliation. The number of deaths, injuries, car crashes, or visits to the ER due to binge drinking are not the primary concerns of these college students.

Five drinks for a man or four for a woman in a few hours may be harmful; nobody would argue otherwise. But as the CDC found, people really drink in excess of eight or nine drinks. Let’s nudge our nation’s gifted, motivated, and driven college students to realize for themselves how silly, wasteful, and dangerous their behavior really is.

Students (and the general population) are wary of statistics. Overconsumption is dangerous and needs to be addressed from a cultural standpoint. Smoking (it’s not cool anymore) and drunk driving (nobody brags about how they just barely made it home) are no longer socially acceptable to most Americans. Let’s put an end to binge drinking the same way.

The irresponsible overconsumption of alcohol must become culturally unacceptable. The Century Council is encouraging college students to find their voice on this issue. All Americans must do the same.

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A study of a controversial housing project that allows chronically homeless people with severe alcohol problems to drink in their apartments found that during their first two years in the building residents cut their heavy drinking by 35 percent.

For every three months during the study, participants drank an average of 8 percent fewer drinks on their heaviest drinking days.

They also had fewer instances of delirium tremens, a life-threatening form of alcohol withdrawal.

The American Journal of Public Health published the findings Jan. 19.

Housing for chronically homeless people usually comes with many conditions, including abstinence from drugs and alcohol and compliance with psychiatric and substance abuse treatment. But such requirements can become barriers to staying in housing.

“These individuals have multiple medical, psychiatric and substance abuse problems, and housing that requires them to give up their belongings, adhere to curfews, stop drinking and commit to treatment all at once is setting them up to fail. The result is that we are relegating some of the most vulnerable people in our community to a life on the streets,” said Susan Collins, lead author and University of Washington research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Because they are unable to cope with the rules, they often do not qualify for housing or are asked to leave. Once back on the street, they cost taxpayers’ money through use of emergency room visits, shelter and sobering center stays, arrests and jail bookings.

In response, an approach called project-based Housing First has been developed by the Downtown Emergency Service Center, a Seattle-based housing agency. Project-based Housing First provides immediate, permanent and supportive housing to chronically homeless people within a single housing project. It is considered “low-barrier” because it removes some of the traditional barriers to housing, such as abstinence from alcohol.

The idea behind it is that if chronically homeless people are provided with stable, permanent housing, then their medical, psychiatric and substance abuse problems will become more manageable.

Downtown Emergency Service Center’s 1811 Eastlake housing project is the first project-based Housing First model in the United States to be scientifically studied. Residents agree to spend 30 percent of their income – if they have any – on rent, and in return they are provided with permanent housing and social services.

An earlier study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that, in its first year of operation, this housing project saved Seattle taxpayers more than $4 million in costs from publicly funded services. The new study shows that drinking also decreases.

“A lot of people believe in the ‘enabling hypothesis’ – that allowing homeless, alcohol-dependent individuals to drink in their homes will enable them to drink more, and their drinking will spiral out of control,” Collins said. “But instead what we found are across-the-board decreases in alcohol consumption and problems.”

Health also improved. Residents reporting recent bouts of delirium tremens dropped by more than half over the two-year study, from 65 percent to 23 percent.

In the study:

94 percent of the 95 participants were men and most were white (40 percent) or American Indian/Alaska Native (27 percent).
The average number of drinks consumed on the heaviest drinking day of the month decreased from 40 to 26 across two years, a decrease of 35 percent.
The median number of drinks, a more accurate view of drinking patterns for this study’s participants, showed a change from 20 to 12 drinks per typical drinking day – a 40 percent drop.
By the end of one year, 80 percent of participants remained in the study. That was reduced to 79 percent after 18 months and 61 percent after two years. Severity of drinking and demographic variables were ruled out as reasons why participants left the study.

Collins said that she and her team witnessed the resilience of the residents. “When they were on the streets, they were in dire straits and did what they needed to do to survive,” Collins said. But with steady housing, they were able to have a more normal existence. “Participants in the study told us that they’re happy to have a home, and happy that they no longer have to drink to stay warm or to put themselves to sleep or to forget that they’re on the streets.”

