USA Today is reporting on a shocking trend: “extreme drinking.”

Get this, researchers at the University of Texas-Austin found some college students celebrate their 21st birthdays by… drinking a lot. Yup, some even drink an average of 12 drinks for men and nine for women.

And it gets worse.

The study also found that 78% of these students cited ill effects of the boozing, including hangovers, blacking out, finding out later they had sex, and getting in a fight.
 

Hangovers? No way! And there is certainly a large population of guys who would not categorize finding out they had sex as an ill effect.
 

Nevertheless, USA Today goes on to explain this surprising pattern:

Although the study focused on only one campus, researchers say the new level of “extreme drinking” goes way beyond “bingeing” — four or five drinks in one sitting. And it’s a phenomenon probably being repeated at schools across the country, researchers say.

However, this study leaves a lot of questions still unanswered.
 

For example, how much did these scientists get paid to learn that college students like to drink?