It's been said that the behavior of every problem drinker affects at least five other people.

The following seven students, who attend colleges around the country, can attest to that:

"My roommate Josh is a "macho" guy who is also a good student and under a lot of pressure from the engineering classes he's taking. He likes to "relax" on the weekends, which, for him, means getting blind drunk from Friday to Monday. I wouldn't mind so much if he didn't have such a bad temper and if his brain and mouth didn't totally disconnect when he drank. But since that is the case, he gets himself into all sorts of altercations, and his first solution is to fight-he's even taken swings at me! I'm so tired of breaking it up, getting bounced out of bars because he's hassling somebody, or having to take him home after he gets his butt kicked."

"One of my roommates freshman year was from a small town. At first, she didn't go out at all, but once she started, she would drink really heavily. One night, she went home with this guy she'd just met. My other roommate and I (we lived in a triple) didn't know where she was. In the middle of the night, she decided to walk the five miles back to our dorm room, but on the way, she was stopped and picked up by campus police. She was still only 17 at the time, so they had to call her parents and have them come to the station before they could bring her back to the dorms. The whole ordeal kept my roommate and me awake all night. This was only one of the times her drinking kept us from getting a good night's sleep."

"I lived in a house with four other girls last year. All of us liked to party, but one girl, Melissa, would get wasted every time she drank. Even after coming home from a night out, she'd sit in front of the TV and drink more, all by herself. We had to take her to the hospital three times last semester. We tried to sit her down and tell her we thought she had a problem, and at first, she seemed to listen to us. She stopped for a few weeks. But then she was right back at it, guzzling as though she was making up for lost time."

"There's this guy in my fraternity house who thinks he's a real ladies' man. When he's drinking, watch out! He's loud and obnoxious and he gets completely out of hand with any woman who comes into the house. My girlfriend won't bring her friends over anymore, and she never stays long herself if he's around. It's getting me really mad 'cause this one guy is making things really difficult for all the rest of us."

"My girlfriend's roommate Kerri has a boyfriend who's a pretty nice guy but he's insanely jealous. He's been drinking more in the last few weeks because Kerri told him she wanted to see other people. Things have been getting really tense between them, and one time he hit her when he was drunk. He's threatened to beat up anyone she goes out with. I'm afraid he's going to get trashed some night and do something really stupid."

"When I first went away to college, I was totally not into the drinking scene. Unfortunately for me, my roommate was-in a big way. She'd be out partying every single night, not caring if she woke me up when she came in, even if she knew I had a test the next day. Once, when I wasn't there, she was wasted and went down the hall to the bathroom in her bra and underwear. She forgot to bring her keys, so she was locked out of our room. When I got home, I found her there, slumped against the door, half-naked."

"One of the guys in our six-person dorm suite gets seriously crazy when he drinks. He vandalizes dorm furniture, plays dangerous pranks on people, and steals stuff from people's rooms. We all thought he was rich and bought a lot of toys for himself, but last weekend the campus police descended on our suite and confiscated all this stuff from his room that he'd stolen from other students. What really sucks is that rumors are starting to go around, and people are saying that the other five of us were somehow involved."

If any of these stories sound like your life, now you know you're not alone. But what can you do? You don't want to seem like a loser. You probably just endure it and hope it doesn't happen again. The problem is, it will happen again. And you shouldn't have to alter your routine because another person can't handle alcohol.

Click on "NEXT" to find out how to get in control when someone's drinking is out of control.