We think we know the usual suspects who push this pastime a little too far and end up getting in fights, driving drunk, or waking up the next day feeling like they were the one who got hit head-on by that 350-pound offensive lineman. Although you might think binge drinking is the territory of 20-somethings, in fact, 36 percent of binge drinking occurs in people age 35 and older.

Whatever age they are, binge drinkers will tell you it is all harmless fun. They only do it on Friday nights or on the weekends. But is it really harmless? As more medical research shows the toxic effects of binge drinking and the damage being done to memory, is it time to reconsider downing a 6-pack before halftime?

What Alcohol Does to Memory & Learning

Memory is essentially the storing of learned information and the ability to recall what you learned. Without memory, there is no learning.

Researchers now think that the most significant alcohol-related injury to memory and learning results from repeated withdrawal from alcohol. But withdrawal doesn’t necessarily mean severe detox such as when someone goes to rehab after long-term heavy drinking.

Mark Twain once joked that quitting smoking is the easiest thing in the world; he quits smoking every night and he starts again every morning. With alcohol it’s the same thing; if you binge drink you eventually go to sleep and your body metabolizes all the alcohol that you’ve consumed. By morning you are in withdrawal. A hangover is essentially a cluster of symptoms related to alcohol withdrawal. The truth is if you go out a single night and have six drinks of alcohol and you stop, you’re going to have withdrawal of the kind that can injure memory and learning.

If you are questioning whether you are binge drinker, remember that the only criteria is a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 grams percent or above. For men, that’s about five drinks in two hours. For women, it’s four drinks in two hours. If you aren’t sure what a standard drink is, this chart will help.

Another thing that binge drinking does is injure your ability to learn from bad experiences that happen while you are drunk. You might get into a dangerous situation when you are binge drinking and experience some very real negative consequences. You swear next time you won’t get into that situation, but chances are you won’t remember to avoid it next time you binge drink.

Studies of rats show that when “sober” they will learn to avoid environments where they receive negative stimuli (foot shock), but give them alcohol and they don’t seem to learn how to avoid the environment where they actually experienced the shock.

Their learning is very limited when under the influence of alcohol.

Interestingly, binge drinkers behave like these rats. They fail to learn associations in aversive conditioning tests and they have much more limited learning. As a result they are not able to avoid situations that are going to be dangerous to them.

Alcohol essentially interferes with your ability to remember threatening situations.

You might ask what a real-life equivalent is to this. Let’s say you binge drink at a football game and drive home drunk. You wake up in your driveway and realize you took out your mailbox. You feel sick to your stomach, yet you’re lucky it didn’t end worse than this. Next time, you swear, you will not drive if you get that drunk.

Unless you make it impossible to drive before you start drinking, chances are you will drive again when you get drunk. Once you are drunk again, you will make the same bad decisions because your alcohol-intoxicated brain has not learned the lesson. (This is also referred to as state-dependent learning.) In fact, binge drinkers are 14 times more likely to drive under the influence than non-binge drinkers.

During the withdrawal period that occurs after any binge drinking episode, your brain tries to re-adjust to being alcohol-free; it often misses the baselines, however, and overshoots the mark. This is the most vulnerable period when brain cells die.

You might read this and think, “Well, it’s just short-term memory loss.” But the damage is more pervasive than that. If new information cannot be retained in short-term memory, it has no chance of being consolidated in long-term storage. Research shows that few cognitive functions escape the impact of alcohol.

Just scan some of the academic literature on binge drinking and the titles alone will make you wonder if this style of alcohol consumption is such a good idea. Words like neurotoxicity, neuronal degeneration, cognitive deficits, and the more easily understood phrase “brain damage” abound in the scientific literature on binge drinking.

So the next time you break open that second six pack during the game, ask yourself if it really is just harmless fun.

Ms. Locklear’s troubles seem to have begun in 2006 when it she discovered emails which hinted that her husband of 11 years, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, was carrying on an affair with one of their mutual acquaintances. Almost immediately, tabloid magazines ran stories which reported Ms. Locklear as seeking the help of prescription medications to deal with bouts of anxiety and depression. Not long after her supposed discovery, Ms. Locklear filed for divorce.

