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Jessica Erwin
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Delta Zeta
Class of 2011
The small blue light of the idling laptop pulsed dimly in the corner, the sole source of light in the dark room; the gentle hum of the refrigerator offered the only audible noise to break the hush of the sleeping dorm. The stillness gave a pleasant contrast from the chaos that preceded. For three a.m. I had never been more awake. The tiny neon flash beaconed like a light house from a faraway place, but I was not going anywhere. Hanging on to every last breath, my concern slowly turned to comfort with the increasingly steady rise and fall of my best friend's chest. Watching, I monotonously counted the seconds between each deepening breath, periodically reaching over to feel her warming skin. Patiently, I monitored my unconscious friend. With the icy edge of the refrigerator pressed firmly against my back I sat for the seven longest hours of my life at the end of the futon, replaying the night's events in my head over and over again, praying I made the right decision, praying everything would be okay. I will never forget that night, the night my best friend set out to find herself, the night I almost lost her.
"So you are really going out tonight?" I asked, still uncomfortable with the idea of drinking, let alone drinking on a school night.
"Yes! I told you; it's pledge family night," she replied without breaking her stare, meticulously applying her mascara in the mirror.
"So what does that mean?" Knowing it meant drinking and hearing pledge family night horror stories from years past, I pushed the issue in hopes saying it out loud would somehow make her change her mind, a feeble attempt to guilt her out of going.
She cut right to the chase but attempted to reassure me none-the-less, "Drinking I'm sure, but I am a big girl. I can handle it." And with that she grabbed her keys and walked out the door.
The next time I saw her she was passed out in the bathroom, her vomit stained face resting limply against the toilet seat, her drunken pledge mom at her side.
"What happened?!" I screamed angrily at the upperclassman I had trusted with my friend's well-being, panic beginning to race through my veins. "How much did she have?"
"I don't know….. five, six shots maybe; It wasn't that much; I guess it was quick, but it wasn't that much," she trailed off.
It wasn't that much? For you maybe, but this girl doesn't drink! I thought angrily, racking my brain for all the information I had learned on AlcoholEdu just hours before. She doesn't have a tolerance. If she had just done the tutorial before she would have known better. She didn't eat dinner. This isn't good.
"I didn't mean to get her this drunk. It was pledge family night, I thought she knew we were drinking, I bought her a fifth. I thought she knew. I just found her like this in the men's room, I thought she knew…" she continued, my heart sinking as I turned to my best friend motionless on the floor.
"Wake up!" Frantically, I shouted her name numerous times to no avail.
"What? Celerebritiesss? ... Daaad?" My friend finally opened her vacant eyes and began to mumble incoherently, her consciousness a small reassurance. She began to puke again and would not stop for the next two hours, long after her pledge mom would leave to go back to the frat house from which she had just come.
Recalling a link I'd seen earlier in the day on the AlcoholEdu webpage, I ran to the computer and looked up the symptoms of alcohol poisoning. Shivering on the bathroom floor, she was in bad shape and leaving her alone was out of the question. Once the vomiting subsided I moved her to the futon and placed her on her side. Fearing her irregular breathing and knowing the risk of vomiting in her sleep, I propped a pillow against the wall and settled in for a long, sleepless night, screening her every move, praying for daylight and the reassurance that things would work out. Looking back, there is no question in my mind I should have called an ambulance; I just thank God that she was alright despite my ignorance.
The true tragedy here lies in what my story lacks: originality. If you feel like you've heard it all before, it's because you have, maybe with a different setting, different characters, and different outcomes, but the underlying problem is always the same: irresponsibility and underage-drinking, a potentially lethal combination.
Alcohol has become the social center of America's youth, especially on college campuses. Students feel embarrassed and ashamed to forget the names of their fellow classmates, yet take pride in not remembering entire events from the previous night. College night life is a course of its own, experience the only professor. For my friend, she learned her lesson, and nothing like that has happened ever since. For me, I witnessed firsthand the reality of the dangers behind drinking irresponsibly. I now know the importance of the preventative measures we've learned in health class over and over again through the years, and I am so thankful for programs like AlcoholEdu providing the tools students need to protect themselves against these self-inflicted accidents.
The United States legally argues that it takes 18 years to grow up; for me, it took one night. At 18 years and 192 days old I became an adult. I lost a part of me that night, an innocence and a naiveté I will never get back, but I gained something so much more: a new appreciation for life and a powerful foresight. That one night when I almost lost my best friend weighs more heavily on my conscience than any amount of peer pressure ever could. I may not be the life of the party, but at least I will have a life to live once I leave it.
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