In 1999, 15.1 percent of American adults 12 and over who drink alcohol had engaged in binge drinking; that is, "drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion on at least one day in the past 30 days."  For the group aged 18 to 25 years, 31.1 percent had engaged in binge drinking within the previous month.

"It is worrisome that society is medicalizing more and more behavioral problems, often defining as addictions what earlier, sterner generations explained as weakness of will.  Prodded by science, or what purports to be science, society is reclassifying what once were considered character flaws or moral failings as personality disorders akin to physical disabilities."

"At one-third of the colleges surveyed, more than half of the student body were binge drinkers....binge drinking was most prevalent (at 81.1%) among students in fraternities and sororities," and, "approximately two of five (or 42.7%) American college students can be termed binge drinkers." These sobering statistics are only part of the findings that Stephen G. Tibbets and Joshua N. Whittimore describe in a Psychological Reports study on college students' self control, substance abuse and commitment to school.

As might be expected, consumption of large amounts of alcohol and using illicit drugs are correlated with lower commitment to school; as academic performance drops, so with it, education as a priority. Being a male student was further associated with substance abuse (r = .13), as was receiving external funding (r = .13), and being a fraternity brother (r = .27). "On the other hand," the researchers write, "GPA (r = -.21), age (r = -.10), having an older brother (r = -.15), being employed 30 or more hours (r = -.19), and being religious (r = -.13) were associated with lower substance abuse."

Similarly, one might expect that lack of self-control would contribute to substance abuse (r = .23), and even that commitment to school would have an "inhibiting effect" on substance abuse (r = -.37). However, it is the confluence of all of these factors that is the most surprising-not for the result, but the scale of the effect: "...the interaction between low self-control and commitment to school had the largest effect upon substance abuse of all the component variables in the estimated model. Thus, the combined influence, i.e., interaction of the two primary variables had a greater combined effect than that observed for the independent effects of either of the separate influences of low self-control and commitment to school." In the end, students exhibiting low self-control as well as low commitment to school were the most prone to be substance abusers (r = .79).

Not only are low self-control and lack of commitment to school predictive of substance abuse by themselves, but together, they produce a potential hangover of immense proportions.

(Source:Stephen G. Tibbetts and Joshua N. Whittimore, "The Interactive Effects of Low Self-Control and Commitment to School on Substance Abuse Among College Students," Psychological Reports, vol. 90, no.1 [February 2002], p. 327-337.)