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With the new Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” in U.S. theaters as of May 17, 2024, the late singer’s relationship with alcohol and drugs is under scrutiny again. In July 2011, Winehouse was found dead in her flat in north London from “death by misadventure” at the age of 27. That’s the official British term used for accidental death caused by a voluntary risk.Her blood alcohol concentration was 0.416%, more than five times the legal intoxication limit in the U.S. – leading her cause of death to be later adjusted to include “alcohol toxicity” following a second coroner’s inquest....

A single night of binge-drinking is more likely to cause liver disease than a few drinks spread across the week, a study revealed. According to a study done by the University College London, first reported by the London Standard, measuring the pattern of alcohol intake was more accurate than volume for predicting the risk of developing alcohol-related cirrhosis (ARC). According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, ARC is a stage of liver disease where the liver has become significantly scarred and may cause the liver to stop working correctly. The scientists analyzed data from 312,599 active alcoholic drinkers in the United Kingdom...

About one-third of the service personnel surveyed met the criteria indicating hazardous drinking and possible alcohol use disorder, with 30 percent reporting that they binge drank in the past month. Among Marines, that figure jumped to 42.6 percent. Binge drinking is defined as more than five drinks for men or more than four for women in one sitting, according to the report, issued by Rand and based on a survey that was conducted from late 2015 to early 2016. That rate was down from 33.1 percent in the previously reported survey from 2011, but it’s still high enough to cause...

Binge drinking across the United States is at an all time high. Yet, a new report from the Wall Street investment firm Cowen & Company shows that this dangerous alcoholic behavior is on the decline in states that have legalized the leaf in a manner similar to alcohol.It was just a month ago that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published new data suggesting that more Americans are now engaging in regular binge drinking. What was once considered a foolish exploit of College students has now apparently infiltrated citizens from every demographic and all walks of life. [...]But the investment analysts at...

About a month ago, Rolling Stone Magazine published a savage story that made headlines across North America, detailing a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. Controversy erupted almost immediately, with the same tiresome lines being trumpeted: Feminists declaring that this assault was evidence of the prevalence of “rape culture,” and conservatives arguing that rape culture didn’t exist. As the UVA rape story began to unravel, feminists got rather shrill, justifiably worried that this could result in other anti-rape measures being taken less serious. Conservatives were a bit triumphant, rather ironically stating that this was another example of...

It may seem this post is well off the beaten path of what I usually write, but I hope you will bear with me for the few minutes it will take you to finish reading. I was drawn to this subject by a post from Hot Air about the dangers of young women binge drinking in college. The post was based on an article in Slate about trying to communicate these dangers to the young women in question. The article in question has stirred up a small firestorm. The author has been accused of a lot of things, including waging...

Almost 1 in 10 U.S. high school seniors have engaged in recent extreme binge drinking—downing at least 10 drinks at a rate that barely budged over six years, according to a government-funded report. Less severe binge drinking, consuming five or more drinks in a row, has mostly declined in recent years among teens. But for high school seniors, the 2011 rate for 10 drinks in a row—9.6 percent—was down only slightly from 2005. The most extreme level—15 or more drinks in a row within the past two weeks—didn’t change from 2005 to 2011. Almost 6 percent of high school seniors...

Back in 2003, responding to a CDC report on binge drinking, I noted that "one man's dinner party is another man's binge—especially if the other man has a degree in public health." Based on more recent survey data, the CDC now warns that "binge drinking* is a bigger problem than previously thought," involving 38 million American adults. That asterisk is well-earned, because the CDC continues to define "binge drinking" as "men drinking 5 or more alcoholic drinks within a short period of time or women drinking 4 or more drinks within a short period of time." If a "short period...

With 38 million Americans involved in binge drinking, it is only a matter of time until the CDC calls for the repeal of the Twenty First Amendment.

OXFORD, Ohio – Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away — not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets. The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of "Animal House" and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News & World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools. The school suspended two of the sororities and put the third on probation. A task force is reviewing discipline...

