What is BORG drinking, and why is it a dangerous trend? An expert explains

If you've been to a party lately and haven't seen someone drinking a BORG, you're likely not partying with college students.

If you’ve been to a party lately and haven’t seen someone drinking a BORG, you’re likely not partying with college students.

And if you have no idea what that sentence even means, you’re probably not a member of Generation Z.

The acronym BORG stands for “blackout rage gallon,” according to the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, DC. The term refers to a concoction often prepared in a gallon-size plastic jug that typically contains vodka or other distilled alcohol, water, a flavour enhancer and an electrolyte powder or drink. BORGs are often drunk at outside day parties, otherwise known as darties.

There’s so much alcohol in a BORG that “drinking one can lead to potentially life-threatening consumption and alcohol poisoning,” said Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University in California.

The large-batch drink is the new version of jungle juice, according to Sabrina Grimaldi, the creator and editor-in-chief of online lifestyle magazine The Zillennial Zine. The publication targets the micro-generation between millennials and Gen Z.

“Instead of making a party-sized mixed drink in a huge 5-gallon drink dispenser, a giant storage tub, or even the grossest trend, which was making jungle juice in a sink or bathtub, everyone has their own personal drink,” Grimaldi wrote CNN in an email. As the drink’s name suggests, “it’s intended to get you extremely drunk.”

What Lembke calls the BORG’s “social contagion factor” makes it even more dangerous.