The warnings about alcohol that college students aren’t getting (Excerpt)
By Aneri Pattani
August 23, 2018
PENNSYLVANIA – The first time Bob Lamb thought of alcohol as an escape, he was standing in a hospital emergency room. A friend of his had collapsed and Lamb, then a sophomore at the University of the Sciences, had performed CPR. “I kept him alive long enough for his dad to see him,” Lamb recalled.
After his friend died, Lamb thought, “I need to get out of here, to get drunk and forget everything that I’m feeling.”
Until then, Lamb drank occasionally, like many college students, but that night was the beginning of a downward spiral. He became a daily drinker, missed classes, and failed courses. He took several leaves from school to get mental-health and substance-use care.
Now more than six years in recovery, and a recent graduate of Temple University’s master of public health program, Lamb, 30, recognizes that his alcohol-use disorder stemmed from the trauma of his friend’s death. But the realization caught him off guard.
As a teenager, he’d been told not to drink and drive. To match every alcoholic beverage with a glass of water. To never go to college parties alone. But none of the warnings he’d received about alcohol mentioned mental health.
As millions of freshmen arrive on college campuses this month and next, they are warned of binge drinking, alcohol poisoning, and sexual assault. Parents dropping their children off may have thought about episodes such as the death of 19-year-old Tim Piazza after a night of alcohol-fueled hazing at Pennsylvania State University. But for most, there likely was little discussion of the relationship between alcohol and mental health, or how drinking can exacerbate anxiety and depression — increasingly common diagnoses among incoming students.
“We have a major alcohol problem that has never really been properly addressed,” said Pascal Scoles, director of Community College of Philadelphia’s collegiate recovery program.
Bob Lamb, a recent graduate from Temple’s master of public health program, has been in recovery from alcohol use disorder for more than six years.
The national conversation about addiction has been focused on opioids, which college recovery experts say is appropriate. But they worry that alcohol will continue to be overlooked. “Alcohol is often the forgotten issue,” said Devin Reaves, executive director of the Pennsylvania Harm Reduction Coalition.
Seven percent to 12 percent of college students misuse opioids, according to the American College Health Association, and about 20 percent meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder.
Not only are more young people dying from alcohol-related liver disease, but excessive drinking also can worsen mental illness and has been linked to suicidal thoughts. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students.
Despite these consequences, American society, and college campuses in particular, treat alcohol differently from other drugs, said Frank Greenagel, an addiction policy expert in New Jersey who works with college students. Many think it’s harmless, he said, and the focus on opioids can further normalize that. “Now people with a drinking problem think, ‘At least I’m not taking pills.’ “