A person blacks out when he or she has consumed so much alcohol that the brain needs to shut down certain parts to keep other more important areas (vascular) effectively running. That's worth repeating. When a person blacks out, their brain shuts down in parts (memory) to maintain the rest.

People all across American high school and college populations are blacking out every day. For a lot of people weekends don't mean anything at all. Monday is as fine a day for a binge drinking session as any other. And why shouldn't we get drunk before class? Or during breakfast before a football game?

Your kids are getting wasted as early as 15. A doctor qualifies 3-5 drinks a night as bingedrinking. I've watched people take down 20 drinks in a night. To shotgun a beer means to poke a hole in the bottom and then pop the top sending a strong stream of the entire can all the way down your throat. A kegstand is when you are hoisted up by your legs and drink straight from the tap in midair.

How long ago did this start and when did it become the rule by which the American youth drink? People passing out on the couch by 12pm, a girl throwing up in the closet because every bathroom is already being used for just that reason, and then of course they drive home. (From my small ethnography drunk driving is largely determinate on geography: Never in California, always down South).

Are we becoming stupider? Do people think this ends after college? When will our livers give out? And who am I even to talk? It's the mode in which I learned how to drink and it's how I learned about limits. But a lot of people don't ever learn the lesson.

Maybe I am wrong and this is how people have always consumed their alcohol, to the point where the next morning we have to call everyone in our phone just to figure out why I woke up in a bush with a stolen street sign and a stuffed animal porcupine.

But if I am right and this is a new social phenomenon what will Congress look like in 40 years when we run it?

If we are to read into a culture by how it drinks, what is America about? And what are your countries about? Drinking wine with the family on Sunday afternoons or buying a breathalizer with your friends just to see how drunk you can possibly get? And of course you should mix it with redbull if you're trying to have a real good time.

I don't even know if this is a bad thing, but it's happening and it's alarming even as a participant.