The last thing Daniel* remembered was struggling to hold himself up while dancing at a local house party. He already drank a 16 oz. water bottle full of Fireball Whiskey followed by numerous swigs of vodka.

He woke up the next morning in a hospital bed with no recollection of how he got there.

“I don’t remember ever leaving the party,” Daniel said. “The doctor explained to me that they had to give me an IV and fluids and that I apparently puked quite a bit.”

With a blood alcohol level of .297, he was lucky to be spotted by UOPD the previous evening. The legal limit in the state of Oregon is .08, putting Daniel .217 above. To put it in perspective, most people above a .40 end in fatality.

“I remember not feeling that drunk when I first got (to the party), so I was looking around for alcohol from wherever I could find it.”

By the end of the night, his friends had to drag him back to the dorms. “We made it back near the dorm where I apparently fell one last time, and when I did a cop who was parked over by Carson flashed his lights. That’s when the entire group of people I was with darted and ran inside, leaving me outside on the pavement, a foot away from the door.”

Daniel’s story is not uncommon among the student body. It could happen to anyone — including the five sorority girls recently hospitalized early this October.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that frequently occurs at the University of Oregon. According to Kelly McIver of the University of Oregon Police Department, 52 students per year on average are medically transported for drug or alcohol use.

“The numbers reflect only the calls for transportation from campus, so by nature it is mostly capturing residents of University Housing, who tend to be first-year students,” McIver said. “The numbers obviously do not include off-campus situations.”

Binge drinking is a problem that many students around UO are faced with. Daniel admits, “I’m terrible at timing drinking and always end up doing too much too soon and this was a prime example of it.”

Contrary to popular belief, the UO is not a “dry campus.” According to Jennifer Summers, the director of Substance Abuse Prevention and Student Success, “Our campus does allow alcohol (upon approval) at events.”

Students who are underage or attending “dry” events and want to drink, however, do not have the option to safely drink at said event. Many students feel pressured to drink prior to arriving at a party or dry event, often referred to as “pre-gaming.”

“Everyone is constantly encouraging each other to drink more,” Madison Richards, a sophomore at the UO said. “They know that they won’t be able to drink when they arrive at their final destination, so they over-indulge as much as they can beforehand.”

The consequences of this kind of alcohol consumption, however, can be extremely serious.

According to Summers, a study conducted by the National College Health Assessment found that in incidents of heavy alcohol consumption, “15.6 percent of students physically injured themselves, 19 percent had unprotected sex, 2.2 percent physically injured someone else, 5.2 percent got into trouble with the law and 39.3 percent did something that they later regretted.”

The UO has taken multiple precautions to prevent these kind of incidents. For example, all freshmen are required to participate in “AlcoholEdu,” a drug and alcohol prevention and safety program implemented to help students understand the risks of drinking large amounts of alcohol in a short amount of time.

“The University of Oregon has a long-standing commitment to proactively addressing high-risk drinking and substance abuse on campus,” Summers said. The university however, also takes pride in creating a celebrative atmosphere for its students. “The goal of current prevention, assessment and treatment efforts at the UO is to change this culture of drinking.”

It’s a drinking culture that for some, has had its consequences.

“Looking back, I remember being extremely bitter towards the people who ran away and left me outside,” Daniel recalls. “But there’s another part of me that is glad things turned out the way that they did. If I had gone back into the dorm there’s no telling whether or not I would have made it.”

*Names have been changed to protect identity.