I want to get some specifics from this article:
Binge Drinking Still Common on U.S.
According to Reuter’s the article defines binge drinking as 5 drinks in a row. This definition seems absurd to me, and I’d like to find out what they mean by “in a row”
A coupla years ago one of my students was doing a research paper on binge drinking, so I got got to read a bit about this. That standard was adopted by somebody along the way, and then they recently changed it so the number for women was different for men.
That said, I do have access to the particular Journal you mentioned. Or at least, I supposedly do. I’m having a bit of trouble with the online catalog at the moment. I’ll keep trying.
Alas, I can’t get my mitts on the original JAMA article where Wechsler first reported the binge drinking level being 5.
However, I’ve found subsequent articles which seemed to indicate that they may have set that level based on its correlation with 12 alcohol-related problems/outcomes, ranging from missing class to getting in trouble with the law. At least in setting the level to 4 for women, they found that women who drank four drinks at a sitting were as likely (using logistic regression) to have the same problems as men who had five.
Anyway, it doesn’t sound like it was an arbitrary benchmark. I only wish I could access the original. I’d expect that this latest Journal of ACH article isn’t going to explain the binge drinking figure in detail because it’s been accepted as standard since the early 1990s.
Um, okay, could I get any more excited about a research project and ignore what you were asking? LOL
Wechsler consistently uses the term “in a row” in articles so I assume that’s how the students are asked. I guess he means one after the other, on a single occasion? So that would be going to a fraternity party and having five beers.
Humph. They need more accurate measures, like drinks consumed during a time interval. Five “in a row” could mean 5 in the space of an hour or less, or it could mean 5 stretched out over an evening.
If you went to a frat party that lasted 3 or 4 hours and had 5 beers, that would be, like, your basic dopefest. 
Well, I think they came up with that measure based on the finding that the average college student who dirnks that amount has problems. Your average Doper can probably drink that without negative effects. But for whatever cultural/social/environmental/biological reason(s), when college students drink that amount, they have a higher incidence of vandalism, missed work, missed classes, engaging in unplanned sex, experiencing disciplinary woes, etc.
For example, when I have four drinks in a row these days, I generally just go clamber upstairs to my own safe bed in my own house in my utterly safe neighborhood and sleep soundly beside my husband. When I was in college drinking like that, I was out at bars or parties, often walking numerous blocks, passing other drunk people, through weird places, sometimes even crashing in the room of some fraternity friend. There was a lot about that process that was riskier than how I drink now.
Anyway, here’s an article that tells a lot more about “What’s Five Drinks?” and why this is the benchmark. Doesn’t directly address the “in a row” but I think this goes a long way to explaining why 5 in a row makes sense.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Documents/Five_Drinks/five_drinks-1.pdf
If you’re still interested in finding the Journal of American College Health it is available at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Ft. Worth. (that is where you live, right?)
WorldCat lists 29 Texas colleges that carry it, but since I’m not up on what colleges are where in Texas, that was the only one with Ft. Worth in the name.
Thanks for the info, but I think Cranky gave me as good an answer as I’ll get.
Here’s the abstract…
Abstract. Data from the 1999 College Alcohol Study were used to examine how students define the term binge drinking, to determine how much binge drinking the students think exists on their campuses, and to analyze how students’ estimates compare with aggregated self-reports of student drinking. The findings indicate that the median of the students’ definitions of binge drinking is 6 drinks in a row for men and 5 for women,(n1) drink higher than the definition used by researchers. Students’ definitions of binge drinking vary with their own drinking levels, suggesting that dissenting views of the research definition may represent voices of the heaviest drinkers. At the median, students estimated that 35% of all students were binge drinkers. Half (47%) of the students underestimated the binge drinking rate at their school, 29% overestimated it, and 13% were accurate. Although programs designed to reduce the frequency or prevalence of binge drinking by emphasizing healthier norms would be most useful in addressing binge drinkers who overestimate drinking norms, this group includes only 13% of college students.
From a table footnote in the reference…
There doen’t appear to be a category for super-binge drinking or even team drinking. Quackery;)