If you were not among the several hundred UW-Platteville students who attended the Campus Programming and Relations program on Sept. 25 in the Pioneer Crossing featuring Rick Barnes as the speaker, please consider the following, potentially life-saving tips that he shared with students about students who have consumed too much alcohol in any setting:

If you see someone who has “passed out” from drinking, don’t assume that s/he is asleep. The unconscious person might die without medical attention as more and more alcohol gets absorbed into the bloodstream. If you are worried about the person being angry with you for summoning medical assistance, consider how you might feel if that person died when medical help might have prevented that tragedy.

If you decide that a drunken person can just sleep it off, be sure to:

Place the person on his/her side with plenty of room for vomit to be expelled in a direction away from the person’s nose and mouth, and
Push/pull her/his legs up into the fetal position.
Put a backpack (preferably the drunken person’s backpack) on the individual, just like he/she was heading to class and wearing it. Put heavy items in the backpack and zip it up.

These first three steps help prevent the drunken person from rolling onto her/his back as real danger can increase from the chance of vomiting and then automatically, through the autonomic nervous system, inhaling (aspirating) vomit and literally drowning due to their own vomit filling the lungs while the person is unconscious, and

Place a trash can, bucket or some form of an open container near the drunken person. It might be questionable if he/she will hit the container if she/he vomits, but it could happen, and most importantly,

NEVER LEAVE THE DRUNKEN PERSON ALONE. Someone, and preferably someone who is sober or who has had very little alcohol, needs to stay awake and be seated near the drunken person to monitor that person’s breathing. Be ready to summon help if things worsen. Sitting with the person for just a couple of hours and then leaving could still result in tragedy. The drunken person’s body may still be absorbing alcohol several hours after it was ingested prior to the loss of consciousness. Don’t leave until the drunken person has become sufficiently sober to be out of any physical danger from their consumption of alcohol and has regained consciousness.

It might not be the nicest thing to do, but when the person regains consciousness and realizes that he/she is wearing a backpack and wonders how that could have happened, you might say, “I was hoping that maybe you could shed some light on that for me.” The facial expression might be a tiny bit of compensation for seeing the person through a crisis. Note: the last statement didn’t come from the Rick Barnes program.

CPR— it was a great call and a job well done by bringing Rick Barnes to UW-P. If his messages help prevent even one tragedy, it was worth far more than the dollars spent for his appearance at UW-P.