ANN ARBOR—Between high school graduation and their mid- 20s, most young Americans have gone on at least one drinking binge and nearly 7 percent have become chronic binge drinkers, according to a University of Michigan study.

The study is based on a nationally representative sample of 9,945 individuals from the Monitoring the Future project, surveyed four times each between the ages of 18 and 24.

Funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the study was conducted by developmental psychologist John Schulenberg and colleagues at the U-M Institute for Social Research. A report on the study appears in the current (May 1996) issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol.

“On the path to adulthood, most people pause to get drunk,” says Schulenberg. It’s one of the few rites of passage into adulthood that remains widely acknowledged.

“But pausing too long or too often is risky. Not only does it increase the likelihood of engaging in other unhealthy or illegal behaviors, it also increases the likelihood of developing long-term problems with alcohol. And, as our study shows, chronic and increased frequent binge drinking corresponds with difficulties and delays in assuming adult roles and responsibilities.”

For the study, the researchers defined binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks in a row at least once in a two- week period. Frequent binge drinking was defined as going on two or more drinking binges within a two-week period.

Almost 48 percent of young adults said they had engaged in frequent binge drinking at least one of the times they were surveyed. Nearly 36 percent said they had never gone on a drinking binge, and about 17 percent said they rarely had. (See Figure 1.)

About 12 percent of men, compared with slightly less than 3 percent of the women, were chronic binge drinkers, reporting frequent binges each time they were surveyed.

About 13 percent of men and 11 percent of women reported decreased binge drinking over the four times they were surveyed. In high school, those whose alcohol consumption eventually decreased drank just as much as chronic drinkers. But after high school, their drinking tapered off as they assumed adult roles and responsibilities.

“This shows that drinking and other drug problems during adolescence do not necessarily set the stage for later problems,” says Schulenberg. “In fact, even in high school, those who later decreased their drinking tended to have more of a future orientation than those who turned into chronic drinkers.”

About 14 percent of men and 7 percent of women increased their binge drinking over the course of the survey, while 9 percent of men and 10 percent of women reported a time-limited “fling” with frequent binge drinking between the ages of 19 and 22.

Both the increased binge drinking pattern and the time- limited fling with frequent binge drinking suggest that the roots of adult substance abuse difficulties do not always appear in adolescence, according to Schulenberg. “Both patterns emerge in individuals who appeared relatively problem-free during late adolescence,” he notes.

“The transition from adolescence to young adulthood is a critical developmental period,” according to the authors. “Although binge drinking is normative during the transition, with close to half the population reporting some frequent binge drinking, relatively few individuals, i.e., 15 percent-20 percent, are engaging in frequent binge drinking near the end of the transition.”

Co-authors of the study are Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, Katherine N. Wadsworth and Lloyd D. Johnston, all with the U-M Institute for Social Research.

Institute for Social Research