BY KEVIN SAWYER – The term “Drunkorexia” has been making the rounds for a few years now on college and university campuses everywhere. The mad cycle of exercise, or not eating, and using alcohol as the main source of sustenance and nutrition has reached epidemic proportions in the country. Binge drinking is on the rise as The New York Times recently reported that over 40% of college students currently engage in the practice.
While it is hardly a news flash that college students drink, the numbers have continued to increase over the last twenty years or so. The reasons students give for the behavior is that they either want to save money, lose weight or just get as drunk as they possibly can. Or a combination of all three of them.
A recent research study completed at the University of Houston stunned the researchers. They discovered that Drunkorexia behavior was far more common than they had anticipated it to be. The research also uncovered a surprising fact that there really was no difference between men and women as both genders practiced the behavior equally.
The researchers studied 1,184 students and questioned them about their drinking habits. The study found that 80% of the students questioned admitted that they had participated in Drunkorexia behavior within the last 90 days. Such behavior included taking laxatives and diuretics as well as going for long periods without eating and vomiting regularly. All this was in preparation to make as much room as possible in their bodies for alcohol.
Lead researcher and psychologist on the study, Dipali Rinker, said that, “In the eating disorders field, there’s a growing sense, and supporting evidence, that men are now just as weight and shape conscious as women are, especially in this age of social media”.
The study also supported long time suspicions that those who live in dormitories drink less than those students who are living in sorority or fraternity houses. Also, those students who are “drunkorexics” are binge drinkers who drink heavily on a regular basis to the point of possible, or likely, alcoholism.
What is concerning researchers is the fact that those engaged in Drunkorexia practices are getting their 1,200 calories not from actual food but from alcohol. The phenomenon is, sadly, not limited to just the campuses any more. Study after study has been revealing that binge drinking and Drunkorexia practices have started to make serious inroads in the general population of both America and England.
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