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"At 11 p.m. on a recent Saturday night, four twentysomething women arrived at the Giggling Grizzly, a popular bar in downtown Denver. &amp;quot;Two were so wasted their eyes were rolling back in their heads,&amp;quot; says bartender Jeff Dew. &amp;quot;When I refused to serve them, one tried to hit me. It used to be guys I was cutting off, but now the women are just as bad.&amp;quot; Chad Widenhouse, manager of the Barrel Bar and Grill in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, says it&amp;#x27;s like Girls Gone Wild in his bar. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve been in this business for 12 years,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;And I can tell you, young women are getting more drunk these days than I&amp;#x27;ve ever seen. Then they&amp;#x27;ll do stripteases on the dance floor or right there on the bar. It&amp;#x27;s shocking.&amp;quot; No big deal? Experts don&amp;#x27;t see it that way. For many young women, they say, partying to oblivion is no longer an occasional way to blow off steam--it&amp;#x27;s a way of life. &amp;quot;There&amp;#x27;s been an intensification of heavy drinking among young women,&amp;quot; says Elissa Weitzman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Guys still tend to binge more often than women do, but we&amp;#x27;re catching up to them: In one recent study, 45 percent of college men reported having five or more drinks in one sitting during a two-week period, compared with 37 percent of college women. But what worries experts most is that a majority of female binge drinkers don&amp;#x27;t even see their habits as extreme; in fact, 91 percent call their drinking &amp;quot;light to moderate.&amp;quot; A shift in attitudes is fueling the alcohol binge. Today more and more women are taking pride in getting dangerously drunk. Consider the popular Facebook group 30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night, where about 170,000 members either post their own drunken party photos or gawk at and comment on (mostly in congratulatory, encouraging terms) the 4,600 photographs of other wasted women. Most images are nothing to boast about--partiers urinating or vomiting, for example--but many women seem delighted with themselves. Among the most extreme photos: A woman lies unconscious in a hospital bed; underneath her photo is the joking line &amp;quot;Never go drunken tubing.&amp;quot; The viewers&amp;#x27; comments written below include &amp;quot;hahaha, cute picture&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;soooo...ya still drinkin? LOL!&amp;quot; One woman who was part of the Facebook group--and who herself had appeared passed out next to a toilet in one photo but didn&amp;#x27;t want her name used in print--thinks the pictures are no big deal. &amp;quot;I can relate to a lot of them,&amp;quot; she says. What&amp;#x27;s the appeal of mortifying yourself this way? You can gain instant Internet notoriety, says Jean Twenge, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University. After all, aren&amp;#x27;t Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Amy Winehouse a little more famous for their adventures in drunkenness? Many who post photos on 30 Reasons may be seeking camaraderie, too--the sense that others are just like them. Drunken escapades are like war stories, says Toben Nelson, an assistant professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. &amp;quot;The subtext is &amp;#x27;Isn&amp;#x27;t it amazing I survived?&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; More than that, argues Jeanette Norris, Ph.D., a social psychologist at the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute at the University of Washington, &amp;quot;people like seeing others being outrageous because it makes them feel more normal.&amp;quot; Why Women Drink So is binge drinking simply about having an extra-good time? &amp;quot;People my age like to drink to get drunk,&amp;quot; says Stephanie Delashmit, a 19-year-old sophomore at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega. But experts say they see other factors at work. &amp;quot;When we ask women why they drink, their answers include &amp;#x27;to address emotional problems,&amp;#x27; &amp;#x27;to increase my confidence,&amp;#x27; &amp;#x27;to relieve stress&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;to reduce sexual inhibitions,&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; says Susan Foster, vice president and director of policy research and analysis at The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) in New York City. What&amp;#x27;s more, &amp;quot;some women are trying to keep up with the guys,&amp;quot; says Foster. That&amp;#x27;s exactly what Natalia, a 20-year-old student at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, sees among her friends. &amp;quot;Women my age think they can drink as much as men,&amp;quot; says Natalia, who stopped drinking after being diagnosed with alcohol-related pancreatitis last year. &amp;quot;People underestimate what can happen.&amp;quot; But the hard truth is that extreme drinking poses greater dangers to women, who &amp;quot;get drunk faster and suffer harsher consequences sooner,&amp;quot; Foster says. Women&amp;#x27;s bodies, compared with men&amp;#x27;s, have less water, which dilutes alcohol, and more fat, which means we retain alcohol longer. Women also have lower levels of a stomach enzyme that breaks down alcohol, so it enters our bloodstreams in a more potent form. We&amp;#x27;re also more susceptible to alcohol-related conditions like cirrhosis, brain damage, heart disease and breast cancer. The more immediate dangers of binge drinking, Foster says, include higher risks of STDs and unplanned pregnancy. Every year 400,000 women have unprotected sex while drunk, and more than 100,000 report being too intoxicated to remember whether they consented to sex. Research also shows that every year at least 97,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. Delashmit says that&amp;#x27;s happened to several of her friends: &amp;quot;They get drunk, hook up and get pushed too far.&amp;quot; Making Smart Choices And binge drinking can pose even more dire risks. Take the tragic story of Amanda Jax. After celebrating her twenty-first birthday with friends last October, the 100-pound Minnesota State University, Mankato student died from alcohol poisoning. Her blood alcohol level was .46--nearly six times the legal limit. Jax had had nine or 10 drinks, her friends recalled, including several strong cocktails and shots. Then she was driven to a friend&amp;#x27;s home semiconscious and was discovered dead the next morning. Jax had partied drunkenly &amp;quot;over 100 times in the last year,&amp;quot; a stunned friend told police. The lesson: A big night can turn into a big tragedy. &amp;quot;No one remembers that binge drinking can be deadly,&amp;quot; Foster says. Of course, women should be able to relax with a beer or margaritas with friends on a Saturday night. But, Foster says, &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a totally different, dangerous thing to make binge drinking the way we cope with--or even celebrate--our daily lives.&amp;quot; While most binge drinkers aren&amp;#x27;t technically alcoholics, their habits increase the risk they&amp;#x27;ll become addicted, research shows. &amp;quot;One out of every four or five people in their early twenties has already experienced clinically defined dependence on alcohol,&amp;quot; Weitzman says. How do you know if you have a problem? &amp;quot;You may be dependent if you crave alcohol or if you cannot stop drinking once you have started,&amp;quot; Nelson says. Another red flag, experts say: If your drinking interferes with work, school or relationships, or you&amp;#x27;ve had legal ramifications, like a DWI. But you don&amp;#x27;t have to be an alcoholic to experience the negative side of drinking. &amp;quot;The bottom line is that alcohol makes young women vulnerable,&amp;quot; Weitzman says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s essential they are educated about risks so they can make smart choices and take care of themselves and their friends.&amp;quot; Norris agrees: &amp;quot;Young women have to make conscious choices,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t just let things happen and then worry about it later. Think about what you&amp;#x27;re doing and what consequence it&amp;#x27;s going to have on your life.&amp;quot; Liz Welch is a contributing editor for Glamour."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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