The latest TikTok challenge has resulted in dozens of students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst being admitted to hospital after participating in the dangerous “borg” drinking challenge.
In total, 46 students were hospitalised, but all were eventually medically cleared and discharged back to campus or home with injuries deemed not life-threatening, Amherst town manager Paul Bockelman told CBS News.
Twenty-eight ambulances were used to transport students to the hospital, with Amherst calling in ambulances from neighbouring towns and the regional EMS task force for help, Bockelman said.
Borgs, or “blackout rage gallons”, are one-gallon containers of water that are emptied a bit, and then filled with alcohol and some kind of flavouring, such as water-enhancing drops or powdered drink mixes.
The trend of making and consuming borgs on college campuses became popular on TikTok, with the hashtag #borg having garnered more than 82.5m views.
A joint statement from the university and the town said the weekend’s developments would be assessed and steps considered to improve alcohol education and intervention, and communicate with students and families.
While there is some logic behind the idea of adding water and electrolytes to slow down the impact of alcohol or lessen hangovers, experts are concerned that the gallon size encourages binge drinking. One borg could contain 16 servings of alcohol or more.
“Consuming this much alcohol would be fatal for the vast majority of people, even if spread out over a full day,” Dr George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, told CBS News.
CBS News article – Dozens of UMass students hospitalized after consuming "borgs" (Open access)
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