The borg — “blackout rage gallon” — has change into the drink of selection on faculty campuses throughout the nation.
Made with half water, half vodka, a caffeinated taste enhancer and a touch of powdered electrolytes, the drink has been hailed by many college students on TikTok as a hangover-proof get together staple.
Binge drinking, which includes consuming an extreme quantity of alcohol over a brief time frame, stays a widespread situation that many faculty directors have struggled to manage. However as borgs go viral, some hurt discount advocates — who do not condone binge consuming — have mentioned the pattern may very well mitigate the risks of faculty consuming tradition.
“In terms of substance use prevention, hurt discount acknowledges that persons are going to make their very own choices relating to alcohol and different medicine,” Erin Monroe, a creator who’s credentialed in substance use prevention in New York, instructed NBC Information in a message. “However there are methods we are able to use to cut back among the threat.”
When making borgs, drinkers get “full management” over what they’re consuming, and may tempo themselves appropriately, Monroe mentioned. She described borgs as “actually stable hurt discount,” when paired with different ways like catching a experience with a trusted designated driver.
One of many earliest TikTok videos concerning the borg dates again to March 2020. The drink, which grew to become extra frequent within the wake of social distancing and different Covid prevention measures, is particularly well-liked for tailgates and out of doors events.
“after covid the entire ‘communal drink’ factor kinda went out the window for us,” one TikTok commenter mentioned on a video concerning the drink. “borgs got here out of necessity.”
Faculty college students started posting extra concerning the drinks final yr, simply as their spring semesters have been wrapping up. It gained recognition all through the autumn semester as college students posted tutorials and movies displaying off their jugs, that are personalised to the drinker’s style.
In a video posted in October, for instance, one TikTok person made a borg with a bottle of Skyy vodka and Kool-Assist. One other TikTok person made a snow day borg with MiO, a packet of Liquid IV and a can of the glowing vitality drink Celsius.
Borgs are topped off by labeling the jug with a punny title. Displaying off borg names like “Soulja Borg” and “Our Borg and Savior” has change into its personal TikTok pattern. Different intelligent borg names embrace “Brown v. the Borg of Education,” “SpongeBorg” and “Borgingham Palace.”
Monroe famous that hurt discount advocates aren’t selling consuming by approving of borgs.
“Hurt discount is neither selling abstinence or consuming. Hurt discount is totally judgement free,” she mentioned. “My purpose is at all times to assist empower individuals to make use of hurt discount instruments that work for them to cut back threat.”
She and different specialists have used TikTok to level out that consuming from borgs seems to be much less harmful than different types of faculty binge consuming.
In a recent video, Monroe in contrast borgs to consuming when she was in faculty, when she mentioned her friends drank “gin buckets and jungle juice” out of “trash cans within the basement of frat homes.”
She additionally authorised of scholars tailoring their borgs to their very own alcohol tolerances. In a follow up video, she made her personal borg (named “Ruth Bader Ginsborg”) with extra water than vodka. Opposite to the drink’s title, she mentioned in a remark, “you is perhaps blacking out however not everybody needs to.”
Creator Leigh Beez, a disaster response educator who works with faculty college students, mentioned in a TikTok that the borgs are among the many “implausible hurt discount methods I’m seeing.”
TikTok creator NarcanMan, who makes content material about hurt discount, described borgs as “the neatest strategy to get drunk” in a video.
“There is no query of unintentionally getting an alcohol that you’ve got much less of a tolerance to or would not sit effectively with you,” he mentioned. “There is no likelihood of somebody slipping one thing into your wide-open cup as a result of you will have a sealed jug. And y’all are staying hydrated!”
In the meantime, many millennial TikTok customers have additionally praised borgs in feedback.
In a video, one TikTok creator mentioned whereas in faculty, she recalled seeing items of hair floating in frat home bathtubs, which have been used to retailer get together concoctions. One other person commented, “how we as a era didn’t collectively die of sepsis is superb.”
Others have commented that the drink seems to be a extra sanitary various to the communal “jungle juice” vats that lengthy dominated faculty events.