People tend to think that chronically homeless people with severe alcohol problems are unable to control themselves or monitor their drinking, Collins said, but instead this study shows that they are “human beings who are capable of change if they are given the same chance as the rest of us.”

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Researchers at the California Teratogen Information Service (CTIS) Pregnancy Health Information Line, a state-wide non-profit organization based at the University of California, San Diego, have found new links between the timing of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and certain characteristics of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). The results will be published in the April 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

The study uses data obtained by counselors at the CTIS Pregnancy Health Information Line, a toll-free service offering evidence-based clinical information about exposures during pregnancy and breastfeeding. It focuses on 992 California women who contacted the CTIS Pregnancy Health Information Line between 1978 and 2005 with questions about a wide variety of exposures and, after being counseled, agreed to participate in a follow-up study of their pregnancy outcome. The study specifically examines the timing of the mother’s reported alcohol exposure in relation to known physical features of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). Importantly, all infants in the study, whether identified as exposed to alcohol or not, received a special screening for birth defects by Kenneth Lyons Jones, MD, chief of the Division of Dysmorphology/Teratology at the Department of Pediatrics and CTIS Medical Director.

The physical features of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome can be very subtle and not easily recognizable, particularly in newborns. These features include a smooth upper lip with thin/smooth red portion of the lip, short eye openings, smaller head size, and reduced birth weight and length.

Researchers found that every pattern of higher prenatal alcohol consumption (no matter the timing in pregnancy) was associated with an increased risk of having an underweight infant or one with a reduced birth length. However, there were also significant associations between higher alcohol consumption in the second half of the first trimester and certain facial features of FAS, in addition to lower birth weight and length. “For every one drink increase in the average number of drinks consumed daily, there was a 25 percent increased risk for smooth upper lip, a 22 percent increased risk for thin red portion of the upper lip border, a 12 percent increased risk for small head size, a 16 percent increased risk for reduced birth weight, and an 18 percent increased risk for reduced birth length,” said Haruna Sawada Feldman, PhD, MPH, CHES, post-doctoral student and lead author of the study.

“These findings show that drinking alcohol between week seven and 12 of pregnancy are clearly associated with a risk for FAS facial features, as well as a decrease in birth weight and length,” said Christina Chambers PhD, MPH, professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego and CTIS program director. “However, this should not be misinterpreted to mean that drinking during weeks 1 through 7 is safe. This study only looked at data that included live births. It does not include women who had miscarriages or stillbirths possibly resulting from early alcohol exposure,” she explained. “If anything, this further supports the idea that there is no designated ‘safe’ period for drinking alcohol in pregnancy, and that discontinuing alcohol consumption as soon as possible, and, ideally, prior to pregnancy is the best approach to preventing FAS.”

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Pennsylvania College of Technology has been awarded a $15,000 grant by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to support its mission of preventing underage and high-risk alcohol use by students.

The college will use the grant to fund its ongoing underage and dangerous alcohol consumption education efforts, said Carl L. Shaner, College Health Services director and grant coordinator.

The Alcohol Education Grants are one component in support of the PLCB’s mission to provide leadership and resources in reducing alcohol misuse in the commonwealth. In general, the PLCB grants support a range of initiatives, including law enforcement training and community and youth outreach and prevention programs.

Shaner said the grant specifically will fund a number of initiatives:

A portion will be used to defray expenses for an on-campus billboard in the Spring 2012 semester advertising the Impaired Student Recovery Area and the importance of calling for emergency care when an individual has had too much to drink.
Also, in Fall 2012, Penn College will implement an online alcohol abuse prevention program that will be mandatory for all first-year students. The goal of the program is to encourage incoming students to assess their own attitudes and beliefs about alcohol, debunk myths about alcohol, and promote personal responsibility.
Penn College Police will use part of the grant to purchase an Intoximeter breathalyzer, a device similar to those used by state and local police that measures blood-alcohol content. The funding also will allow police to conduct targeted patrols during times when student drinking has been noted to rise including Thursday nights, weekends and holiday breaks.
Funding additionally will go toward training at the Impaired Student Recovery Area, staffed by EMTs that monitor students who have been found to have ingested an amount of alcohol that could be a danger to themselves or others.