Things appeared quiet for a time until 2008 when it was reported that the star had spent a month at a center in Arizona receiving treatment for anxiety and depression. Sadly, Ms. Locklear appears to have experienced a relapse at best, within a matter of months she was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Evidently, a US Weekly reporter who had been photographing Ms. Locklear that same evening, made a 911 call to report that the star was driving erratically. It turned out that Ms. Locklear tested negative for alcohol and narcotics, but her lawyer did say that prescription medications may have caused her impaired driving. The case was dismissed in 2009 after Ms. Locklear entered a plea of no contest to the charge of reckless driving. The star agreed to three years of informal probation and a $700 fine.

No further mishaps were reported until 2010 when she ran into a neighborhood No Parking sign at four in the morning. A neighbor, frightened by the crash, called 911. This case was later dismissed because the court had insufficient evidence to prove that it was Ms. Locklear’s car which had crashed into the sign. Despite the fact that the court could not prove her culpability, it must have been obvious to those closest to Ms. Locklear that she was a woman who needed some help. It took another near-disaster before her loved ones intervened.

In 2011, it was announced that her engagement to boyfriend Jack Wagner was at an end. Their on-again off-again romance appears to have mirrored the turbulence inside Ms. Locklear because just this past month her ingestion of a cocktail of prescription medications (likely Xanax) and alcohol left her so disoriented that her sister placed a frantic call to 911. Ms. Locklear ended up in Los Robles hospital because her family was concerned that she might try to harm herself. The family later said that the star was out of any immediate danger but did announce their desire to see her enter residential rehab treatment again.

It has been said that we live out of our hearts. Ms. Locklear’s heart has been sorely tested over the past six years. Prescription medications and alcohol have not been sufficient to mend what has been damaged inside of the star’s beautiful exterior. Hopefully, she will agree to her family’s wishes that she seek residential rehab treatment. Addressing the issues inside of Ms. Locklear is the best hope for conquering the outside issues plaguing her.

Carnie Wilson suffers from addiction disorder. For many years her addiction was to food. Over the years, Ms. Wilson has laid the blame for her penchant to overindulge in food on her dysfunctional relationship with her father, her inability to cope with the disappointment over her musical group break-up and the inordinate amount of stress involved in being a working mother.

Ms. Wilson’s misunderstanding of the nature of addiction should have been obvious given her comments in 1999, the year she decided to undergo bariatric surgery. At that time, Ms. Wilson said that she expected the surgery to cure her of her food cravings.

Wilson did lose 150 pounds following her surgery. She subsequently underwent plastic surgery to remove excess skin from her stomach and arms and even augmented her breasts in an effort to find happiness and satisfaction. This led to an offer to pose in Playboy, which she accepted. However, the good feelings which she said she experienced at that time quickly faded and Ms. Wilson was soon facing life’s difficulties once again.

She married a guitarist and was able to put her band back together. Soon she was feeling pressure to maintain her svelte appearance as the poster-child for future gastric bypass surgery candidates. In a condition known as addiction transfer, Ms. Wilson turned from abuse of food to the abuse of alcohol. It wasn’t long before her husband warned her that their marriage would remain childless until she got her drinking under control. It was enough to scare Ms. Wilson straight – for a while – and in 2005 baby Lola Sofia was born.

As with most pregnancies, mom was left with a few extra pounds which she attempted to lose on the TV show Celebrity Fit Club. Wilson lost 22 pounds but was not following a healthy diet or exercise regimen and evidently was drinking again. In 2007, the star entered a 12-step program but her interviews given at the time reveal that she still did not take full responsibility for her recovery. In 2009 another baby, Luci Bella was born and more weight became an issue. She worked for a diet food company for a while until it was discovered that she was building a homemade cheesecake business for herself on the side.

The yo-yo behaviors of Ms. Wilson demonstrate the dangers of expecting something outside of personal responsibility to "fix" an addiction problem. Surgery doesn’t solve addiction. Dabbling here and there with therapy without full commitment won’t work. Overcoming addiction requires getting at the root of the issues which drive the behaviors and then hard work every day to overcome the thought processes which feed addictive behavior. The people who really ‘have it all’ are the ones who understand what it takes to handle the problems life throws at them.

