Corey Dozier, a sophomore at the New School, says his friends consider him a “late bloomer”: He didn’t start getting drunk until he was 17.

By his 20th birthday party, he had become a pro.

For Mr. Dozier and his friends, weekends start early on “thirsty Thursdays,” when they begin the drinking binge that often leaves them too hungover to go to class on Friday morning, but ready to tip the bottle again by Friday and Saturday nights.

“No one thought anyone had a problem,” Mr. Dozier said. “We all just get wasted.”

On a recent weekend night, Mr. Dozier and his friends invented a theme for one of their binges. They called it a “vomit party,” in which the 25 or so students who gathered in a friend’s apartment were encouraged to drink nauseating amounts from a shared bottle of vodka. Unfortunately, Mr. Dozier said, the bottle was toppled over early in the evening by one of the tipsy partygoers and the festivities were brought to an end.

“The vomit party didn’t go down like it was supposed to,” he said.

They were lucky. Gary Devercelly Jr., a freshman at Rider University in New Jersey, landed in the emergency room after drinking a bottle of vodka at a fraternity party last month. He later died from complications resulting from “respiratory suppression,” a condition in which alcohol suppresses the part of the brain that makes a person breathe.

An autopsy found his blood alcohol concentration was 0.426, more than five times the legal limit to drive a car in the state.

It’s not only the New School.

A freshman at Columbia University, Andrew Beale, said that while most of his former high school classmates at Trinity School in Manhattan drank to get drunk on some weekends, his college peers binge drink far more often. He said they not only have easier access to alcohol, they have more free time to consume it —especially since so few classes are scheduled on Fridays.

Mr. Beale, 18, said his peers often brag about “blacking out,” or drinking to the point that they experienced some short-term memory loss — a state that has been linked to permanently damaging a young person’s memory, spatial skills, and ability to focus.

Explaining the temptation to gloat about “blacking out,” he said: “Part of that might have something to do with trying to get some sort of image as someone who parties often, and knows how to have a good time. But I think it might be mostly because nights like those can lead to some amusing situations when you ignore the brain damage aspect of it.”

A senior at New York University, Greg Monson, 21, said about 90% of his friends binge-drink regularly.

“I know plenty of people who just can’t control themselves,” he said. “They have to drink. They can’t have a good time unless they are getting drunk. I’ve known a couple of people who’ve been to AA already and they are only 20 years old.”

He says he knows students who had a Breathalyzer device, which they would check between shots of liquor and chugged beers to see just how far they could push their blood alcohol content.

College is a time for students to experiment and discover their limits, he said. It is also a time when the consequences seem far away, he said.

At the New School, the assistant vice president for student affairs, Roger Ward, says his school is doing something about it after dormitory staff began noticing a dramatic rise in the number of intoxicated students staggering home at night in the past two years.

“We’re located in New York City,” he said. “We’re surrounded by bars and restaurants.”

In response, administrators from the New School, New York University, and other local colleges sat down with the officials at local police precincts to ask them to step up enforcement against bars, restaurants, and liquor stores that sell to underage drinkers. The legal drinking age in New York is 21, and most American college students are younger than that, at least until their junior or senior years.

Mr. Ward said that since those meetings with police, there has been a decline in intoxicated students and ambulance calls, with only two reported incidents so far this school year. Administrators at other colleges — even those not traditionally known as centers of binge drinking — are also beginning to focus on the issue.

“Are students drinking alcohol in the resident halls? Of course they are, as they are at campuses around the country,” Mr. Ward said. “But we’re trying to get the student to understand why this behavior is harmful.”

Tomorrow: The toll on young brains.
Yesterday’s installment, on binge drinking in high school, is available at nysun.com.