This just in: American college students get shitfaced drunk because it allows them to have sex without having to admit to themselves, their peers, their parents, or their pal Jesus that sex is something they want:

Students in her studies described alcohol as emboldening and said it offers "liquid courage," a phrase other researchers also have cited. Drinking allows young women to "act out being sexually assertive, carefree, liberated," she says, and can be an excuse for their sexual behavior. "If you have sex, you're a slut, and if you don't, you're a prude—but drinking allows you to do both," she says. "You can go out, get drunk, have sex and the next day say, 'I'm still a good girl.'"

And she's still a good girl because the booze is to blame. But where did she learn that sex is something for which blame must be assigned? Where did she come by those inhibitions? Mom & dad, Jesus Christ, and the moralizing guilt trips passed off as sex education in America. So, booze. Because booze both disinhibits and exonerates—and post-sex exoneration is just as important as pre-sex disinhibition. Get drunk and fuck your brains out, sober up and blame the booze. Everybody wins! (You, your sex partner, your parents, Absolute Vodka, the preacher you go to for absolution, Jesus Christ, Anheuser-Busch, Captain Morgan's, Keith Stone, Malibu Rum, etc., etc.)

You know... if we want American college kids to drink less... maybe we shouldn't pound so many crippling sexual inhibitions into their heads in the first place.