The grants awarded to Penn College and 76 other organizations represent a shift in focus on the part of the PLCB, Shaner said. In the past, the college typically used the funds to defray the cost of alcohol-free, “alternative” events offered on campus.

Now, however, he explained, the PLCB requires its grant recipients to focus on developing “environmental management strategies” designed to reduce underage and high-risk drinking. Studies conducted by the Higher Education Center, which falls under the U.S. Department of Education, have shown that strategies targeted at the “environment” – in Penn College’s case, the campus and surrounding neighborhood – are more effective.

The PLCB is an independent agency that manages the alcohol beverage industry in Pennsylvania. It is responsible for licensing the possession, sale, storage, transportation, importation and manufacture of wine, spirits, and malt or brewed beverages in the commonwealth, as well as operating a system of liquor distribution (retailing) and providing education and prevention services to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol misuse.

The PLCB grant program is administered by the board’s Bureau of Alcohol Education.

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Bloomberg — known for sipping fine wine and downing a cold beer from time to time — wants to crack down on alcohol sales to curb excessive drinking, according to a provocative planning document obtained by The Post.

The city Health Department’s far-reaching Partnership for a Healthier New York City initiatives proposes to slash the number of establishments in the city that sell booze.

Community “transformation” grants provided under President Obama’s health-care law would help bankroll the effort.

One of the goals listed in the “request for proposal” document to community groups is “reducing alcohol retail outlet (e.g. bar, corner store) density and illegal alcohol,” the document states.

“Talk about a nanny state. Why don’t they just close all the liquor establishments?” quipped Mike Long, a former liquor-store owner in Bay Ridge and head of the state Conservative Party.

“This is absolutely insane. They want to run the retail establishments in New York,” said Long, who likened the effort to the temperance movement of more than a century ago.

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Alcohol leads to the release of endorphins in certain areas of the brain that produce feelings of pleasure and reward, U.S. researchers suggest.

Lead author Jennifer Mitchell, clinical project director at the Gallo Center and an adjunct assistant professor of neurology at University of California, San Francisco, said the finding is the first time that endorphin release in response to alcohol consumption has been directly observed in humans.

Endorphins are small proteins with opiate-like effects that are produced naturally in the brain.

“This is something that we’ve speculated about for 30 years, based on animal studies, but haven’t observed in humans until now,” Mitchell said in a statement. “It provides the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good.”

Senior author Howard L. Fields said the discovery of the precise locations in the brain where endorphins are released provides a possible target for the development of more effective drugs for the treatment of alcohol abuse.

The researchers used positron emission tomography imaging to observe the immediate effects of alcohol in the brains of 13 heavy drinkers and 12 matched controls, who were not heavy drinkers.

The study, published in the Science Translational Medicine, found alcohol intake in all subjects led to a release of endorphins — and the more endorphins released in the nucleus accumbens part of the brain, the greater the feelings of pleasure reported by each drinker.

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A new study provides clues about the brain mechanisms that drive people to abuse alcohol. The study found a link between how good people feel after they drink, and the amount of endorphins—proteins with opiate-like effects—released in their brain.

Similar findings have been seen in animal studies, but this is the first time they have been observed in humans, according to a news release by the University of California, San Francisco, where the research was conducted. “This is something that we’ve speculated about for 30 years, based on animal studies, but haven’t observed in humans until now,” said lead author Jennifer Mitchell, PhD. “It provides the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good.”

Researchers studied 15 volunteers; 13 were heavy social drinkers and 12 were not. Women were considered heavy social drinkers if they consumed 10 to 16 drinks a week, while men in that category had 14 to 20 drinks weekly, CNN reports. Women who were not heavy social drinkers had fewer than five drinks a week, while the men had fewer than seven drinks.

The subjects’ brains were scanned using positron emission tomography (PET) to examine the distribution of chemicals produced in response to drinking. In heavy drinkers, just one drink led to the release of more endorphins in two brain regions that play a role in pleasure and reward. They perceived drinking as more pleasurable than the non-heavy drinkers. That feeling leads them to crave alcohol, the researchers said.

They noted that the study, which located the precise areas of the brain where endorphins are released, may provide a possible target for the development of better treatments for alcohol abuse.

The findings appear in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

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