Sometimes referred to by names like the z-drug, Zopiclone is a non-benzodiazepine hypnotic agent that is called Imovane by brand name in Canada and Zimovane in the U.K. In the U.S., Zopiclone is only available by prescription, and Eszopiclone – an active stereoisomer of Zopiclone – is also available by prescription, called Lunesta.

Harding said in recent articles and interviews that she was fortunate to have lived through the addiction to the sleep-inducing pills, which spanned four years. She cites emotional problems over the break-up with a former fiancé as the trigger for her addictions.

Harding has also been reported to be involved in tumultuous relationships with men with their own drug addictions, including Theo Van Dries, whom she said became physically violent with her in a hotel.

Harding said ending her addiction to Zopiclone was very difficult but she did return to normal sleeping patterns – although her sleeping problems have been reported to have returned.

Research studies suggest that a person’s romantic partner can have a strong influence on a person’s use of drugs or alcohol, and that many people in long-term relationships tend to have similar drinking patterns over time as their mate.

Tom Sizemore is a 48-year-old actor who has tasted the sweetness of success as well as the bitterness of defeat. Professional success can be chronicled through his impressive litany of movie roles: Heat, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, True Romance and Natural Born Killers. But professional success doesn’t guarantee success in private life and the painful end of Sizemore’s marriage in 1999 was compounded by an addiction that eventually robbed him of everything.

The actor went to drug rehab in 1998 to treat his heroin addiction, but says now that he only went for the sake of his marriage. When that ended in 1999, Sizemore managed to stay sober until he hooked up with the infamous Heidi Fleiss known as Hollywood’s Madam in 2001. It was during his relationship with Ms. Fleiss that Sizemore says he began to abuse methamphetamine. After that, things went from bad to worse.

Recovered addicts among his acquaintance warned Sizemore at the time to stay away from meth, saying it would cost the actor everything. He didn’t believe them until three years and $11 million in legal fees later when everything, in fact, was gone.

In 2003, Ms. Fleiss accused Sizemore of assault and battery. He was convicted of the charge and received a 17-month jail sentence. More arrests and convictions for drugs followed in 2005 and 2009. Finally, an emaciated Sizemore agreed to appear on Season 3 of Celebrity Rehab. Mr. Sizemore now says that he was in such a stupor of withdrawal that he was barely aware that he was on television at the time. Not until he continued drug rehab through the Celebrity Rehab follow-up Sober House did the actor say that he finally started to emerge from the fog of addiction.

Today Sizemore admits to wasting many years blaming others for his troubles. Not until he looked in the mirror and realized that he himself was the problem did things begin to change – and change they have. Mr. Sizemore has been sober for over two years and has been working on a memoir to chronicle his acting career, his suffocating addiction and his eventual recovery. The book is due for release in 2013. Mr. Sizemore’s acting schedule is fuller than it has ever been and his gratitude for his blessings is evident.

Mr. Sizemore is overwhelmed that directors are willing to give him another chance in the industry. In fact, Sizemore says that current success isn’t a second chance but more like a 19th chance! He says that he should have died numerous times and was so far down at the bottom that he never felt he could climb out to the light of day again. He hopes that his memoir will inspire hope in others that recovery is possible even for the person who feels certain he could never do it. His own miracle of recovery and grace are bound to give that hope.

The 4.5-year prison term comes on top of a current sentence Douglas is serving for methamphetamine convictions and heroin convictions, crimes allegedly carried out at a high-priced hotel in Manhattan. Prosecutors pushed for a lesser term of one year to 18 months, but Judge Richard Berman rejected the request, according to recent articles.

Douglas has openly cast the attention toward the nature of his addiction, rather than his own actions, in regard to his sentencing. He is reported to have told the judge he felt "ashamed" and beaten down by his addiction, but neither plea seemed to overshadow Douglas’s accusations of having lied about the methods he used to acquire drugs during his current sentence.

