Adam Wiederholt never drank alcohol before he turned 21 last June. Since then, Wiederholt has begun drinking large amounts of alcohol every weekend.

“I drink heavily on Friday nights and might have another time during the week, but basically just Fridays,” Wiederholt, senior in history, said.

For Wiederholt, “drinking heavily” means drinking about eight drinks. Wiederholt could be labeled as a “binge drinker” because of the amount of alcohol he consumes, according to the Harvard School of Public Health’s College Alcohol Study.

The study defines binge drinking as five or more drinks in a row for a man and four or more drinks in a row for a woman at least once in a two-week period.

Forty percent of Iowa State students binge drink, according to the 2002 National College Health Assessment. The assessment recorded responses from 812 undergraduate students in the spring 2002.

“When you look at it, the majority of students are making good decisions in regards to alcohol use,” said Brian Dunn, health promotion coordinator for the Thielen Student Health Center.

Twenty five percent of students do not drink at all, according to the National College Health Assessment.

Jon Brandon agrees that drinking is not as common as most people think. Brandon is a staff psychologist and substance abuse coordinator at student counseling services.

“Alcohol use is not the norm necessarily,” Brandon said. “Alcohol abuse especially is not the norm. It can look that way, you’re peer group may be involved with it, but it’s really not.”

Whether students binge drink, their perceptions and willingness can influence their decision to drink, according to an ISU study recently published in the Journal of Health Psychology.

The ISU study covers information about the images students have of typical drinkers and nondrinkers and how those images influence their drinking behaviors.

“Our hypothesis is that students have a set of characteristics they visualize or associate with drinking, especially drinking to excess,” said Meg Gerrard, professor of psychology and one of the study’s researchers.

The study asked students to “think for a minute about the type of person your age who drinks [alcohol] frequently.” Students then described their image of that person, choosing from 12 characteristics: Smart, confused, popular, immature, cool, self-confident, independent, careless, unattractive, dull, considerate and self-centered.

The three most favorable characteristics of the drinker image were social attributes (i.e. popular, not unattractive, not dull), and the three most favorable characteristics of the nondrinker image were related to competence (i.e. smart, not careless, not confused), according to the study.

Gerrard said the study demonstrates that a person’s perception of drinkers and nondrinkers is a factor that determines how much he or she drinks.

“We find that if you compare the image of drinkers with the image of non-drinkers, you find that even drinkers see nondrinkers in a more favorable light than they do drinkers,” she said.

Overall, the study found that the image of people who drink excessively is negative, Gerrard said.

Wiederholt said he does not perceive people who drink excessively in a negative way.

“I really don’t see them any differently than I normally do,” he said.

In her research, Gerrard said, there is a sharp distinction between intending to do something and being willing to do something. Intentions are more often contemplated beforehand and willingness is largely defined by situational circumstances, she said.

Wiederholt said when he drinks he usually intends to have six to nine drinks.

“I usually have a set amount I’m going to drink that night and I don’t go and bum any off of anyone else when I run out,” he said. “I know if I go above a certain point that I start to feel like crap, so I don’t.”

Wiederholt said he has only gone beyond his personal limit of nine drinks twice.

“The first time, I had no idea what my limit was, so it was trial and error basically,” he said. “The second time, I lost track of how much I’d had.”

Gerrard said the perceptions about drinking and people who drink have changed dramatically, but not as dramatically as the perceptions of smokers have in the last 15 years.

“The perceptions of drinkers, especially those who drink a lot, follow the same trend; they just haven’t turned as negative as smokers have,” she said. “But there clearly are a lot more people who just aren’t drinking or who are drinking very minimally and that changes the norms and the perceptions.”

Although the perceptions of heavy drinkers have changed, the percentage of students who report binge drinking has remained stable in the past few years, according to the National College Health Assessment.

“We’ve found that students overestimate the amount of drinking an ISU student does,” Dunn said.

Wiederholt disagrees. He believes drinking is very prevalent at Iowa State.

“Most of the people you run into drink, almost all,” Wiederholt said.

No one can tell students anything that will make them stop drinking excessively, Wiederholt said.

“[Students] will either grow out of it or something will happen that will make them think about what they’re doing,” he said. “Other than that, I don’t think you could say something to them, like state some statistics about binge drinkers, and it will make them stop.”