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February 28, 2007
Michael Shannon
Ezekiel returned from hiding after a few days. I've yet to get a good explanation for why he disappeared, or else I would tell you all. I suppose he just needed some time to himself.
The following constitutes a single week of journal entries on my good friend Ezekiel. Thankfully, this is not the norm, but then again the attributes and demeanor that produce a week of binge drinking like this are always with him. This is not to be taken as a week out of character.
February 19, 2007
I returned from a trip home to D.C. this morning. I had a chance to spend some time with my girlfriend at Georgetown, catch up with my family, see the dogs. It was a good weekend; I needed a break.
After classes ended this evening, I headed over to Ezekiel's room. I hadn't see my good friend since Thursday and wanted to get an update on how he had spent the last few days, and tell him how his hometown was doing without him. Inside his darkened room, the floor was covered with empty Bud Lite cans (he never leaves a beer unfinished). He was drunk. It must have been a tough Monday, I thought.
I took a few steps into the room and was immediately handed a beer bong to hold as Eze took back another pint. He looked tired, and certainly was not sober, but still surprisingly alert.
"I had a ton of work to do this weekend," he said to me. "Didn't really get to it until yesterday, though." He had not wanted to work Friday, so he drank to pass the time. He procrastinated all of Saturday and became a bit worried, so he drank to calm his nerves. Finally, with late assignments getting later and upcoming assignments quickly approaching their due dates, Ezekiel had arisen early Sunday morning, taken 30 mg of Adderall, and headed to the library with no intention of leaving before Monday.
"Drinking sucks," he said as he poured another pint into the beer bong. He had been without sleep for forty hours. Now, he justified drinking as a means of counteracting the amphetamines and caffeine already in his system. The plan did not make any sense, I know, but he was not having any of my talk on chemical interactions.
"I've got to put the final nail in the coffin … in my bed. Man, I need to go to bed," he attempted to explain as he made himself a gin tonic and took it through the beer bong.
We spoke for a little while longer until I told him it was time for me to get a bit of work done in my room before I headed to sleep. He decided to go find someone to accompany him to a bar.
February 20, 2007
Ezekiel spent last night on the floor of a friend's room - not by his own volition, of course. He had gone to a couple of bars, continued to drink after we parted company, returned to the dorm and even ordered two sandwiches to be delivered by an all-night convenience shop. This is what he could piece together of his night, based on what others have told him. For his own, he says he can not remember a thing. He must have passed out, because he awoke at 10 a.m. with the worst hangover of recent memory and 11 missed calls from the delivery man. He fell back asleep in his own bed and slept until early evening. No water; no classes. Ezekiel quickly told me all this as we passed in the hallway. He was returning to his room to try and sleep off his lingering hangover.
February 21, 2007
I saw Ezekiel twice today. The first time, we found ourselves in the same elevator heading off to class in the same building. "Fancy meeting you here," he said. My good friend Ezekiel told me that he planned to pull another all-nighter and finally get caught up on work. "I won't be seeing the sun for some time," he grinned. "Send my apologies."
The second time, I found him passed out in one of the floor's shower stalls, fully-clothed, still clutching a bottle of Corona. He had even taken the time to put in a lime wedge.
February 22, 2007
I ran into Ezekiel on W. 113th St. this afternoon evening as he returned from a popular pizza place, Koronet's, and I was coming from class. He was not in a good mood, his clothing was malodorous - in spite of him having slept in the shower - and he told me that his throat, stomach, and head were all hurting rather badly.
My weekend had begun; for him, it was to be a night in the library. Although, I took his plans with a grain of salt.
The thing is, midterms are not even for another couple of weeks.
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February 21, 2007
Vera Simon-Nobes
This is for the parents of teenagers who obey the law -- teens who just aren't interested, who don't want to put toxins in their body, whose religions stop them, or who live in fear of getting caught. For whatever reason, many teenagers decide not to drink. I was recently approached by a mother who was worried about her non-drinking son, as he enters a world where drinking is the norm. This is the world of college, where there is "pressure to drink," and those who abstain are courageously running against the grain. I'm sure this mother is not alone in her concerns about her son's social well-being as he goes off to college. For her, and parents and teenagers everywhere, I will present this story.
My friend Hannah is a gorgeous sophomore. When I arrived to spend the blizzarding afternoon at her dorm, I found her downstairs in someone else's room. She was lounging with a friend and talking on the phone. She slowly wrapped up her conversation and introduced me to her friend, who is a blond haired, blue-eyed snow-boarder, disappointed not to be at the mountain on our snow-day. Hannah has three best friends. She studies hard and goes out every weekend. Hannah, who broke up with her long-term boyfriend on Sunday, and was invited on a Valentine's date by Tuesday, doesn't drink. Nor does her best friend, the girlfriend of the hockey team captain. They both, for different reasons, have resisted the pressure to drink that undoubtedly comes with college. They don't represent the typical nondrinkers at college; they are students and partiers who have created their identity without using alcohol.
Now what if I propose that the frequently discussed "pressure to drink" does not really exist. We can replace it by the immense pressure to "fit in." The two are often synonymous because, in most places, the pressure to fit in goes hand in hand with drinking. People use alcohol as they get to know themselves and their place in their social networks.
Finding a niche at college is complex, and we often oversimplify it. "Socially adjusted" and drinking are not as closely associated as we treat them, nor are nondrinkers and "socially awkward." Finding a niche at college is not decided on whether you drink or not. There are nondrinkers on college campuses everywhere, though sometimes in places where you'd least expect them. People will become comfortable with themselves through a variety of mediums. Students like Hannah prove that they fit in fine without drinking. "People can really do whatever they want," Hannah says, "as long as they don't criticize everyone for making different decisions than they did."
