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The Partying Habit That Can Put You in DangerDrinking is part of life for many 20somethings. But beware: There’s one boozing practice that makes you vulnerable to all kinds of bad things.It’s no secret that kicking back with friends over a couple rounds or beer pong or quarters can be a blast. Thing is, if you look past the playful competition and fun social scene that these and other drinking games inspire, you’ll find some real threats to your well-being.“Because the games encourage you to consume larger amounts of alcohol in shorter periods of time than in other social settings, they increase the risk of injury,” explains Henry Wechsler, PhD, director of college alcohol studies in Harvard School of Public Health. An even scarier drawback: You sexual-assault odds soar. Adding to the danger is the fact that drinking games are more popular than ever. Surveys of college students have found that up to 80 percent play them at some point- due in part to the increasing numbers of bars and clubs that now sponsor game nights and even hold tournaments. So before you dive in, read our report on the sneaky yet serious consequences. When You Play Drinking Games, You Can Binge Drink Without Realizing It“During spring break, my friends and I took part in a chug-off contest: Whoever downed the most beer in two minutes won,” recalls Jessie, 22. “We figured that since it wasn’t hard liquor, we’d only get buzzed. But after sucking down four brews, I became dizzy and started shaking. No wonder – I drank more in those few minutes than I usually consume in a night.”As Jessie realized, the typical drinking game stealthily delivers large quantities of alcohol to your system. In many cases, you end up imbibing so much, you approach binge-drinking territory – defined as five drunks one after the other for men, four for women, explains Wechsler. (One drunk equals a 12-ounce bottle of beer, 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 1.5-ounce shot glass of liquor.) Recent research bears this out: An Indiana State University study found that when women played drinking games, they chugged binge-level amounts of booze. But when they were drinking in other situations, like at a mellow dinner party or even a bar, their intake was significantly lower. Break down the rules of certain games and you can see why it’s practically impossible to avoid bingeing. Take one called the 100-Minute Club. The point is to drink a shot glass filled with bear every minute for 100 minutes … or 100 shots of beer in under two hours. Since one bottle of bear contains eight shot glasses’ worth of liquor, you become a member of the binge-drinking club after about half an hour (not to mention that you might earn yourself a trip to the ER). “Flooding your system like that may trigger an alcohol overdose, which can cause brain damage or be fatal.” Says Drew Pinsky, MD, alcohol and addiction specialist and nationally syndicated talk-show host. How Much You Consume Is Out of Your ControlWhen you’re at a bar, you generally order your own drinks- and watch someone else pour them. So you’re pretty much in control of what and how much you’re guzzling. “With drinking games, however, how much you down is placed in the hands of others or is determined by luck,” says Wechsler. “This prevents you from knowing when to start cutting back, increasing your odds of ending up judgment-impaired in an unsafe situation.”Think about it: Games like Asshole let your fellow players decide who should drink and how often. Others like Three Man rely on the roll of the dice to control how blitzed you get. Then there are games with made-up rules, which put your blood-alcohol level at the mercy of the person inventing them. The real danger isn’t that you’re drinking – it’s that how hammered you get is in the hands of people who may not even know your name, much less care what happens to you after the game is over, says Dr. Pinsky. Melissa, 28, recalls one especially out-of-control game: “It was called Upside-Down Margarita, and I’m pretty sure some new rules were created right there at the party. A bunch of people convinced me to sit in a swivel chair with my head back and mouth open while my friends poured margarita ingredients down my throat – as much as they wanted - and then spun me around and around. “At first, I thought it would be harmless fun. But almost immediately, I began throwing up like crazy. I realized I needed to get home, but then I injured myself badly after tripping on the stairs to my apartment. It was my last drinking game ever. You’re Not on Even Ground With the Guys“My roommate and I were doing a Power Hour - when you down a shot of beer every minute for 60 minutes - with four guys we knew from our dorm,” recalls Amy, 21. “After 10 minutes, they were barely feeling it. But we were so plastered, we could hardly stand up without our heads spinning.”When guys and girls play drinking games for the same length of time, everyone ends up downing just about the same level of booze, research shows. Yet, as Amy learned, that similar quantity hits chicks a lot harder. Blame female body chemistry. “Women are affected more strongly by alcohol because they have less water in their bodies, so alcohol doesn’t get diluted,” explains Marc A. Schuckit, MD, director of the Alcohol Research Center at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. Body weight plays a big role too. Let’s say you weigh 110 pounds, and a man you’re competing against clocks in at 150. If you each down five of the same drinks over three hours, his blood alcohol level will be at 0.07 – tipsy but just under the definition of legally intoxicated. Meanwhile, yours will be nearly twice that, at 0.13, which means obvious loss of muscle control, slurred speech, and drastically slowed reaction time, explains Brian Borsari, PhD, assistant professor at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Bottom line: This is one time when you don’t want to keep up with the guys. It’s best to limit your intake to no more than one drink an hour. Your Gamemates May Have Ulterior MotivesAs sinister as it sounds, data from two studies found that 44 percent of guys listed having sex as an important reason for participating in a drinking game. In another one-fifth of men surveyed admitted to taking sexual advantage of a fellow player after the game, and 19 percent said they slept with someone who was too drunk to give consent,” explains Tom Johnson, PhD, a professor of psychology at Indiana State University and a specialist on drinking games. In the same study, 22 percent of female students said they were groped after a drinking game, and 15 percent reported having sex when they were too inebriated to rebuff a guy’s advances.We’re not implying that every dude at the beer-pong table is laying this kind of date-rape trap. But when you mix some guy’s shady motives with your own alcohol-clouded judgment, you may put yourself in a bad sexual situation – for example, flashing your boobs to a group of guys or, worse, getting tricked into going to bed with someone you wouldn’t otherwise sleep with. Sharon, 25, fesses up: “One night, my friends and I were playing I Never with some guys we met at the party, and each time it was our turn, we also had to take off an item of clothing,” she says. “My inhibitions were down, and soon I had my shirt and bra off. To this day, knowing that I exposed myself topless like that really creeps me out.” You May Be Humiliated or HazedA big part of any game is the underlying competition, and drinking games are no exception. Combine that with the typical guy’s ultracompetitive nature – as well as the mega quantities of booze he’ll likely consume during each round - and what starts out as a harmless contest can take a nasty turn. Also many games are about forming hierarchical teams, further upping the intensity of the competition. The result: One or a group of players may gang up on others at the table simply to embarrass them or to make them feel weak.“Fueled by large amounts of alcohol and the win-lose aspect of the game itself, a lot of players may unthinkingly act in dominating ways, even toward a date or friend whom they’ve never acted out of line with before,” says Johnson. “It may take the form of hazing – for example, forcing you to keep drinking until you’re severely intoxicated or pass out. Or they could make you do something foolish or humiliating, such as revealing private information.” That’s what happened to Sarah, 23, after she agreed to play Asshole with a coed bunch of pals. “In the game, the top-level person, the ‘president’ can make up any rule,” she recalls. “So the guy who was president made a rule that I had to tell everyone about my most shameful hookup. Thanks to the two beers I’d just chugged, I spilled all. Suddenly, the president and his buddies started shouting about what a slut I was. I felt frightened and ashamed. I realize now that they set out to target me all along.” |