I am a special education teacher. The one disability that almost all of my students share is memory loss. Short term and active working memory contribute to their learning problems. It is a shame that “normal” students, students without significant learning disabilities, disable themselves by choice. Very sad, indeed.

You mean to tell me that kids can’t remember what they did the next day after a night of drinking? We needed a study for that.

When I was in college, I had several classes with a guy who was paralyzed from the neck down.

He and several fraternity brothers had been binge drinking, when they decided to jump in a swimming pool. This young man mistakenly dove head first into the shallow end and broke his neck. He managed to get around on campus by breathing into a straw on his paraplegic wheelchair.

That is one night of drinking he will never forget.

Let’s see… a ’study’ where no statistics are presented, by a psychologist — not a medical doctor — is supposed to be definitive proof that ‘binge’ drinking on a ‘regular’ basis may cause temporary or permanent prospective memory loss. What a crock.
There is no story here. There is no basis for the psychologist’s conclusion offered in this story.
First the accepted definition of binge drinking is five or more drinks per occurence. If I drink five drinks in five hours, my blood alcohol will measure .02 at most. I doubt that affects me at all physically.
Secondly, what is considered a regular basis? If I drink five beers in four hours, bingeing baby, seven days a week I highly doubt I’ll forget to buy bread the next day or forty years hence.
Thirdly, given my experience of ‘binge’ drinking on a ‘regular’ basis, I suspect this was a study commisioned by neo-prohibitionists. Notice how Heffernan refers to “cutting off the source, … the suppy.”
This sounds like a study sponsored by the Robert Wood Foundation or a UK equivalent type prohibitionist cult.

You people spent more of my tax money on this…. You all should be ashamed of youselves. Waste of freaking time. If you would spend your money on MARIJUANA REFORM we could get rid of ALCOHOL all together…

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL NORML!!!!!!!!

I definitely believe this is true. When I was in high school I participated in binge-drinking many times. Pretty much every time I drank, I drank to the point where I was either unconscious or almost there. Shortly after I started drinking my freshmen year, my friends started noticing that I had memory problems, which earned me the nickname “Dori.” I am now about to complete my first year of college and still experience memory problems.