Enjoying the Binge Drinking in 2020

Binge drinking – what comes to your mind after reading this word? Enjoying, chilling, relaxing with your friends over a few consecutive rounds of drink. In fact, the binge drinking meaning tells the same about it – it’s a drinking pattern in which a person drinks more than 4 times within 2 hours. To understand the binge drinking meaning separately in terms of man and a woman, it’s easy.

For men, it’s defined as drinking consecutively for more than 5 times, and for women, it is considered to be more than 4 times. Binge drinking alcohol is becoming one of the most common patterns in drinking, especially with men.The effects are further leading to many other health issues as well, with the most important being drunkorexia.

Some countries like Moldova, Belarus, Russia, Austria, and the Czech Republic are the top countries known worldwide because of their love for alcohol. These countries, along with some other countries have an acceptance for drinking as a part of their culture. Thus, binge drinking alcohol may not be a big deal for them. But apart from these countries, the craze is increasing worldwide, with people preferring to opt for binge drinking once a month.

We all know that everything, every concept has a good as well as a bad side. if you think about symptoms and effects, you can understand that it has more negative outcomes than the positive ones.

Binge Drinking Symptoms

To find out whether you are a binge drinker or not, you have to first understand the symptoms. Making excuses for having a drink and going for a drink very frequently are some of the most common symptoms. If one is finding pleasure in risky behaviors after drinking, such as rash driving, abusive behavior, unsafe physical relations, or attraction towards drugs, it can also be considered as one of the binge drinking symptoms. In this situation, the binge drinker does not remember what happened, especially about the time of drinking. Another such symptom or effect could be drunkorexia, but let’s discuss it later, in the effects.

Binge Drinking Effects

While discussing the effects, we have to consider both the positive as well as negative effects. Because, enjoying drinking without any harmful outcomes is also possible. But as we know that excess of anything is bad, it is applicable in terms of binge drinking too. Binge drinking has both short-term and long-term effects. One starts to see the short-term effects immediately after he goes for binge drinking alcohol.

The effects and their extent on your body depend upon your age, health, immunity, gender, and body type too. It is seen that people with good health and immunity don’t face severe effects from binge drinking. However, if you lack immunity, it can prove fatal.

Binge drinking has a number of effects on your body. Intoxication is one of the major effects, which also leads to many deaths every year, in many countries. Also, it should be noted that the youngsters between the age group of 20 to 25 are seen to opt for binge drinking more often. And thus, their health condition starts deteriorating right from an early age. Even if they live long, they go on to face many health problems right up to their later years.

Apart from that, alcohol poisoning is also one of the major binge drinking effects. Excessive drinking can also lead to many accidental happenings such as car accidents, rash driving after drinking, accidental drowning, death because of suffocation, and many such mishaps. But one of the riskiest outcomes of binge drinking is drunkorexia.

Drunkorexia and Binge Drinking

Drunkorexia is not any kind of a medical term, but more a type of slang, a non-medical slang used to denote a health condition. The issue of drunkorexia is mostly found in the age group of youngsters, from the age of 18 to 25. We all are aware that the teenage and the early 20s are emotionally sensitive ages, and they are more prone to mental health issues than any other age group.

A majority of eating disorders (those which can be defined as psychological health issues) are found in the youngsters only. And one of such health issues, eating disorder found in youngsters, which is also related to binge drinking and their mental health, is drunkorexia.

Drunkorexia is a health problem in which people restrict their diet, eating habits to avoid gaining calories, so that they can consume more drinks. Not every drinker opts for a low-calory drink, so they choose to have more alcohol and less food, to fulfill their desire for drinking. One of the major reasons behind drunkorexia is the fear of gaining weight. And it is mostly found in college-goers. If not prevented in the early stages, drunkorexia can also lead to extreme issues like bulimia or anorexia.

Also, it is not easy to identify drunkorexic behavior, because some people otherwise follow a normal eating schedule, but restrict their food intake when they are going out for a drink. It can again lead to overconsumption of drinks and more binge drinking. Thus, it can be said that the problem of drunkorexia is multi-faceted. It’s easy to come, but difficult to go problem.

Is binge drinking SO bad?

After reading so much about the various problems caused by binge drinking, anyone would start worrying about it. One may start panicking over a binge drinking plan that he made with his friends, over a few months ago, feeling, “I’ve messed with my life!!!” But relax, it’s not that bad. These all are the problems that will take place ONLY if there is an excess of drinking. But otherwise, having strict planning about your drinking habits will surely help you to stay away from its side effects. For e.g. binge drinking once a month won’t prove fatal for your health.

Binge drinking over a relaxed, light conversation with your friends can cheer your mood up. Some countries (especially European countries) have a ‘wet culture’, so having a drink over a discussion is not a big deal for them. Light drinking can help you increase your confidence, have a relaxed mood, and forget your worries. Thus, it can be said that binge drinking is neither a black subject, nor a white – it’s grey. And the decision depends upon you – to make it black, or white.