I thought that the 2006 video created by 20/20 was very good to watch to see how a female doesn’t have to be failing out of school, or be a bad student, to be having a problem with alcohol.  Ann Dowsett Johnson who is the author of, “Drink” explained how she was the face of an alcoholic, but was also a professional, hard working woman you would not expect to have an alcohol problem.  Perhaps Ann was feeling stressed and pulled in many directions trying to fulfill the role of “womanly” duties.  “Role exhaustion” is the term that was used to describe how women are expected to do everything, work, be a mom, and run the household.  This stress makes women turn to drinking to relax, but to overconsumption.  Women often drink alone and are more susceptible to becoming depressed.  It is not just older women who abuse alcohol, but this problem is more seen in women underage.  An example of younger females starting to drink are Koren Kailckas and Samantha Spady, who were both straight A students, but both abused alcohol.  Thankfully, Koren realized she needed to change her behaviors, but it was too late for Smantha Spady who died of alcohol poisoning.  Samantha was at a frat party when the vanilla vodka bottle started to be passed around, and she drank until she couldn’t talk or walk anymore.  The people at the party put her in a room to have her sleep it off, but she ended up dying in her sleep and her body was found the next morning.  I think this video highlights the impact binge drinking has on the person him/herself, but also its affects on the parents of that binge drinker.  The parents of Samantha said that their lives were shattered after Samantha had died, and Koren’s parents said that they were distraught after they had found out about what their daughter had experienced via her book.

 

          Koren’s book was very inspiring and still is to females around the country who have turned to look at themselves and may have realized that they, too, have, or had, an alcohol abuse problem.   Another video that forced people turn to look at themselves was the video called, “Binge Drinking in Words.”  The video starts out by asking questions about how often a person drinks, or if you like to go out on the weekends, etc.  This makes the audience ask themselves these questions and reflect on their alcohol habits/patterns.  However I think the video titled, “College Girls Tweets from Jail Became Viral” was more impactful to watch than any of the videos posted.  This shows that what you do at college doesn’t just stay at college.  Social media is at an all time high right now in our society and people use it constantly.  Videos and pictures are always being posted of people drinking and partying, and there happens to be a craze of people posting pictures of their friends passed out drunk at parties.  For Samantha Goudie, a friend didn’t post something that got her in trouble, but rather she got herself drunk, ended up on a football field, and got herself arrested being four times over the legal limit of being drunk.  Then in the holding cell Samantha started tweeting about her experience, and making a joke about her poor behaviors.  Numerous websites and television shows picked up her tweets, and she became the laughing stock of news media.  Samantha felt as though she was portrayed as somebody she wasn’t, and became very depressed.  @Vodka_Sam shut down her Twitter account and claims she will not be going back on social media, and that her experience has stopped her from binge drinking, even though she feels socially isolated now.  Samantha realizes that she did this to herself and can only blame herself for not realizing the consequences of her actions and her use of social media.  This highlights how so many college students use social media to get attention or share with others their moments of partying.  What they think is funny at that time of intoxication is mostly likely not, and as seen with Samantha, you never know who is looking at your social media page, maybe a future employer.  Overall, I think this video has the most impact on college-aged students who use social media often.

 

          I think that energy drinks should not be consumed, but especially not when mixed with alcohol.  Energy drinks, such as Red Bull and Four Loko, contain many synthetic ingredients that help oxygen flow at an increased rate in the body giving people a boost of energy.  Then if energy drinks are mixed with alcohol, their effects on the body make people feel less drunk.  And because these drinks are cold, people consume more of the mixed beverage and become highly intoxicated without realizing it.  This could cause people to die from alcohol poisoning since they do not realize the amount that they have drank, and now it may be too late to reverse their poor decision making behaviors.  In fact, in a study conducted among college students at ten universities in North Carolina, they concluded that students who consume energy drinks mixed with alcohol get drunk twice as fast, and are more likely to be injured or need medical treatment when drinking.  Even thought energy drink manufacturers do not encourage consumers to mix their products with alcohol, more and more people are doing it.  There have been an increasing number of people dying from consuming energy drinks mixed with alcohol and I think such products should be banned from consuming, since they put people at too big of a risk of losing their lives, and potentially harming others in doing so.