Borg use at US colleges can be ‘particularly harmful’ to drinkers, study suggests

(NEXSTAR) – A recent study on the use of borgs at U.S. college campuses suggests that the trend could be fueling particularly harmful drinking behaviors , despite some users believing it to be less risky.

Borgs (an acronym for “black-out rage gallons”) are essentially large homemade cocktails made from liquor, water, vitamin or electrolyte supplements, and flavorings. Partygoers carry their own personal borgs to parties or tailgates — usually in repurposed milk jug — for sipping throughout the day.

“Most importantly, you have to name it,” one TikTok user once explained in a 2023 instructional video, while writing the words “LeBorg James” on a milk jug that contained, among other things, a fifth of vodka.

The idea gained popularity in the earlier half of the 2020s, and spread largely through social media. Proponents of the fad said they preferred to mix their own beverages because they could control what goes into them, and wouldn’t need to drink from shared bottles or communal punches, which can be tampered with more easily or harbor bacteria.

“If you went to a party and drank from the communal ‘jungle juice’ tub … you don’t really know what’s in your cup or how much alcohol you’re consuming,” Amelia McCoun, a licensed professional counselor at Texas Tech University, told Nexstar in 2023.

At the time, McCoun also said borgs could potentially be useful as a tool for harm reduction, a practice defined by the National Harm Reduction Coalition as “a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use.” Specifically, McCoun said students who may feel peer-pressured to drink can mix their own personal borg with as little alcohol as they want — or even none — and no one would be the wiser.

But McCoun also raised a major concern about borg-drinking, specifically that an easily accessible jug filled with a pre-mixed cocktail — one that could potentially contain a dangerous amount of alcohol — might lead to binge-drinking or high-intensity drinking, and increase the risk of alcohol poisoning or harmful consequences.

A study now appears to indicate those concerns are warranted.

The study, conducted by researchers with the University of Chicago’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience and published in a peer-reviewed Rutgers University journal, examined the drinking behavior of a sample of U.S. college students, and specifically their behaviors concerning borgs. Based on the participants’ responses, researchers determined that borg-drinkers, on average, imbibed the equivalent of 9.4 standard alcoholic beverages by the end of an event/party, whereas they only drank an average of 6.3 standard alcoholic drinks on a “non-BORG binge-drinking day.”

Furthermore, nearly all participants who used borgs reported getting drunk or buzzed during a typical outing (28 percent), and around a third (29 percent) reported blacking out. More than half (59 percent) admitted to doing something embarrassing during a borg binge-drinking day, and just under a fifth (17 percent) said they had vomited.

The study also cited previous reports of hospitalizations linked to borg usage, including one instance from 2023 in which dozens of students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst were treated for alcohol intoxication.

Lead researcher Andrea C. King, PhD, acknowledged in a recent news release that drinking games have been associated with concerning alcohol use “for decades,” but suggested that borg use was more concerning.

“[T]he mixing of hard liquor and additive flavorings in BORGs may be particularly harmful given the sweetness of the beverage and the lure of sharing one’s BORG and tasting others’ concoctions,” King said. (Nearly all participants in the study reported sipping from another’s borg, or sharing their own.)

Most (68 percent) of the study’s subjects, however, said they would likely use a borg again within the next year, despite the risk of blacking out, puking or embarrassing themselves. And most of that group said it was because borgs made it easier to socialize, or that it was just more fun.

“The present data show that individuals who use BORGs perceive them as highly social,” reads a portion of the findings. But researchers say the other aspects touted by proponents — controlling alcohol intake, reducing contamination, and helping with harm reduction — “were not supported by this study.”