Binge Drinking is Contagious

A new study has found that binge drinking is highly contagious, especially when it comes to relationships. During a 28 day period, researchers could predict one partner's binge drinking based off the other partner's binge drinking.

208 nonmarried, heterosexual dating couples in their early 20's were examined in the study. The pre-requisites for taking part in the study were that the couples had to be:

• dating for at least 3 months
• have face-to-face contact at least 5 days a week
• one member of each dating couple had to be a university/college student

This study may show why young adults are binge drinking, to put it simply, they are in a drinking partnership that promotes binge drinking.

"In some respect this is a cautionary piece of research. Pick your friends and lovers carefully because they influence you more than you think," says Dr. Simon Sherry, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.

"We're not so naive as researchers to think students are going to walk away from binge drinking. But our study shows there's a large majority of students who form romantic partnerships where alcohol is a regularly occurring theme."