Alcohol Abuse

On a recent autumn night, about 35 people gathered around a keg of beer and a stereo in a crowded apartment in Willow Grove. The music was loud. Some partygoers talked, while others played a board game called "Passout," in which players drink at the draw of a card or if they fail at particular tasks. The party was a smash - that is, until the Upper Moreland police arrived. The officers knocked on the door and entered the apartment, and the fun ended. About 15 of the people were not yet 21 years old, the legal drinking age, but most had been drinking anyway, said Heather Jones, 20, of Hatboro, who attended the party.

When Juan Leon came to southern Chester County in 1978, drinking beer helped him overcome the boredom of his monotonous job of picking mushrooms eight to 12 hours a day. For the young man from Yuriria, Mexico, the alcohol helped him deal with the constant bouts of homesickness that overwhelmed him, he said. He was only 19. "Every day you went through the same routine - every day," Leon said in his native Spanish. "I always felt like a prisoner - you always went back and forth from the mushroom house to your housing quarters.

One day a couple of years ago Linda Jeffrey, a psychology professor at Glassboro State College, was discussing drug use in a child development class. She was taken aback by the comments of one of her students. "He argued that parents would have to recognize now that drug use is a normal part of growing up. It was an acceptance of drugs that I found (to be) a very dangerous point of view. " About the same time, while she was working with the Child Abuse Prevention Project at the college, a mother with two preschool-age children talked nonchalantly about drinking cocaine in tea to stay awake while studying, while another student laughed about drinking a six-pack of beer in less than two hours as if it were a commendable achievement.

Experts tell us that the most popular New Year's resolutions include losing weight, getting more exercise, quitting smoking and cutting down on alcohol consumption. Unfortunately, few keep to their resolutions - and in the case of alcohol abuse, the results are tragic. According to government statistics, about 100,000 Americans die every year from alcohol-related causes. Half of these deaths come from various diseases, such as cirrhosis, cancer and stroke; the rest come from injury.

It is nighttime, long after classes have ended and books have been closed. Inside Princeton University's gothic student center the lights have gone down, the Coors Light banner has gone up and, amid the sounds of laughter and the jukebox, a handful of students is engaging in a national collegiate pastime. Beer. They have come to drink beer at the Ivy League school's innovative, albeit ironic, attempt to curb campus alcohol abuse. Sell alcohol to stop its abuse? The approach suggests the confusion and desperation that universities across the United States face in trying to stop excessive drinking among their students.

Gov. Ridge might not have been the most appropriate person to congratulate the state-championship athletes at Downingtown Senior High School yesterday. He never even played on a team while attending Cathedral Prep in Erie. "Jack-of-all-trades, master of none," was how the governor described his high school athletic skills. Still, the staff and players from the football and girls' basketball teams, which captured state titles this school year, didn't seem to care about his lack of varsity letters.

Doug West's wife, Wuela, leaned close to her husband and clutched his arm in a show of support. As West chronicled events leading to his admission in an open letter Sunday night he has problems with depression and alcohol abuse, she knew the subject might be hard to discuss. "The trade just blew everything up, but maybe this was the best thing to ever happen to me," said West, the ninth-year guard from Villanova who was traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Vancouver Grizzlies last Wednesday.

A Norristown woman who killed her boyfriend by plunging a steak knife into his heart in a drunken rage in September was sentenced yesterday to six to 12 years in state prison. Patricia Ann Horton, 49, was also ordered to undergo treatment for alcohol abuse and bipolar disorder. Horton pleaded guilty in February to third-degree murder for killing John Friday, 50, who shared a boardinghouse room on East Elm Street with her. Horton had faced first-degree murder charges. "I am so sorry for taking John's life," Horton told Montgomery County Court Judge Maurino Rossanese before sentencing.

The Haddon Township school board has written to the state Department of Transportation requesting a traffic light at the intersection near the high school where two 16-year-old girls were struck by a car last week. The girls, sophomores at the high school, had been attending a dance there and were standing in the middle of Cuthbert Boulevard at Merrick Road when they were struck about 11 p.m. by a 1972 Volkswagen driven by another student. The girls, Heidi Kennedy of the 900 block of Merrick Avenue and Kim Marshall of the Haddon Hills Apartments, remain in critical condition in the trauma center at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center.

School officials are usually pleased when students score above the norm on a test. Not this time. When a survey showed that seniors in the Central Bucks School District use drugs and alcohol more often than the national average, district officials were anything but pleased. "We weren't totally surprised, but we certainly were disappointed," said Superintendent Robert Winters. "We thought we had a pretty good sense about what the usage was among our students. " The 56-question survey was given to ninth- and 12th-grade students in February as part of the district's Drug Free Schools program.

