21 beers, 44 shots, 17 vodkas, 7 whiskies - in ONE night. The shocking proof students are drinking themselves to death

By the time four students return home at 3am they have drunk 139 units

The girls, 18-year-old Francesca and Codie, drinking 25 and 26 respectively

Boys Sam and Jake downing 40 and 48 units each

Government advises that men should drink no more than 21 units a week

Women should drink no more than two to three units a day, or 14 a week

Starting early: Codle, 21, 'pre-loads' with cheap drink at home

For students Jake, Francesca, Codie and Sam, alcohol is vital oil to the wheels of their many nights out. These, invariably, start at their university halls of residence in Liverpool, where, armed with bottles of cheap supermarket spirits and shots, they spend the evening ‘pre-loading’ — drinking a large amount of cheap alcohol to avoid spending too much when they’re out — before they head to the city centre’s many bars.



Even before they head out to ‘start’ their evening, baby-faced 19-year-old Jake Hirst, who is studying international journalism, has had 11 beers, four shots, three whiskies and one vodka.



His blonde-haired, blue-eyed flatmate Codie McBride, 21, has got through one bottle of beer, six shots and five vodkas. Their two friends have proved equally thirsty: Sam’s tally is eight beers, six shots and two whiskies, while Francesca’s is one beer, four shots, three vodkas and two whiskies.

Once in town they teeter round Liverpool’s bars, downing six more shots and two double vodkas each.



By the time they return home at 3am they have drunk a staggering 139 units, with the girls, 18-year-old Francesca and Codie, drinking 25 and 26 respectively, and boys Sam and Jake downing 40 and 48.



To put this in context, the government advises that men should drink no more than four units in one day, or 21 units a week. Women should drink no more than two to three units a day, or 14 a week.



For the Liverpool students, their current level of drinking is par for the course and would usually be forgotten once the next day’s hangover had abated, but this time the true scale of their alcohol abuse has been captured for the ITV current affairs programme Tonight, in which Britain’s binge-drinking culture is put under the spotlight.



The programme, to be screened this evening, shows flatmates Jake, Francesca Leech, Codie and Codie’s 19-year-old boyfriend Sam Alexander having their alcohol consumption monitored over the course of a typical night out before undergoing a series of medical checks to find out the damage it has caused.



Jake, the son of a businessman from Knaresborough in North Yorkshire, has a straightforward attitude to drinking.



‘You drink, you get drunk, you act like a bit of an idiot. Then you have a hangover,’ he says. ‘You definitely don’t think for a minute about what is happening inside your body.’



It’s a view that is shared by a vast number of students across the UK.



Immersed in a drinking culture in which bingeing on alcohol several nights a week is the norm, few of them give a moment’s thought to the long-term damage they may be inflicting on their bodies. As Jake candidly puts it: ‘I figure that we’re only doing it for a few years, so it will all be OK in the end.’

Sadly, this youthful confidence may be misplaced.

The results of the ITV experiment were shocking: all four students had consumed at least 25 units of alcohol in just a few hours — in Jake’s case, a staggering 48 units. Their blood alcohol levels were so high as to be considered medically dangerous. If they continue drinking at this level over the next few years, they all risk serious liver damage.



It makes for alarming viewing, not least for parents, many of whom have no idea how much their children are drinking at university, away from their watchful gaze. As history student Francesca admits, it’s the drinking culture that drew her to university in the first place.



‘One of the main reasons I wanted to go to university is because of the going out and the partying every night,’ she says.



‘It’s normal to go out three times a week and get hammered.’



Drop of the hard stuff: Sam, 19, prepares another round of shots

Of course, young people drinking to excess is nothing new. What has changed, however, is the scale of the problem and the impact it is having on their bodies. Today, alcohol is the biggest cause of death in young people in the UK, with someone in their 20s dying every month from alcohol poisoning.



Over the past decade the number of under-30s admitted to hospital with liver disease has almost doubled, while a growing number of teenagers are also being treated for the condition.



Little wonder that alcohol consumption among the young is increasingly being seen by government and health officials as a ticking time bomb.



While the amount of alcohol consumed by Jake and his friends seems enormous by many people’s standards, Jake believes it is the norm.



‘The drinking culture at university is huge,’ he says. ‘You’re surrounded by people your own age and it’s just easy and acceptable to get absolutely hammered. It’s just what we do.’



Francesca, who is originally from Manchester, agrees. Although she first started drinking at 16 years old — getting into local bars with the aid of fake I.D. — she says that the culture at university took her drinking up a level.



DID YOU KNOW?

On average, boys first try alcohol at the age of 11. For girls it's 13.

‘The first day we arrived at university it was a case of “we’re going to get drunk now”,’ she says.

‘In freshers’ week everyone is drinking every single day and it carries on from there. It’s actually impossible not to drink — you want to fit in, you want to make friends and you don’t want to be the person to stay in.’



Now she routinely goes out around three or four times a week, drinking to excess each time.



While such heavy drinking may be routine, even expected, for students, it is impossible to ignore the damage it is causing to their young bodies.