Douglas’s previous encounters with Judge Berman have also been the subject of media stories, including claims that the judge gave Douglas a final chance to end his drug activity in 2009. Douglas is also said to have failed drug rehab programs at least six times but is now vowing to end his drug use for the long term.

Berman has made a recommendation that Douglas be moved to a different incarceration center that will provide drug addiction recovery services and that he be permitted to have encounters with family members. Research regarding drug addiction often points to multiple relapses as part of the process for many people as they work toward recovery, and experts suggest that friends and family members provide firm, consistent support throughout the steps of recovery.

T.I. has achieved great success in the entertainment industry releasing several hit albums (seven in all). He has also performed with his genre’s top names (Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Rhianna) including king of hip-hop Eminem. He has even taken on film acting roles. He may be best known for his popular single "Live Your Life" but has matched his wealth of talent with a penchant for trouble.

Along the way, he has managed to land twice in the county jail for violations of probation and once in federal prison on weapons-related charges. Most recently (2010) the rapper admitted to an addiction to the prescription drugs OxyContin and hydrocodone following oral surgery. He is one of a growing number of those who have struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers.

Collaboration in music isn’t all that T.I. shares in common with Eminem. Both men have had to deal with the evils of addiction and the personal struggles within and without that so often accompany addiction. After getting sober, Eminem resorted to sleeping aids and needed to enter a drug rehab facility in order to break free. Evidently, he made efforts to get in touch with T.I. during his prison sentence in order to lend support and encouragement. T.I. highlights the hip-hop king’s outreach and encouragement to overcome his addiction in interviews which he gave after his September 29 prison release.

New recordings are in the works and the rapper intends to reciprocate the overtures made by Eminem. Given the attention both men draw, a joint effort to lead lives of sobriety could send a powerful message to youth. T.I. has been quoted as praising Eminem for his victory over personal demons and addiction, saying that the icon has re-set the bar for what defines the most successful artist in hip-hop.

T.I. is out of prison and has voiced a desire to make some changes in the direction his life is headed. While grateful for the public support of Eminem and others, the rapper speaks with the voice of maturity when he says that despite the support one may receive from others, the decision must begin with you to get a life back on the right track. After a long tale of misdirected youth, T.I. says he is ready, with help, to make the internal changes that will set his feet on a new and better path.

To baseball fans in the 1980s, especially those from New York, Dwight "Doc" Gooden was the golden boy on the pitcher’s mound. Hitters feared him, fans loved him. He soon earned a second nickname "Dr. K" – K being the symbol for strikeout.

Beginning his professional career at the tender age of 19, Gooden went on to earn many of baseball’s most coveted honors: Rookie of the Year (1984) and Cy Young Award (1985). He four times won starting position in an All Star Game, and, certainly not least, was a member of three World Series championship teams (1986 with the New York Mets being his best remembered performance).

Along the way, drugs became a habit and a once-promising baseball career fizzled out in front of stadium fans and television followers. While many have tracked his decline and some have read his book, it was during an October 2011 ESPN interview that Gooden revealed how his drug habit robbed him of what should have been one of his life’s happiest and most memorable moments.

Gooden described how the 1986 NY Mets team celebrated together in the ball park clubhouse following their World Series win in game seven. He told of sharing champagne on the pitcher’s mound and the teams’ decision to carry the party to a Long Island club. Gooden called his drug dealer en route and arranged to meet him at the club. It was a call that would lead to regret.

Gooden reports that at some point in the evening’s celebrations, he decided to leave his teammates and ended up in the projects at the apartment home of a drug dealer whom he did not know. He was in such a drug-induced haze the next day that rather than make it to the stadium in order to participate in the Manhattan ticker tape parade, he watched the parade on television through a fog of cocaine.

The trade-off was so miserable that it might have been hoped that Gooden would try and turn things around – but addictions often take a person to what feels like the lowest point possible only to drag them even lower. Gooden was no exception.

His pitching no longer inspired fear and his personal life headed downwards. Gooden was to spend years in a slow professional decline punctuated by repeated arrests and jail time. The pitcher’s career tanked permanently when he was released from the Yankee’s roster in 2001. His personal life has only recently hit bottom hard enough to begin a turnaround. Gooden credits his appearance on the reality show Celebrity Rehab with his recent seven or so months of drug-free living.

