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Though episodes of drinking and driving have gone down by 30% during the past 5 years, it remains a serious problem. Alcohol-impaired drivers are involved in about 1 in 3 crash deaths, resulting in nearly 11,000 deaths in 2009. A recent CDC report discusses drinking and driving and the proven measures that can help.

U.S. drivers got behind the wheel after drinking too much about 112 million times in 2010.

Certain groups are more likely to drink and drive than others.

• Men were responsible for 4 in 5 episodes (81%) of drinking and driving in 2010.
• Young men ages 21-34 made up only 11% of the U.S. population in 2010, yet were responsible for 32% of all instances of drinking and driving.

85% of drinking and driving episodes were reported by people who also reported binge drinking. Binge drinking means 5 or more drinks for men or 4 or more drinks for women during a short period of time.

Steps for Safety

Seat belts help keep everyone safe on the road. Seat belts can protect every passenger on every trip. Just by buckling up, you reduce your risk of serious injuries and deaths from crashes by about 50%.

There are proven steps that people can take to help prevent drinking and driving.

States can:

• Enforce 0.08% blood alcohol concentration and minimum legal drinking age laws.
• Expand the use of sobriety checkpoints.
• Require ignition interlocks for everyone convicted of drinking and driving, starting with their first offense.
• Consider including strategies to reduce binge drinking—such as increasing alcohol taxes—to reduce drinking and driving, since the two behaviors are linked.
• Pass primary enforcement seat belt laws that cover everyone in the car.

Employers can:

• Set policies that immediately take away all work-related driving privileges for any employee cited for drinking and driving while using a company or personal vehicle for work purposes.
• Use workplace health promotion programs to communicate the dangers of drinking and driving, including information directed to family members.

Health professionals can:

• Help patients realize that car crashes are the leading cause of death for everyone ages 5-34 and that 1 in 3 of all crash deaths involves a drunk driver.
• Routinely screen patients for risky drinking patterns, including binge drinking, and provide a brief intervention—a 10–15 minute counseling session—for patients who screen positive.

 Everyone can:

• Choose to not drink and drive and help others do the same. ?Before drinking, designate a nondrinking driver when with a group.
• If out drinking, get a ride home or call a taxi.
• Don’t let friends drink and drive.
• Choose not to binge drink themselves and help others not to do it.
• Talk with a doctor or nurse about drinking and driving and request counseling if drinking is causing health, work, or social problems.
• Buckle up every time, no matter how short the trip. Encourage passengers in the car to buckle up, including those in the back seat.

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Hospitalizations for alcohol and drug overdoses — alone or in combination — increased dramatically among 18- to 24-year-olds between 1999 and 2008, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health. Continue reading →

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The Los Angeles Times reports that, “Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.

“Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety. Continue reading →

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An online alcohol prevention course can help reduce harmful drinking among college freshmen, but the benefits in the fall don’t last through the spring, according to a study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Led by Mallie J. Paschall, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, Calif., the research evaluated the effectiveness of a commercially available Internet-based alcohol misuse prevention course known as AlcoholEdu.  The researchers had no connection with the company that developed and sells the course.

“Our findings indicate that this course can be a useful component of an overall strategy that combines campus-wide and environmental interventions to prevent harmful drinking by college students,” says Dr. Paschall.

The course consists of five modules, four of which are typically offered in the late summer before freshmen arrive on campus, and one module that students complete during the early fall semester.  The modules include instruction on the definition of a standard drink; the physiologic effects of alcohol; social influences on alcohol use; alcohol laws; feedback to correct misperceptions about college drinking norms; and alcohol harm-reduction strategies.

As reported in the Sept., 2011 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Dr. Paschall and colleagues conducted a randomized trial of the course at 30 public and private universities in the United States.  Incoming freshmen at half of the universities took the course, while students at the other schools served as controls and received whatever alcohol prevention programs those schools normally provide to new students.  An average of 90 students at each campus subsequently participated in periodic surveys that assessed their past-30-day alcohol use, average number of drinks per occasion, and binge drinking frequency.

“Prior studies have shown that the freshman year is a particularly risky time for hazardous drinking among college students,” notes Ralph Hingson, Sc.D., director of the NIAAA division of epidemiology and prevention research.  “There is a need for effective prevention strategies that are timed to address this problem.”

The researchers found that students who took the online course reported significantly reduced alcohol use and binge drinking during the fall semester, compared with control students.  These beneficial effects, however, did not persist into the spring semester.

“These findings represent one hopeful step in the long journey to address this complex issue,” says NIAAA Acting Director Kenneth R. Warren, Ph.D.  “Each year approximately 1,825 college students die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries; 696,000 students are assaulted by another student who has been drinking; and 97,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.”

“Lack of course effects in the following spring suggests that, by itself, the course may be insufficient to sustain effects over time, or perhaps that its benefit is eventually overcome by students’ exposure to alcohol and peer drinking behavior,” says Dr. Paschall.

Dr. Paschall’s research group also recently reported that AlcoholEdu appeared to have beneficial short-term effects on sexual assault and other forms of victimization, as well as the most common types of alcohol-related physiological and social problems among freshmen.  Those findings, from the same 30-university study population, were published in the July issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.  The study also found more beneficial effects of the AlcoholEdu course at schools where the course was mandated for incoming freshmen and at least 70 percent of freshmen completed all course modules.

“These findings,” adds Dr. Warren, “are consistent with previous NIAAA-funded research that found that, while educational components are integral to some successful college drinking interventions, they do not appear to be effective in isolation.”

The researchers conclude their recent findings suggest that use of the Internet-based prevention course should be reinforced with effective environmental prevention strategies.  Examples of such strategies include reducing alcohol availability, raising prices, and limiting alcohol promotions and advertising on and around campus.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, is the primary U.S. agency for conducting and supporting research on the causes, consequences, prevention, and treatment of alcohol abuse, alcoholism, and alcohol problems. NIAAA also disseminates research findings to general, professional, and academic audiences. Additional alcohol research information and publications are available at www.niaaa.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers  and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH  is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and  translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments,  and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH  and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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The following is from Buddy T’s Blog on About.com.

Dealing With Shame, Guilt and Personal Faults

If your drinking or drug use reached the point that you needed professional help to deal with the problem, chances are you came into recovery with a lot of negative baggage from the past. Most alcoholics and addicts experience a great deal of shame and guilt even while still active in their addiction.

As you reach the stage in your recovery of trying to maintain long-term abstinence, it is important that you deal with your feelings of guilt and shame and lack of self-esteem, because allowing these feelings to fester can easily drive you back to drinking or drugging to escape the pain.

Shame and Guilt

Shame is having negative beliefs about yourself and your self-worth. Guilt is having negative feelings about your behavior. Many alcoholics and addicts feel ashamed for having become addicted in the first place. Some feel that they are weak, worthless and not deserving of recovery.

A Vicious Cycle

Research shows that if steps are not taken by alcoholics and addicts to deal with these feelings, they may return to their addictive behavior in order to temporarily relieve the pain, or they will use again to hurt or punish themselves for their past behavior.

Then, because they feel shame and guilt about drinking or using drugs again, they use even more to escape that shame, creating a vicious addictive cycle and downward spiral into further addictive behavior.

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