What we do to ourselves on our 21st birthdays

As a general statement, 21st birthdays are terrific. Once American adults have waited out the western world’s longest pre-legality period, a 21st is a debaucherous festival for all of us to share with our friends (and even families, if you’re comfortable with it). I’ve done it, and you’ve either done it or already are eagerly awaiting the chance to stride up to the door at R.J. Bentley’s and proudly present your real driver’s license and have an above-board good time.

Odds are that you’ll have a good and (sort of) memorable 21st birthday experience. But a detailed study from 2008 (about which we’ve wanted to write for some time) paints a scary picture of the fine line many of us walk on this special occasion.

Researchers Patricia Rutledge, Aesoon Park and Kenneth J. Sher polled 2,518 college students, and 83 percent of them said they drank to celebrate on their 21st birthday. Factor in that people tend to lie about perceived bad or unhealthy behavior even on anonymous surveys, and it’s reasonable to think even more college students than that might go out for drinks on 21st birthdays in particular.

Not all drinkers are created equal, of course. Students in Greek life were 90 percent likely to drink on their birthdays, while non-Greek students were 80 percent likely. For women, the figure is 85 percent against 80 percent for men. White students celebrate by drinking at an 84 percent clip, while non-whites are at 69 percent. But everybody is likelier to drink than not.

So, you’ve heard it here first: On 21st birthdays, college students drink. Groundbreaking, isn’t it? But the empirical data on how much we drink on these birthdays is sort of stunning. The researchers found that 12 percent of birthday boys and birthday girls reported going “21 for 21” — the completely insane but nominally impressive feat of putting back 21 drinks on that special day. (I don’t know anyone who’s actually done this, but I’ll take the scientists at their word.)

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