<p>The son of legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel was found dead in a Washington Heights apartment under mysterious circumstances yesterday morning after a daylong drinking binge with a man he had just met in a Midtown bar, law-enforcement sources said.</p>

The son of legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel died early Monday after a night of drinking that ended in the seedy Manhattan apartment of a pub crawl acquaintance. Andrew Koppel, a 40-year-old attorney with the New York City Housing Authority with a history of alcohol problems, was declared dead around 1:30 a.m., according to the New York Post. Police sources told the newspaper Koppel had stumbled two and a half hours earlier into the Washington Heights apartment of Russell Wimberly, a waiter he had met 12 hours earlier in a Hell's Kitchen bar. A roommate of Wimberly, Belinda Caban, told...

University Researchers Discover Denial Malcolm A. Kline, March 12, 2010 Once again, university researchers have gone to great lengths, and expense, to learn something that less credentialed Americans have known for generations. “Researchers say that some anti-binge drinking public service announcements have an opposite effect,” Sara Schwartz reports in The Washington Examiner. “Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management says that public service ads intended to reduce binge drinking are actually leading to more of it.” “The university performed a five-part study in which researchers showed anti-alcohol ads to 1,200 undergrads and interviewed them afterward.” They could have saved themselves the...

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he'd personally like to see the legal drinking age lifted to 21 years. But there would have to be rigorous debate and evidence that the policy could reduce binge drinking before the government would consider it, he says. What do you thinks about the legal drinking age? Should it be raised to 21? Leave your comment below. "If the evidence is there and it is capable of being proven that it works, then we (will) look at these things and make a decision," Mr Rudd said, when quizzed on ABC Television's Q&A program on Monday...

It's no secret to students that coed dorms are more fun than same-sex dorms. But they can also fuel very unhealthy behavior that might otherwise be moderated. A new study finds university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week. And no surprise, they're also likely to have more sexual partners, the study found. Also, pornography use was higher among students in coed dorms. Some 90 percent of U.S. college dorms are now coed.

(edit)Police are handing out the footwear to help drunken ladettes get home uninjured after spotting a number of women staggering home in unsuitable shoes.  (edit) 'Sometimes people get drunk and you see them carrying footwear which is inappropriate,' he said.  'The emphasis is on providing replacement footwear for people to get home in, should they find their high heels uncomfortable, inappropriate or soiled.'   The footwear will be paid for by £30,000 worth of funding secured from the Home Office by Safer Communities Torbay. Police chief, Supt Chris Singer said: 'Linking in with our pastors this funding represents a significant opportunity...

Anti-drinking ads which show stupid drunk behaviour inadvertently glamorise Medical Studies/Trials Published: Monday, 10-Dec-2007 . .   Advertising campaigns in Britain meant to discourage young people from drinking to excess have come in for some harsh criticism from researchers and comes at a time when experts are saying alcohol abuse is a widespread problem among the young. The researchers say adverts which focus on the idiotic behaviour carried out when people are drunk may be "catastrophically misconceived" and may backfire by inadvertently glamorising the habit. In a study, led by a research team at the University of Bath, researchers...

To combat underage binge drinking, the national legal drinking age should be lowered to 18, a former college president is saying. Since releasing a 250-page study on the societal effects of modern drinking laws, Middlebury College President emeritus John McCardell has campaigned across the country calling for states to lower the legal drinking age to 18 because he observed fewer alcohol-related problems 30 years ago, when 18-year-olds could legally drink. "Before the law changed, it wasn't perfect," McCardell said. "But what you had then was out-in-the-open, intergenerational [drinking]." Since then, McCardell, who is launching the nonprofit group Choose Responsibility this...

Last month, Judge Charles Harris announced on the Today programme that "a very large proportion of domestic violence is committed by people who have been drinking - and if they hadn't been so drinking so much, they wouldn't be so violent". 'Twas ever thus. In 1751, novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding wrote: "Wretches are often brought before me, charged with theft and robbery, whom I am forced to confine before they are in a condition to be examined: and when they have afterwards become sober, I have plainly perceived from the state of case that the gin alone was the...

In the coming weeks, millions of students will begin their fall semester of college, with all the attendant rituals of campus life: freshman orientation, registering for classes, rushing by fraternities and sororities and, in a more recent nocturnal college tradition, "pregaming" in their rooms. Pregaming is probably unfamiliar to people who went to college before the 1990s. But it is now a common practice among 18-, 19- and 20-year-old students who cannot legally buy or consume alcohol. It usually involves sitting in a dorm room or an off-campus apartment and drinking as much hard liquor as possible before heading out...