Binge Drinking

2036

Binge Drinking Ever heard about “Binge Drinking”? If not, maybe you spend too much time either at home or at your granny’s. If you do know what we are talking about, well then you’ve certainly had one hell of a freshman year.
Anyway, here’s our IATE term of the week. “Binge Drinking” is how they call this new trend about drinking so much alcohol in a very short time, just with the purpose to do so. No social pleasure in sharing a beer with a friend or sipping a Mojito at the beach. Binge Drinking is anything but good, nor fun.
We don’t know what pushes kids and people all over the world to this weird habit – we’re going to leave the social analysis to whoever does that – but we do know there is nothing fun, nor appealing, in getting wasted like that and even risk your own life.
And, pay attention, we are not making any judgments, nor moral trials.

Most of the times, university students and goliards are famous for their jokes, and – let’s call it this way – pleasant lifestyle. But there is nothing new in this.
If we go back to the old times – nope guys, not the sixties, a little bit further – we can even find proves of “Binge Drinking” habits in one of the most famous collection of medieval chants, Carmina Burana. In fact, there’s a traditional goliard song about heavy drinking, called “In taberna quando sumus”, which is the medieval Latin for “When we are in tavern”.

 

Binge Drinking IATE

 

But we are discussing on a potential tragedy of our times, not an historical fact. History, indeed, can show us what happened when new substances or “malpractices” occurred for the first time, among different cultural sets. The results have always been dramatic. We could perhaps mention Thomas De Quincey, author of Confession of an Opium Eater, one the first testimony of the consequences of Opium free selling in United Kingdom. And even though the “Confession” is a rare example of art, it also gives clues about a malpractice quickly and dangerously spreading all over England. Other examples may include the mass poisoning by amphetamine in Japan during World War Two. One more instance: the introduction of alcoholic substances in the diet of Native Americans did lead to a very bad social tragedy. And we could go on and on ’til we drop dead. That is what happens when institutions underestimate the potential harm of a new trend.
And this is what’s happening now. Binge Drinking is becoming more and more dangerous right because it hasn’t been treated as a real issue.
Let’s start doing it.

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By Sabina Grixoni

Editor and Social Media Strategist

Communication Trainee at TermCoord

 

and

 

Matteo Poles

Social Media Specialist

Communication Trainee at TermCoord

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