A Columbia University study released today says the frequency with which college students binge drink or abuse drugs has “skyrocketed” since 1993.

This trend, while sad and alarming, is not surprising. It is one predictable correlate of the upsurge in narcissism on campuses, which is the subject of a survey titled “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before” (and which I have highlighted).

The narcissism study showed, among similar views suggesting disdain for authority and the elevation of self-indulgence above self-discipline, that many students believe “I can live my life any way I want to.” One of the study’s authors, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, concluded as much in commenting, “Permissiveness seems to be a component.”

Given its unprecedented material wealth — and the green light it generally receives from parents and educators to indulge any and all appetites — this generation of students (not to mention their elders) needs to be morally awakened to (as listed recently by David Brooks) what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision, what Steven Pinker calls the Tragic Vision, and what E. Q. Wilson calls Existential Conservatism. (“Human Nature Redux,” The New York Times, 2/18/07) This worldview includes the belief that the wholesale discarding of social conventions and institutions based on a respect for legitimate authority, and on self-restraint, can be dangerous.

This is one of the lessons of which the sad new addiction study might remind us.