NEW YORK - Guys, when your sweetheart says "No thanks" to sex, do you knock back a few stiff drinks to feel better? Turns out fruit flies do pretty much the same thing. That's the word from a new study that may explain why both species react that way. In Friday's issue of the journal Science, researchers propose a biological explanation for why "Not tonight, dear" may lead to "Gimme another beer. " If it proves true in people, it may help scientists find new medications to fight alcoholism.

Ernie Accorsi spent more than 30 years working in NFL front offices. As general manager of the New York Giants, he hired Tom Coughlin as head coach and worked the draft day deal that brought quarterback Eli Manning to the team. And whenever he needed advice, he consulted his old friend, Joe Paterno. "I can't tell you how many times I called him and said, 'How do you think I should handle this?' " Accorsi said in a telephone interview Friday, five days after the passing of the former Penn State head coach at age 85. "He always had something good to say. He was right on the money every time.

DETROIT - Betty Ford, 93, the former first lady whose triumph over drug and alcohol addiction became a beacon of hope for addicts and the inspiration for her Betty Ford Center, has died, a family friend said Friday. During and after her years in the White House, 1974 to 1977, Mrs. Ford won acclaim for her candor, wit and courage as she fought breast cancer, severe arthritis, and the twin addictions of drugs and alcohol. She also pressed for abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.

The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations wants NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell to apologize to Chris Simon for mistakenly suggesting the suspended New York Islanders forward would receive counseling for drug and alcohol issues. Phil Fontaine released a statement yesterday, the day after Campbell announced that Simon would be banned for a league-record 30 games. Simon was suspended for stomping on Pittsburgh Penguins forward Jarkko Ruutu in a game last weekend. "I agree with the NHL, and the vast majority of hockey fans, that Mr. Simon must be punished for this unfortunate incident with a Pittsburgh player during last Saturday's game," Fontaine said.

Not quite 30 seconds into a conference call discussing the death of Eddie Griffin, Kevin McHale's voice began to crack from emotion. For the next 15 minutes, McHale, the Minnesota Timberwolves' vice president of basketball operations, spoke of Griffin with the despair one feels over the loss of someone who could not be reached, or saved. "I had no idea how much I was pulling for him until it hit me yesterday," McHale said of Griffin, 25, who was killed in a fiery collision with a train Friday in Houston.

Eddie Griffin left Philadelphia for what everyone thought would be fame and fortune, not to mention a long and prosperous NBA career. But it was not to be. In the seven years after his graduation from Roman Catholic High School in 2000, Griffin encountered nothing but trouble. His life was one of substance abuse, depression, run-ins with the law, and a quiet stint in the NBA. He barely made an impact for any of the three teams that had signed him. It all came to a sudden and tragic end in the early hours of Friday when Griffin ignored a railroad barrier, drove his Nissan SUV past warning lights, and struck a moving freight train in southeast Houston.

A Norristown woman who killed her boyfriend by plunging a steak knife into his heart in a drunken rage in September was sentenced yesterday to six to 12 years in state prison. Patricia Ann Horton, 49, was also ordered to undergo treatment for alcohol abuse and bipolar disorder. Horton pleaded guilty in February to third-degree murder for killing John Friday, 50, who shared a boardinghouse room on East Elm Street with her. Horton had faced first-degree murder charges. "I am so sorry for taking John's life," Horton told Montgomery County Court Judge Maurino Rossanese before sentencing.

As a Bucks County detective, Robert Tegge handled some of the area's most serious crimes. Two months ago, he helped send a Doylestown middle school teacher to prison for having an affair with a student. But in private, Tegge was drinking too much - and committing some of the same offenses he was supposed to be exposing, authorities now say. Tegge, 48, of Telford, was charged yesterday with molesting a 13-year-old girl in her home. Her accusations began in mid-March, around the time Tegge began a month of alcohol-abuse treatment at a Florida facility, authorities say. A six-year veteran of the Bucks County detectives, Tegge surrendered to state agents on two counts each of indecent assault and corruption of a minor.

As Pennsylvania State University began the fall semester this week, campus officials confronted what they termed one of the worst cases of alcohol poisoning ever seen there - a student hospitalized with a 0.682 percent blood-alcohol content after consuming 21 shots in two hours of bar-hopping to celebrate her 21st birthday. The student, Kristine Lurowist, was recovering at her Audubon, Montgomery County, home yesterday after two days at Centre Community Hospital in State College.

Five days after a University of Pennsylvania alumnus fell to his death on campus after drinking at a fraternity party, the school yesterday announced a ban on alcohol at undergraduate campus parties and suspended Phi Gamma Delta, the fraternity where 26-year-old Michael E. Tobin died. In announcing the alcohol ban at a news conference, Robert Barchi, Penn's provost, said it was intended not to be punitive but rather to provoke a campus-wide discussion about how to change the culture of alcohol abuse that has taken hold at Penn and schools across the country.