Background: Alcohol consumption in our society is a known, and a widely discussed problem, due to the proven negative impact of excessive usage of spirits on health. Aim of the study was to evaluate the rate of consumption, and risk of an alcoholic disease among Polish students.
Subjects and methods: Study was carried out using an authors' own questionnaire, made of a queries about amount and frequency of alcohol consumption, risky behaviors and knowledge about alcoholism. Research was conducted through community portals (f.e. facebook.com), and within 3 weeks time (from a 10(th) of January to 31(st) of January 2013) 1300 students from different Polish universities participated in it. Out of them, after removal of inadequate questionnaires, group of 1259 students (822 females, 437 males) was selected for further analysis. Average age equaled to 21.5, with the maximum of 27 and minimum of 18 years. For the statistical analysis StatSoft "Statistica" 10.0 software was used.
Results: The study shows that 95.5% of students use alcohol (mostly beer and vodka) and they tend to overuse it. 28.86% of respondents drank excessively more than 3 times during the month preceding research, 46% of subjects also had an alcoholic palimpsest more than once, 12.7% need an alcohol to enjoy a party and 0.83% of respondents can't control the amount of a one-time alcohol consumption. 3.32% of students may be in the group of a high alcoholism risk.
Conclusions: Alcohol consumption is a common problem among Polish students. Most of respondents, mostly males, drink excessively and potentially risky for their health. There is a remarkable group of students endangered with alcohol addiction.