• Posted May 29, 2026

Heavy Drinking Harms College Students' Brain Power, Study Finds

A night of heavy pours can ruin a college student’s brain power during next day’s classes, a new study has found.

Any drinking at all is linked to a 14% greater likelihood of memory or thinking lapses the next day, researchers reported recently in the journal Alcohol, Clinical and Experimental Research.

Further, each additional drink on a given day increases by 5% the odds that a college student will have a cognitive lapse the next day, researchers found.

As one might expect, high-intensity drinking leading to a blackout had the worst effect, more than doubling the chances of a next-day brain lapse, according to results.

College kids often assume that once they sober up from a night’s drunk, everything returns to normal, researchers said. That just isn’t so.

“We’re seeing in this study that heavy drinking can affect functioning the next day,” said lead researcher Ashley Linden-Carmichael, an associate professor of counseling psychology and human services at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

“Students could have a harder time with their schoolwork, going to a job or navigating friendships, and that could have big implications for their mental health,” she said in a news release.

About half of young adults who drink have imbibed to the point of blacking out at least once, researchers said in background notes.

“When someone is blacking out, they’re continuing to navigate the world, but they’re not processing information or making and storing memories, which can lead to making decisions they normally wouldn’t, increasing the risk for physical injury and sexual assault,” Linden-Carmichael said.

For the new study, researchers recruited more than 300 college students, all of whom said they had previously engaged in heavy drinking and blackout drinking. Heavy drinking was defined as at least four drinks in a single sitting for women and at least five for men.

The team tracked students for three weeks, during which they texted surveys every two hours between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The surveys asked students to report the previous day’s happenings, along with their current temperament and brain power. Each survey also included a “brain game” to test their cognitive ability.

Results showed that the more alcohol a student drank the day before, the worse their ability to remember and think became.

High-intensity drinking was associated with:

• 66% higher likelihood of a prospective memory lapse, causing students to forget plans or activities they had scheduled for the next day

• 75% greater odds of a retrospective memory lapse, which involves forgetting earlier memories or lessons

• 2.3 times greater odds of a cognitive lapse

Blackout drinking was associated with a 61% higher risk of retrospective memory lapses and 40% greater odds of cognitive lapses, results showed.

“The biggest effects were when they drank at very high levels, or when they were blacking out,” Linden-Carmichael said.

Researchers next plan to examine whether sleep might protect the memory and brain power of young adults who drink heavily. They also plan to explore the cognitive effects of consecutive days of heavy drinking, as well as the effect of using alcohol and weed together.

More information

The National Institutes of Health has more on alcohol’s effects on the brain.

SOURCES: University of Oregon, news release, May 13, 2026; Alcohol, Clinical and Experimental Research, March 2026