Dwight Gooden represents the baseball career that "might have been." On stages large and small, the same script is performed by all who end up enslaved to the drugs they thought would bring escape and intensity to life. Hopefully, the end of Gooden’s "what might have been" tale will be an epilogue of freedom from the shackles of addiction.

According to Ms. Porizkova, her emotional struggle began back in 2007 when she was early and perhaps unceremoniously eliminated from competition on the hit show "Dancing With the Stars." Still reeling from that rejection, Ms. Porizkova was given a spot on "America’s Next Top Model" in 2008. However, after one year on the program, Ms. Porizkova was again handed the pink slip. Reasons as to why she was let go swirled around the news. Some said budget concerns led to her release, but Ms. Porizkova herself wondered at the time if it was due to her "huge ego," a situation which came to her attention during her stint as a judge on the program.

The bookend failures took Ms. Porizkova back into her early years of high school when she says she was the least popular girl at her school. Once again, she was left inwardly hurting and wondering why she wasn’t liked by her peers. Her emotional reaction at the time was such that she sought out medical help. Explaining to her doctor that she was experiencing anxiety attacks, her physician prescribed Lexapro to help settle her into a more even emotional state.

Ms. Porizkova says that over the two-year period she took Lexapro, the drug muted her personality as well as her anxiety. It also caused her to experience emotional distance from her husband. She further reports that she was ridiculed by those on the set of "America’s Next Top Model" when a health form required her to reveal that she was taking the medication. Eventually, Ms. Porizkova felt that the medication was not worth the cost and decided to quit taking it.

For three weeks, Porizkova says that she battled fatigue, shakiness and bad dreams with an increase in her exercise regimen. Ms. Porizkova says the experience led her to greater empathy for people with serious drug addictions, since she herself felt a daily tug to "pop a pill."

Doctors generally refute the addictive potential of anti-depressants. Unlike tranquilizers or narcotics, physicians say, anti-depressants do not require that the user continually increase the dosage in order to receive the same result. Doctors also say that people who take anti-depressants do not continue to crave the medication following cessation. People, like Ms. Porizkova, may feel addicted, doctors say, as they feel their original condition returning.

Paulina Porizkova says that she did feel dependent upon the medication. While she denies being an anti-medication advocate, she wonders if the drugs aren’t the "emotional equivalent of plastic surgery."

A recent study in the UK highlighted the strong feelings kids have about the advertising they see. A survey asked 2,300 individuals under the age of 18 what they think about how the alcohol industry markets their products. The survey was conducted by Alcohol Concern and is reportedly the largest ever conducted regarding teens’ views of alcohol marketing.

The results sent a strong message to the alcohol industry:

• 60 percent of participants in the study said they wanted advertising in cinemas to be shown only in connection with films regulated for those 18 years and older.
• 58 percent of respondents indicated that they wanted alcohol advertising to be shown only after 9 p.m.
• 59 percent wanted alcohol promotional information to be displayed only in supermarkets and liquor stores.

The chief executive of Alcohol Concern, Don Shenker, says that the results of the survey highlight the need for greater protection for teens from alcohol advertising. Even kids know that the advertising provides a temptation that is not healthy for them.

The survey shows that the regulations that are in place to protect teens from exposure to alcohol advertising are not enough, says Shenker. The government needs to examine whether the current restrictions are adequate to prevent teens from drinking alcohol. Shenker says that the survey results are a clear indication that kids don’t believe that the regulations are protecting them.

According to Alcohol Concern, the alcohol industry spends around £800 million each year to market alcohol to consumers. The group also reports that in just one match of the World Cup, 1.6 million children experienced exposure to alcohol advertising.

In a response from the Advertising Association, a spokesman said that the organization is not surprised that kids think that companies should have freedom to advertise alcohol to adults, but in support of regulations that protect kids. The spokesman said that these regulations are already working.

The survey’s findings highlight the need for caution in advertising. It is difficult to imagine a sports game without alcohol advertising, but this significant change may be necessary to provide the protection needed to safeguard teens from alcohol.