Recent research has shown that despite their increasing in age, Baby Boomers do not necessarily set aside their fondness for binge drinking or drugs. The issue here is these individuals are increasing their risk for both long term health problems such as neurological complications and elevated blood pressure.
U.S. health officials reported in June that binge drinking was up on college campuses, heightening the attention to an alarming trend. Now, authorities are asking the important question: How do you know when your social drinking habits have crossed the line into “at risk” drinking?
This question was asked of Dr. Mark Willenbring, Director of the Division of Treatment and Recovery Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). "People get a lot of confusing messages and they don’t really know how to think about drinking in a healthy way," he said.
That apparent absence of good information prompted Willenbring and his colleagues at the NIAAA to create Rethinking Drinking, a project launched this past March whose primary goal is to give people the tools they need to assess the role that alcohol plays in their lives.
In examining absolute risk, heavier drinkers have less than a 20 percent chance of developing an alcohol habit. According to Willenbring, "Most people who have high cholesterol don’t have heart attacks, and most people who smoke don’t get lung cancer," he says, but that doesn’t mean they’re not at risk. "People don’t understand risks that way."
In truth, everyone is at risk in some way of developing alcohol dependence and it is important to seek out educational material to understand risks in association to individual tolerance. There are no hard and fast rules, but education can go a long way toward responsible drinking.
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