by Kathiann M. Kowalski

About the author: Kathiann M. Kowalski is a health writer for various magazines.

Twenty-year-old Benjamin was too young to drink legally, but that didn’t keep him from “funneling” at an off-campus keg party with his fraternity brothers from Louisiana State University. Drinkers gulped down beer shots through a rubber hose into their mouths. Next, Benjamin and his group visited a bar near campus and chugged mixtures of rum, whiskey, and liqueur. By the end of the night, Benjamin had downed the equivalent of 24 drinks. With a blood alcohol level six times the adult legal limit, Benjamin died of acute alcohol poisoning.

On a Binge

A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found as many as 70 percent of students at some college campuses binge...