Before you ask, BORG – pronounced like the alien word “interstellar travel” – is an acronym for “gallon blackout rage.” The drink with this name is a mixture of water, alcohol, sweet flavoring, and some hangover medicine, like Liquid IV or Pedialyte.
Mixing is becoming increasingly popular on college campuses across the country, at least in part thanks to TikTok, where videos of students brandishing their jugs at parties and demonstrating how to mix Drink has been widely shared.
BORG news this month, when the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Town of Amherst issued a Joint statement involved “a significant number of cases of intoxication” occurring during the Blarney Blowout, an annual off-campus event.
The statement noted that “many students were observed carrying plastic gallon containers, believed to be ‘BORG'” and that “this trend of binge drinking is increasingly depicted on TikTok and seen on university campuses around the country.”
Bella Alonzo, a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, posted BORG . video in January. Wearing a cowboy hat emblazoned with stars and the Busch beer logo, 21-year-old Alonzo began by pouring about half of the water in the gallon jug. Then she added more vodka, a can of raspberry fizzy energy drink, and an electrolyte powder. “So we don’t get past midnight,” Alonzo said, before shaking the jug and taking a sip.
In an interview with The New York Times, Alonzo said she was surprised by the sudden popularity of BORGs on social media, as she had known about them for years. The main draw, she says, is that they’re easy to drink for such a high alcohol content. “All you really like is water and food coloring,” Ms. Alonzo said. “You don’t taste any wine, that’s the great part.”
“You know, I see people decades older than me commenting on TikTok like, ‘Oh, yeah, we used to do this to call it something else,'” she added. She notes that the drink is especially popular in “darties,” slang for the party of the day.
In December, Cate Keane, a senior at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, posted a video of her classmates showing off their BORG at a party. clamp has since been viewed more than 500,000 times. Each jar is labeled with a pun, such as “Justin BieBORG”, “BORGttega Veneta” or “BORgan Donor”.
For some students, a funny name is just as important to BORG as electrolytes. ONE TikTok The name suggestion prompt posted last month by Benjamin Giller, a sophomore at San Diego State University, has been viewed nearly a million times on the platform and received hundreds of comments.
Some students said they were attracted to BORG because of their supposed safety benefits.
Ms Keane, 21, said: “It’s great that you can put the lid on instead of, for example, if you’re at the bar and open the drink, someone can easily point, like, ‘flip’ ‘friends’,” said Ms. Keane, 21. , referring to the so-called date rape drug Rohypnol.
Ms. Alonzo echoed that point, noting that she liked how BORG allowed her to control and know exactly how much wine was in her jug. On TikTok, one videotapes highlights how BORG can be seen as a harm prevention tactic that has been viewed more than three million times.
But not everyone is on board with BORG.
The Amherst Fire Department reported 28 requests for ambulance transportation during the Blarney Explosion on March 4. Ed Blaguszewski, a spokesman for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, declined to comment on the number of ambulance calls received. claimed in previous years, but said this year’s figure was higher than in the past. (In 2014, CBS News reported that police officers in riot gear were called in to deal with what the school described as “unruly behavior” at the same event. More than 70 arrests have been made.)
“I think it can actually do a lot of harm,” Dr Sarah Andrews, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, about this trend. “It is promoting false ideas about drinking.”
She acknowledges the importance of college students being aware of what’s in their drinks, but she says she doesn’t believe BORG is the answer to the problem.
Dr Andrews, whose area of expertise includes alcohol abuse, said: “Just because you know what’s in it doesn’t mean you really understand the negative effects it can have. “Even if it was mixed with electrolytes, it wouldn’t compensate for the alcohol content. It doesn’t make up for the dangers of alcohol.”
However, some college students, like Gracelyn Jones, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Louisville, claim otherwise. Or, at least, Ms. Jones thinks BORG is better than some of the alternative drinking methods on college campuses.
“When I compare BORG to butt picking,” she said, referring to alcohol douching, “it just doesn’t seem as bad.”
