The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education

7Gender and Substance Use in Higher Education

Scott Radimer and Adam M. McCready

College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?

– David Wood

In the United States, there is a narrative that college is the “best 4 years of your life” and a timeout before adulthood, where students are supposed to drink, use drugs, have sex, and make some poor decisions. Data support the idea that this narrative is one many college students subscribe to (e.g. Sweeney 2014). While alcohol and drug use affect every facet of society, problematic alcohol and drug use behaviors are most prevalent among college students, and college is anything but a “fun timeout” for many.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics (2015/2017), 18–25‐year‐olds are the age group most likely to report past‐year heavy drinking in the United States. Even within this segment of the population, college students have higher rates of binge drinking (having five or more drinks on one occasion for men, four or more for women), daily drinking, and reporting getting drunk within the past month than their non‐college peers (Schulenberg et al. 2017). These differences are particularly concerning because full‐time college students tend to enter college having drunk less than their non‐college peers during high school (Miech et al. 2017). This means the college experience socializes many ...