Halloween is just around the corner and, for many college students, that means drinking and partying. While it is obviously good to have fun, many college students are drinking too much, too often and it is important to be safe, especially on holidays like Halloween.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), about four out of five college students drink alcohol and about half of college students who drink also participate in binge drinking. The NIAAA defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 or higher. This usually happens when men have five or more drinks and when women have four or more drinks in about two hours.

Many college students are 21 or older, so they obviously are going to want to go out and drink to have a good time. But is it really safe to be binge drinking multiple days every single weekend? I do not think so, and many experts agree.

The statistics of binge drinking for college students are alarming. According to the NIAAA, 1,285 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related injuries and 559,000 per year receive unintentional injuries while under the influence.

Halloween is around the time when class workloads start getting heavier, but it is also the time when students start wanting to go out and drink more to relieve their stress. However, about 25 percent of college students report academic consequences from drinking, including missing classes, falling behind, not doing well on papers and/or exams and receiving lower grades overall, according to the NIAAA.

While going to a party is an obvious option to celebrate Halloween, there are so many other ways to do so and have fun without binge drinking. You could go to a pumpkin patch or corn maze with your friends, have a movie night, decorate and carve pumpkins or have a campfire with s’mores. The possibilities are endless and going to a party to drink is not the only option.

The point of this is not to tell you to not go out or not to drink — I just want to get the point across that you need to be safe. Halloween is one of the biggest partying days for college students, which also means that a lot of dangerous things could happen.

Almost half of all motor vehicle traffic fatalities on Halloween night in 2012 involved a drunk driver, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This number gets even higher when Halloween is on a weekend, like it is this year.

When going out this weekend, be sure to stay safe and also be sure that your friends are staying safe. If you see a friend and you know he or she is going above their limit, step in. Make sure they are getting home OK and do not let them do anything that they would not normally do if they were sober. Call the police if it is an extreme situation.

Be sure to have fun and stay safe this Halloween!

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