Alcohol impact on college students Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Alcohol impact on college students - Essay Example The play â€Å"Cat on a hot tin Roof† by Tennessee Williams paints the real picture of harmful effects of alcoholism on the family life. Brick is the most loved son of big mama and big daddy. He married Maggie, a beautiful girl from a poor family background. Brick is great football player. Skipper is the best friend of Brick. Maggie humiliates skipper for having sexual relations with his husband Brick. Skipper negates it and starts drinking alcohol for mental peace. He died of extensive drinking. Brick considered himself the cause of skipper’s death and indulged in alcoholism. This ruined the life of complete family. Memory loss Alcohol reduces short-term memory by transferring information to long term memory. Therefore, attention span reduces to 48 hours after the drink. Drink causes memory loss to college students this memory loss in known as blackouts (O’Malley & Wagenaar 479). Retention and assimilation capabilities of students are largely affected by alcohol ism. A study shows the statistics that, 54% of overindulged drinkers described that they did not remember anything about the world and their mind away in some other world when extensively drunken (Andreasson & Allebeck 634). We can find a good example of memory loss in the play â€Å"Cat on a hot tin roof†. Everybody of big daddy’s family knew that big daddy is suffering from cancer but big daddy knew nothing about his real disease. Brick was heavily drunk during conversation with big daddy on the birthday of daddy. During the same conversation, he told big daddy about his real ailment. This created big tension and trauma in the family life. Memory loss takes some time to regain short term memory. Behavioural Abuses Alcohol causes fluctuation in student behaviour. Sometimes they behave very rudely with the close relatives especially when they are just over with a drink. Hangover captures the senses of college students and makes them behave different from the normal (Gr ossman, et al 349). This behaviour leads them to property damaging and pulling of fire alarms. In one national study, 8% college students accepted damaging public property and pulling fire alarm. 25% administration staff of low drinking level colleges and about 50% of high drinking level campuses reported severe damage to property (Andreasson & Allebeck 636). Students after drinking get very emotional and break everything coming in their way. Brick also showed behaviour problem in the play â€Å"Cat on a hot tin roof†. He quitted sleeping with his wife and broke all the relations with her after the death of Skipper. Maggie tried to convince her husband to live a normal life but he did not listen. Complete family tried their best to make him quit drinking. Brick did not pay any attention to the family will and kept drinking extensively until the time he felt a click of peace in his mind. Physical Injuries and Deaths Students who misuse alcohol are exposed to danger of serious injuries and even death. The US department of education revealed death of hundreds of students per year due to alcohol trauma. Students most of the times face hangovers and vomiting. Long-term effect includes loss of immunity against the diseases. Cirrhosis of liver is a lifelong physical damage to human organ (Abbey, et al 1014). There is evidence that alcohol misuse can compel students to commit suicide or