‘We checked the concentration of alcohol in their blood — the higher it is the more damage it causes,’ says GP Dr Arun Ghosh, who performed tests on the students when they returned home from their night out.



‘A reading of 400mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood is likely to be fatal but anything over 100 is considered medically dangerous — and all our students had a reading over 100’.



With over 100mg of alcohol in their blood, the students’ mental faculties will have been impaired and they would have begun slurring and staggering.



‘Codie was 145, Fran was 160, Jacob was 162 and Sam’s was over 200, which is medically “very dangerous”,’ says Dr Ghosh.



‘His body wasn’t able to cope with the amount of blood alcohol to the point where it was excreting protein. If he did that on a regular basis he would have long-term liver problems.’



Many students chose to drink at home before going out in order to save money. (Pictured (L-R): Liverpool Students Jake, Codie Sam and Francesca, talking to Doctor Arun Ghosh

It’s a depressing prognosis for a young man in the prime of life — albeit not an entirely surprising one for Dr Ghosh.



‘I regularly see the devastating effect of binge-drinking in my surgery,’ he says. ‘Prices have gone up and students have got poorer, so they are drinking stronger stuff to get drunk.



‘It’s cheaper to buy a bottle of Aldi vodka rather than a six-pack, which used to be popular — and now they are drinking that bottle in one night.’ The consequences of consuming such huge quantities of alcohol can be catastrophic, as the parents of 19-year-old Matthew Loveday know only too well.



Matthew died on New Year’s Eve 2004 after consuming the equivalent of 20 shots of ouzo. His internal organs had shut down and he died of respiratory failure. At his inquest, the coroner warned about the dangers of binge-drinking.



Phoebe Haffenden, meanwhile, is one of the lucky ones: at the age of 19 she was told how she had just six months to live after years of heavy drinking which culminated in her consuming six litres of cider in one day.



Now, eight months sober after a prolonged stint in rehab, Phoebe, who started drinking to boost her confidence, recalls how her social drinking eventually took over her life.



‘I couldn’t go through the day without a drink. I started at 10am and wouldn’t finish until 3am the next day,’ she recalls. ‘I hardly got any sleep but I didn’t care. I would have the shakes and the only way I could deal with the shakes was to have a drink.’



Indeed, young women who consume huge quantities of alcohol are in even more danger than their male friends.



As Dr Ghosh points out, heavy drinking among young women is linked to increased risk of sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancies.



Dr Ghosh (not pictured) points out heavy drinking among young women is linked to increased risk of sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancies

‘When you are drinking at that volume you are no longer in control and that leads to unwanted consequences,’ he says.



He points out that young men and women are also drinking with no awareness of their own limits.

‘Take Sam and Jake — Sam is trying to keep up with Jake but Jake is twice his size and twice the weight, which is why he was less affected by the volume of alcohol they drank,’ he says. ‘When you start getting girls trying to drink at the same level it can be very dangerous.’



Francesca admits that she sometimes drinks so much she can’t always remember returning home from a night out.



‘I have had mornings where I can’t remember getting home, and there have been times when I can’t remember bits of a night,’ she confesses.



‘But I’ve never really worried about it or given it any thought in regard to health. I always think that if I’m with people I’ll never get into trouble.’



For Fran, the most alarming revelation of her blood test is the amount of calories she has consumed through alcohol.



‘I discovered what I’d drunk was around 2,000 calories of alcohol, which was the equivalent of seven burgers,’ she says.



Sam, at least, has been given pause for thought, after learning that, out of the four students, he would be the first to contract liver damage if he continues to drink at the same level.



‘It’s given me a kick up the backside about drinking, and the idea that I can’t keep doing what I’ve done previously,’ he says.



‘If I carry on it’s not just going to be something that will go away — it will be something that will be with me and slow me down and could be potentially fatal. It worries me.’



‘I have had mornings where I can’t remember getting home, and there have been times when I can’t remember bits of a night' - Francesca

As indeed it should: as Dr Ghosh points out, the statistics are not on his side.



‘It’s like smoking — not everyone who smokes will get lung cancer and not everyone who binge-drinks will end up with liver damage, but the more of them that do it, the more it will appear.

‘And we are seeing an increase in the number of young people drinking to excess.’



Perhaps the most shocking thing about the whole experiment? The fact that, a month after filming, Jake and Francesca admit that the exercise has not stopped them binge-drinking.



‘I suppose I was a bit shocked but I can’t honestly say I’ve done anything about it,’ admits Francesca. ‘The way I see it, when I’m 30 I’m not going to be going out three or four times a week — it’s only at university I will be doing this. I don’t think it can harm me .’



Her sentiments are echoed by Jake. ‘I do think about it a bit more but overall it hasn’t really changed much,’ he says.



‘I’m only at university for a couple of years and I want to make the most of it. I don’t think it will cause me any damage in the long term.’



You have to hope for their sake — and that of the thousands of other young people drinking themselves into oblivion each week — that they are right.

