Nicholas Christakis has a lot to say about the importance of the company we keep. Not only do your friends’ smoking and eating habits affect your own, but their loneliness and drinking habits do as well. Christakis and his colleagues note that if you are directly connected with a person Read more…
School doesn’t start until next Tuesday, and we still have a weekend to go, but the binge drinking has already begun. The local paper reported that 11 alcohol-related cases had been treated at an Emergency Room near campus, one a 17-year-old with a blood alcohol level of .38. This is Read more…
Most of us in higher education are struggling to understand the remarkable level of alcohol consumption evidenced by our students. One of my clicker questions this past quarter, in conjunction with a discussion of how the brain protects us from toxins, asked how many students had vomited from drinking alcohol. Read more…
As my students and readers are aware, my only dabbling with personal biochemistry is limited to consuming substantial amounts of caffeine. Consequently, I was more than a little taken aback when my students, via their anonymous iClickers, informed me that 60% of them had consumed enough alcohol that they barfed. Read more…