If you're not aware of the latest drinking trend spreading on TikTok, experts say you should be -- especially if you have college-aged children.
It's called the "borg," short for blackout rage gallon -- essentially a homemade cocktail in a large plastic jug.
The trend involves pouring some water out of a gallon jug of water and replacing it with liquor and a flavor enhancer, such as a powdered drink mix. The drink is often consumed over the course of a day.
The hashtag #borg has racked up more than 76.1 million views on TikTok.
Dr. George F. Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health, said the real danger lies within how much alcohol the drink contains, and how quickly a person drinks it.
"Quite simply, as alcohol consumption goes up, so do the risks of injuries, fights, sexual assaults, emergency department visits, blackouts, car crashes and other harms," Koob told CBS News.
Koob told the network he's seen some borg recipes that call for a half gallon or liquor, which equals about 43 servings of alcohol.
"Consuming this much alcohol would be fatal for the vast majority of people, even if spread out over a full day," he said. "It is unknown how many students actually follow borg recipes that call for a half gallon of vodka, but doing so could turn deadly depending on how much they end up consuming."
Ashley Linden-Carmichael, an associate research professor at Penn State's Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, is concerned that the trend encourages binge drinking.
"If someone is having 16 drinks in one sitting, even if it's mixed with water, that still counts as high-intensity or extreme drinking," she told Inside Higher Ed.
Some users consider drinking a borg slightly less dangerous because it mixes water with alcohol, or is made with an electrolyte power mix or vitamin supplement to counteract some side effects of booze. But Linden-Carmichael said it doesn't quite work that way.
"Adding water to it is not necessarily making someone less intoxicated. It's a myth that drinking water or having caffeine or taking a cold shower lower your blood alcohol content," she told Inside Higher Ed.
Some of those supplement mixes might even contain high levels of caffeine, which can be dangerous when combined with alcohol.
"It's important for students to know that caffeine, particularly in large amounts, can interfere with the ability to recognize how intoxicated one is, which can increase the risks of negative outcomes," Koob told CBS.
One upside to the trend, if done responsibly, is that users aren't sharing their beverage with anyone or drinking from communal vats of alcohol, compared to drinking trends like "jungle juice." They also know exactly what's in the drink because they mixed it.
"There are certain obvious benefits to drinking from one's own container and not sharing it," Koob told CBS. "It's always better to know what is in one's drink than to trust whoever mixed up something like a communal drink bowl."
Another positive is the user doesn't have to put any alcohol in their borg, and no one at the party would know, thus reducing peer pressure to drink.
Health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stress that no amount of alcohol is "safe." As such, experts say the key to drinking a borg responsibly is being educated on the dangers and acting in moderation.
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