Alcohol, when consumed in reason, can be fine. But when it is taken in great quantities it can be very detrimental to a student. Heather Wilson and Jeremy Foster wrote a perspective on drugs and alcohol in a book aimed to warn people about the dangers of alcohol and drugs. Here is there account. "During parents weekend, she, her roommate, and their parents went to her best friend's room and found her soaked in blood and tears on the dorm­room floor. Heather's friend had a history of depression, and the combination of this, a bottle of Jack Daniel's Black Label, and too much cold medicine left her ravaged and suicidal"(Kuhn 21). The girl in the story turned out to be ok. She had tried to slit her wrists the night before. The story went on to say that, "They found her in time to save her, but she will always carry the scars where she cut her wrists"(Kuhn 21). In this paper I intend to prove how alcohol is detrimental to college students.
Our brain controls everything we do. Without it we wouldn't be able to perform the simplest of tasks It is one of if not the most important thing we have as a person. As a college student I rely heavily on my brain to help me with all of the assignments for my classes. But what if my brain didn't work properly? When alcohol is inputted into the brain, it induces many output actions such as; impaired judgment, extreme emotion, and slowed behavior (Alcohol and its effects). Not only are the short term effects enough to side track any academic student, but the long term effects could have serious implications on your life. Long­term effects include damage in cognitive behavior, difficulty in learning new material, deficits in abstraction, problem solving, and reduced visuospatial abilities (Alcohol and its effects). One of the long term effects listed was difficulty in learning. Now if you start drinking in high school, like most college aged students do, you already have a disadvantage against everyother person who choses not to drink. Researchers have found that the brains of alcoholics are smaller and have an increased number of brain tissue loss then a nonalcoholic(Alcohol and its effects). This would lead someone to believe that somebody who is the same age and does not drink would be faster and quicker in cognitive abilities(Alcohol and its effects).
We already know about the effects alcohol can have on your brain, but what about some of the non health related risks alcohol has that can hinder a college students education. Well college students who drink are more likely to have an unplanned sexual activity (Back to School and Drunk Again).

Having unsafe sex can lead to getting many dangerous diseases, a lot of which don't have any known cure, that could lead to you having to leave school so that you could get medical help. Also this increases the risk of having an unplanned pregnancy. Having a child while in school could put a damper in your scholastic plans. Some people have kids and stay in school, but getting pregnant also leads some to drop out. There are other non medical effects alcohol could have on your future. Engaging in alcohol makes you more likely to damage property, injure yourself, get into trouble with the police, have an overdose, or it could just cause you to forget your actions (Back to School and Drunk Again). Drinking puts college students at risk for all of the aforementioned things. Any one of those actions could cause you to lose focus on your academics and subsequently fail out of school. As previously stated in the paper alcohol can have negative effects on one of the