Is alcohol a necessary element of student life?

In September of 2014, I was catapulted into Galway city’s student life.

This turned out to be an unpleasant, life-changing experience. For a quiet girl who doesn’t have much of a taste for alcohol, college life was challenging. It’s common knowledge that alcohol is a depressant and this reigned particularly true for me. By the time I reached my first year of college,

I had discovered that a few drinks too many had adverse effects on me. Drink made me sad, lonely and irritable. To be clear, I can enjoy a few drinks every now and then but the thought of going out to nightclubs and getting twisted twice a week made me nauseous.

In hindsight, the city commonly known as ‘Party town’ probably wasn’t the best choice for me but as the old saying goes ‘hindsight is a wonderful thing.’ From Fresher’s week,

I felt completely isolated as university life seemed to revolve around alcohol and nightclubs. Which was something I couldn’t quite grasp and still raises the question today, why is drinking alcohol a cultural expectation for students?

I would assume it has something to do with newfound adulthood and freedom that accompanies being a student and leaving home for the first time, however I believe the way alcohol and nightclubs are advertised towards students may have something to do with it.

A study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that the regulation of marketing strategies such as sale prices, promotions and advertisements could lead to a reduction in episodic binge drinking amongst college students.

The study, entitled ‘The Marketing of Alcohol towards College Students: The Role of Low Prices and Special Promotions.’ was carried out on over 10,000 students across 118 campuses across the United States.  The availability of large quantities of alcohol such as 20-30 can cases of beer or kegs for a reasonably low price had a large part to play in binge drinking amongst college students. As well as this, the study stated that students drank significantly more during promotions such as ‘Happy hour’

There’s a strong possibility that alcohol culture is seriously harming the quality of life of third level students. While many of us know that alcohol harms our bodies, it also effects our minds.

In 2012, the mental health organisation Headstrong carried out a large scale national study focusing on youth mental health in Ireland. The study found that 60 per cent of Irish students engaged in problem drinking, with 10 per cent of this figure struggling with alcohol dependency.  The survey also found that 40 per cent of Irish students suffer from depression and 38 per cent from anxiety. These conditions are known to be aggravated by alcohol.

This  raises serious questions about the ethics behind promoting alcohol to college students.

Binge drinking is too often employed as a coping method to deal with college-related stress.

Unfortunately, due the way alcohol reacts with the chemicals in our brain, it can only worsen our situation. I can’t help but consider what might happen if we promoted counselling services as much as we promoted alcohol.

Personally, I believe a reduction in alcohol-laden university life would be hugely beneficial.

Little things such as alcohol free events would go a long way by ensuring that non-drinkers don’t feel like social outcasts. As well as this, we need to open up a discussion on how the promotion and consumption of alcohol is affecting our mental and physical health.