Binge drinking ‘contagious among partners’

Washington: Couples influence each other``s drinking habits, a new study has claimed.

The researchers studied 208 nonmarried, heterosexual dating couples in their early 20’s. Each couple had to be dating for at least 3 months, have face-to-face contact at least 5 days a week, and one member of each dating couple had to be a university/college student. On an average, the couples in the study were dating for close to 2 years. Over a 28 day time frame, researchers were able to predict one partner’s binge drinking based the other partner’s binge drinking. “In some respect this is a cautionary piece of research. Pick your friends and lovers carefully because they influence you more than you think,” Simon Sherry, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S, said. “We’re not so naive as researchers to think students are going to walk away from binge drinking. But our study shows there’s a large majority of students who form romantic partnerships where alcohol is a regularly occurring theme,” Sherry added. ANI