Students who drink more found to be happier: study

Sociologist Carolyn Hsu found those who binge drink are more satisfied with their social lives

As students prepare to head back to University, a new study sheds some light on how to make those four...or five...or six years a happier time. Drink more.

The authors were actually trying to draw attention to the issues of binge drinking in hopes people will stop using it to improve their social status, but found students who binge drink are happier, reports LiveScience. This especially holds true for the rich, white, male students who are in fraternities.

The study, presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Denver this week, finds that 64 per cent of students are binge drinkers and these students are happier.

Co-author Carolyn Hsu, an associate professor of sociology at Colgate University in New York, found students don't drink because they are upset or as a way to relieve anxiety, but they drink to attain a social status.

"I would guess it has to do with feeling like you belong and whether or not you're doing what a 'real' college student does," Hsu told LiveScience. "It seems to be more about certain groups getting to define what that looks like."

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The researchers surveyed nearly 1,600 students at an unnamed liberal arts college in the Northeast, attempting to learn more about the relationships between social status, satisfaction with college life and binge drinking. Binge drinking is defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more for men at least once in a two-week period.

They found students in high-status groups, such as rich white frat boys, were more satisfied socially than the less wealthy minorities who didn't participate in Greek life.

The study also found high-status students were more likely to drink and low-status students would boost their social satisfaction by drinking. High-status students who didn't binge drink reported lower levels of satisfaction.

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The authors find the fact that students have to drink to improve their social satisfaction sad. They conclude, "It is our hope that by drawing attention to the important social motivations underlying binge drinking, institutional administrators and public health professionals will be able to design and implement programs for students that take into account the full range of reason that students binge drink."

Hsu told LiveScience that many students don't want to drink, but it's what everyone is doing and they feel like they don't belong if they don't consume alcohol.

She said, "Maybe this is a fantasy, but I do honestly hope that some college students will actually react to this by saying, 'Okay, I want to rebel against this, I don't even like those people. I don't want them to define the college experience for me."

As the study mentions, binge drinking is also related to poor academic performance, violence, risky sexual behaviours and the development of alcohol dependence.

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