College Officials Concerned About “Drunkorexia”

College officials are concerned about students refusing to eat all day before consuming alcohol, a practice known as “drunkorexia,” according to The Washington Post.

Drunkorexia is mostly seen in young women who want to party while staying extremely thin. It can include excessive exercise or purging before drinking alcohol. If a student doesn’t eat anything all day and then drinks excessively, there is no food to slow down the absorption of alcohol.

“With nothing in her system, alcohol hits quickly, and that brings up the same issues as with any high-risk drinking: getting home safely, sexual assault, unintentional injury, fights, blackouts, hangovers that affect class attendance and grades, and possibly ending up in emergency because the alcohol hits so hard,” said Tavis Glassman, professor of health education and public health at the University of Toledo in Ohio, who researches drunkorexia.

No national statistics exist on the prevalence of drunkorexia, the article notes.