Alcohol use by college students is serious. It affects the individual drinker and other students around them. The level of usage is generally set in the pre-college adolescent years during high school. The adolescent's peer group in high school largely determines his drinking behavior. This is also true when the adolescent enters college. The problem of alcohol abuse in college needs to be addressed before the high school years when drinking patterns become entrenched. The transitional period between high school and college should be a window of opportunity for students to change their behavior patterns with respect to alcohol use. This paper will examine the role of peer relationships on drinking behavior, some effects that drinking can have on college students themselves and on other students, and possible intervention strategies which have been tried.
Students, entering college as freshmen, tend to choose friends with the same values that their peer group held in high school. That is, if they used alcohol and drugs with their friends in high school, it is likely that the friends that they choose in college will also share the same values about how much and when to drink or use drugs. Alcohol use can be a determining factor in the choice of new friends (Leibsohn, 1994, p. 179). College students are not usually choosing to lower their level of alcohol consumption upon entering the freshmen class; instead they are often increasing their use of alcohol.
The majority of freshmen (89.4 percent) in college use alcohol (Leibsohn, 1994, p. 182). The average freshman consumes alcohol 5 times a month and almost three out of four drink at least once a week (Leibsohn, 1994, p. 186). Over two-thirds of those students, in Leibsohn's study, who drink reported becoming drunk. Seventy-two percent, of the students, who reported becoming drunk did so at least once during the month preceding the survey. One-third, of these studen...