“Alcohol has been seen as a gift of God, and it’s also something that’s been seen as a gift of the Devil,” John Finneran, PhD, said.
According to Finneran, a Health Science professor at Keene State College who has his PhD in Psychology: Alcoholism Studies, alcohol is one of the oldest substances known to mankind; it has been used for food when water supplies have been undrinkable, as well as celebrations and religious ceremonies.
However, its consumption comes with negative repercussions, including (but not limited to) death, injury, assault and sexual abuse.
According to research by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, more than 80 percent of college students drink, and almost 50 percent report binge drinking in the past two weeks.
They define binge drinking as, “a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels to .08g/dL. This typically occurs after four drinks for women and five drinks for men in about two hours.” Despite these generally concrete numbers, Finneran explained how there is much more science to drinking than just counting your drinks. “Alcohol is a liquid that has a very simple chemical formula to it. This very simple chemical formula allows it to go to many places in the body. As a matter of fact, alcohol will go to any place in the body that there’s water, it’s water-soluble. If we count the hydrogen bonds in the human body, about ninety-five percent of our body is water. So any place there can be water, there can also go alcohol,” Finneran said.
He continued, “Assuming we’re drinking it, it usually takes about fifteen minutes or so before you start to feel the effects of a drink. That’s because it takes this long for the alcohol to make its way to the stomach and then to the small intestines. And that’s when it starts to be absorbed by the bloodstream. Once it’s absorbed in the bloodstream, the blood in its coursings will travel up to the brain.”
Finneran said that once the alcohol is in the brain, it can depress the Central Nervous System if it is not metabolized quickly enough by the body. This can put to sleep reason, judgement, metabolism, motor functioning, coordination and even our heartbeat and breathing. This happens when the extra alcohol is held in the blood stream.
“It takes about an hour to metabolize about an ounce-and-a-half of alcohol. But if I drink more than one drink in an hour, then the alcohol that is not metabolized is put on hold in the blood system in the blood stream. That’s where it will start to go to the brain and do its magic,” Finneran explained.
KSC junior and Substance Abuse minor Nicole Demers said that students in the Health Science department may have more knowledge about this process than other students.
“We get to learn how it affects our body and our brain and what it actually does to us. More than just getting the high, we know how it really can control some people and then not really affect others,” she said. Demers also said that some students are just not aware of all the consequences of alcohol.
“I feel like our campus has a wide variety, where there are people who are very responsible with it, then there are people who go out and do abuse it. But I’m assuming that they don’t know they’re abusing it or don’t know that they can be harming themselves in those specific ways,” she said. Finneran explained that students also may not be aware of the true consequences because of how they do learn about this information.
“Students have a lot of opinions about substances, but where do those opinions or ideas come from? Don’t we learn from our peers?” Finneran said.
“When students are initiated into the use of alcohol or other drugs, are they doing it in isolation or are they doing in a social context?
Photo Illustration by Jake Coughlin / Administrative Executive Editor & Tim Smith / Photo Editor
Sometimes when people are in groups, the group exerts a kind of pressure . . . We get a lot of information and experiences from others. Sometimes we get really good information from them. But sometimes we can get really bad information from them too. I would imagine that a lot of students have this common fund of knowledge about using various substances, alcohol included.”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies major Megan Penney said that she knows about how alcohol affects people after they drink it, including consequences such as alcohol being a depressant, addictive, dangerous and causing people to lack common sense as well as lower their inhibitions. She said she learned this kind of information from her peers during her first year at KSC.
“My minor (Psychology) gives me more info than anything else. Other than that I haven’t gotten anything about it, just stuff that I’ve already known,” Penney said. Both Demers and Finneran said that a program for incoming first-years would be the ideal solution to this lack of knowledge. Finneran explained that many years ago, there used to be a First-Year Experience program, where students lived in groups in the dorms, and took classes with each other with the same professors.
“There’s been some talk about trying to bring that back,” Finneran said of the program. “[It] helped make that first year transition a much more meaningful one. If you have that ritual and that container of community, then it might help students who will experiment. You’re expected to experiment when you’re a young adult and when you’re a teenager. You have to decide how you’re going to use psychoactive substances for yourself. But if it was done in a way where you could do it kind of safely, it may not have some of the negative consequences.” Demers agreed, and said that what KSC does now is good, but that students should take it more seriously.
“We have that alcohol survey we have to do. People really don’t take their time and be very sincere on it. They just blow through it to get it over with. If they actually take their time and realize how much they’re drinking or how much drugs they’re using, that could affect them a little bit more.”
Demers said alcohol will be a part of the college lifestyle for a long time, but she does not think drinking responsibly is a hopeless cause.
“I feel like alcohol will always be something that’s here. It’s something for people to do and get together . . . students just need to be responsible and conscious of what they’re drinking and how much they’re drinking, and how many nights of the week they’re actually drinking. Everyone is smart, everyone can take care of themselves.”
Finneran had similar thoughts. He said, “Alcohol can bring great joy, as many other substances can in a particular social context. It can also bring great sadness and suffering. Know that before you go into something, think, think, think. It [alcohol] can be associated with some of the happiest times of your life, but it can also be associated with some of the saddest times of your life.”
Diana Pimer can be contacted at dpimer@kscequinox.com