Simply put, teenage binge drinking is drinking to get drunk - a self-destructive and unrestrained drinking bout. During the drinking binge the heavily intoxicated drinker ignores responsibilities, squanders money, and engages in all manner of harmful behaviours that may well bring them into contact with the police or emergency services.

Binge drinking is now a problem in many western countries, even though individual countries have different tolerance levels of binge drinkers. In the United States, binge drinking is the consuming of four or more drinks by a woman, or five or more drinks by a man on any particular occasion.

In the United Kingdom, binge drinking is commonly defined as consuming 11 or more drinks on any particular occasion. This is more than double what is considered binge drinking in the USA – yet teenage binge drinking in the United Kingdom is now so serious, the British Government is about to bring in measures to tackle the problem.

What's the problem?

Teenage binge drinking is irresponsible; heavy drinking that often comes under the disguise of fun and games. Binge drinking is terribly dangerous to the drinker and to the people around them.

Risks to the binge drinker include:

• Getting into trouble with the police

• Driving a car after drinking

• Alcohol poisoning; a severe and potentially fatal physical reaction to an alcohol overdose.

• Getting hurt or injured

• Damaging property

• Missing work

• Not using protection when having sex

• Engaging in unplanned sexual activity

Risks to people around binge drinkers:

• Being pushed, hit or assaulted

• Experiencing an unwanted sexual advances or assault

• Having property damaged

• Having leisure time or sleep interrupted

• Having a serious argument

• Being insulted or humiliated

Why do teenagers do it?

• To get drunk

• For status associated with drinking

• Culture of alcohol consumption

• Peer pressure

• Stress

Are you a teenager and do you have a binge-drinking problem? Do you recognise any of these harmful and destructive behaviours in your own life:

• Are you drinking more heavily and more often?

• Are you drinking to "get drunk"

• Is your drinking affecting your work or upsetting your partner or family?

What can you do?

Luckily, there's an effective solution to binge drinking - Hypnotherapy and NLP. We all tend to be miss-programmed by negative input in some way and neuro-linguistic programming reprograms the mind for a positive outcome. Hypnotherapy puts the mind in a state that will accept the NLP re-programming more readily, so NLP and hypnotherapy combined are a very effective combination.

By using a combination of hypnotherapy and NLP, you can re-program your teenage binge drinking behaviour in a few hours. You can stop binge drinking by re-programming your brain you can get a trained hypnotherapist to do this, or you can do-it-yourself by using a self-help download. Either way the result is the same to change your usual self-destructive "drink to get drunk" activities to a pleasant "have a few drinks and have a good time".