Hospitals expose binge drinking health risks

By Allison Sues

Editor’s note: This is the third part in a four-part series on binge drinking.

Adi Siah, a senior in business, laid his face against the public toilet seat in his dorm bathroom. He had drank 10 shots in under an hour and had been throwing up as he clung onto consciousness. When his friends thought they saw blood in his vomit they called the emergency room.

Paramedics tested Siah’s blood alcohol content and said that he needed to go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Before they could get Siah into an ambulance, he refused and signed a refusal of care form freeing the hospital from any responsibilities or liabilities with regards to Siah’s health that night.

“I probably should’ve gone to the hospital,” Siah said. “But, I’m a cheapskate. I didn’t want to pay for it.”

The extent of binge drinking is obvious at the University. According to UIUC’s Alcohol and Other Drug Survey, 77 percent of students drank alcohol regularly and 61 percent binge drank regularly in 2004.

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You hear the presence of binge drinking on campus in casual conversations before lectures begin, see it in the lines outside the bars and smell it in the alcoholic perfume of Green Street. However, the most dangerous aspects of the University’s binge drinking are hidden away in the emergency rooms of Carle Foundation Hospital and Provena Covenant Hospital, both in Urbana.

Between Aug. 31, 2004 and Mar. 30, 2005, Carle Hospital treated 120 patients between the ages of 18 and 24 for alcohol intoxication.

“If you included alcohol-related injuries from drunken falls, fights and accidents, the numbers would be even higher,” said Patty Metzler, a registered nurse in Carle Hospital’s emergency room. “Carle only handles about half of these cases; Provena gets the other half.”

Worse than being hidden in hospital rooms is when the grave dangers of binge drinking are hidden away in dorm rooms or friends’ apartments. A general fear and misunderstanding of hospital care leaves University students sleeping off alcohol poisoning each weekend.

Students often come home and pass out after a night of drinking. It has become a social norm. Students may not know that blood alcohol content can continue to rise after passing out and that alcohol poisoning can lead to irreparable brain damage or death.

“I’d just have my friends help me into bed if I drank way too much,” said Meghan Ori, sophomore in LAS. “I wouldn’t want people to make a big deal out of it. All you really need to do if someone has alcohol poisoning is put them to bed and make sure you lay them on their side.”

“There has been a noticeable change in girls’ group culture,” said Karen Sims, the director of the Rape Crisis Center which services both Carle and Provena Hospitals.

“Groups are definitely less careful with watching over their friends,” Sims said. “It’s been a recent problem we’ve noticed from anecdotal reports that the buddy system is no longer as valuable as it used to be.”

“The buddy system being safe is great in theory,” said Kim Sula, junior in business. “But, really it doesn’t make any sense because it is drunk people taking care of drunk people.”

That is one of the main reasons so few students are brought to the hospital when they have alcohol poisoning. Their friends are drunk themselves and afraid they will get in trouble if they bring their friend in, Metzler said.

“Most of the time it is friends that bring sick students in,” Metzler said. “They are usually underage and drunk themselves, and I always think bless these people. It’s a very brave thing to do.”

Occasionally, friends will drop off students with alcohol poisoning right outside the doors of the hospital and take off before they can get involved with hospital staff. “We don’t have any problems with students doing that. It’s not cowardice – it gets the job done,” Metzler said.

Many students do not realize hospitals will not turn in names of underage drinkers to the police. Names of patients over 18 years old will not be released to parents without permission either. “Our hospital focuses on a balance of safety and privacy,” Metzler said. “We’re not punitive, unless they were drinking and driving.”

Often, hospital trips fail to act as a wake-up call for students. Adi Siah said he took it easy for about a week before returning to heavy drinking.

The Rape Crisis Center serves within Carle and Provena Hospitals. While this resource is available to everyone within its surrounding four counties, about 50 percent of its patients are UIUC students.

The Alcohol and Drug Survey showed that 12 percent of females and seven percent of males reported being taken advantage of sexually while intoxicated throughout 2004.

The Rape Crisis Center provides medical advocacy, which allows for victims to be accompanied to the hospital to have a rape kit done, treat other related injuries or take treatments to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

“I’d say 70 to 80 percent of student victims are intoxicated when the assault occurs,” Sims said. “Alcohol itself is the biggest date rape drug.”

Alcohol counteracts the culturally reserved sexual expression of young women, Sims said. “A lot of women feel that they cannot be sexually assertive unless they can blame it on alcohol,” Sims said. When women use alcohol to allow themselves to be sexually aggressive, they put themselves at risk.

The Alcohol and Other Drugs Survey found that in 2004, 60 percent of students reported that alcohol facilitates sexual opportunity.

Many sexual assault victims do not come forward because they blame themselves at least partially. Nationally, only a quarter of sexual assaults are reported, Sims said. The blame is even greater if the victim feels guilty that she was drunk.

Often, victims will wait until they are not intoxicated to come into the hospital and be treated. By then, it is too late for a rape kit to be completed because evidence of the assault is only gatherable within 72 hours of the attack. Drugs taken to prevent STDs must also be taken within 72 hours of the attack.

“Victims that were assaulted while intoxicated don’t come in because they are afraid they will be persecuted for underage drinking,” Sims said. “It’s strange though, because in this town’s culture, it seems like no one is persecuted for drinking.”