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February 14, 2007
Esther Hwang
For the first time ever, I drank to make my problems go away. In one day, I had gotten a disappointing grade on a big paper and I had gotten rejected from a job I was trying out for for the second time. I wanted to cry, and every happy person I saw depressed me even further because it reminded me that they, unlike me, had something to be happy about.
I told my friend what happened and with his good intentions, he suggested we go out and get "trashed out of our minds." Someone kindly went to the nearest market and bought some beer and vodka, and we commenced getting trashed. The drunker I got, the angrier I got, until I was yelling and cursing about all the people who were getting in the way of my happiness: my professors, the people who had interviewed me for the "stupid job." Why were people trying so hard to make me unhappy? I drank and drank, and was coaxed by others, "Forget about it. Just drink it away."
I did. I got angry at the world and drank the emotions away until I was numb. With the pain gone, I had a sort of feeling of invincibility and thought, "Forget it. If I can have this invincibility, I don't really need anything else. Forget grades, forget school, forget about anything sad or unhappy."
Sometime in the night, I must've fallen asleep. I woke up the next day with the 1:00 sun burning my face. For the first second or so, I just felt numb, like I was still sleeping. Then the fog lifted and it hit me all at once ... the job rejection, the bad paper, the classes I had just slept through, the dirty carpet pressed against my face, the sunburn on my cheek. It was too much, and I ran to the bathroom and was sick for what felt like forever. I sat there, leaning my face against the toilet, my body exhausted. I was too tired to cry but too tired to call someone to help me. So I sat all alone in the bathroom, silently enduring the wave after wave of anger, hurt, rejection, disappointment, and nausea.
I guess I hit the lowest point I've hit in a while inside that bathroom. But after hitting the bottom, I felt very silly. I managed to see the big picture of how in the big scheme of things, one interview and one bad paper was not going to ruin my life. I realized I overreacted to things that wouldn't seem like such a big deal in probably less than a year. I would have probably gotten over the disappointment and rejection eventually, but I made the problems worse by trying to cheat my way out of pain with alcohol. Instead, the pain came back to me all at once, bigger and louder, to a point where I thought I wouldn't be able to handle it.
I don't think I'll be drinking my problems again anytime soon. The next time there is pain and hurt and rejection, I'll have to find another alternative to numbing my mind and delaying it.
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February 7, 2007
Kate Frankola
They Say Men are like Fine Wine - Maybe that's Not Too Far from the Truth
Twice a week, I drag myself out of bed at 5:30 am, walk the two blocks to our on-campus recreation facility in a zombie-like daze, and proceed to sit perched above a pool for the next few hours, eyes loyally following the slow, monotonous laps swum by the early risers. I am the youngest person in the room by a good 30 years. I down a few caffeinated beverages to assure that I remain conscious and therefore on the payroll and, with my brain awake but my body committed to its sedentary position, there really isn't anything for me to do for the next few hours but think. I have my best ideas between 5:45 and 8:30 am on Monday and Wednesday mornings.
This past week, my thoughts couldn't help but turn to the guy with whom I'd been fooling around during the last six or so weeks of fall semester. He'd left me before winter break with a very convincing "I really do like you, Kate," complete with a goodbye kiss, but we'd gone the entire month between semesters without speaking and had hardly uttered more than a few words to each other since we'd been back. I'm not one to get attached to guys that I'm just seeing casually, but this one was different, and I spent that morning trying to put my finger on the reason.
Tyler had made me feel very attractive and generally good about myself toward the beginning of our fling. He was great company for a sports game, and he was a fun addition to any party. But he and the fun I associated with him were almost addicting, and the more time I sacrificed to spend with him, the more control I felt myself losing over the situation. He'd also tempt me to engage in behaviors that I knew were unproductive: sleeping until noon, or lying around and watching TV when there was homework to be done. Being around him for too long made me feel lazy and gross, but being away from him for too long left me feeling lonely, bored, and rejected, like I was missing the party. It slowly dawned on me that he kind of reminded me of ... beer.
This was an interesting realization - that a guy could so closely resemble a drink. I thought about my last boyfriend, the one from Carnegie Mellon. We'd dated for over a year. He was smart, stable, and mild-mannered, and our relationship was very healthy. I'd broken up with him because I'd gotten a little bored, but I will always think of him as one of my best friends and a generally great guy. Maybe he was a little bland for my tastes, but he was dependable, constant, and wholesome - kind of like water.
Then I realized that I'd immediately associated a non-alcoholic drink with a great guy who'd made me undeniably happy while, conversely, the first drink that had come to mind for a guy who hadn't been so healthy for me was an alcoholic one. Unfortunately, my own experiences made for a very insufficient sample size. To properly continue the experiment, I'd have to survey some friends.
I first asked my best friend, Lindsey, to think of the first drink - alcoholic or otherwise - that she associated with the guy with whom she'd been drunkenly hooking up toward the end of last semester, a source of continual morning-after regret in her life. As if on cue, she quipped, "A shot of Captain Morgan: he comes on too strong, he's definitely an acquired taste, I never really appreciate him ... but at least it's always over quickly." I then asked her about her boyfriend from high school, of whom I knew she thought very favorably. Her answer was even better: "Chai tea. He's more complex than you'd realize, very flavorful, universally liked, and overall very warm and comforting."
My suitemate, Catherine, was next. She's been dating her boyfriend since September and recently realized that she's falling for him. "Hot chocolate," she responded after some thought. "He's warm, comforting, tasty, and great to snuggle up with." My suitemate, Katy, whose affinity for her long-term boyfriend is undeniable, answered, "Prune juice. He's kind of old mentally, infused with lots of healthy things, and ... what can I say, he keeps me regular."
Next was Rachel, my roommate, whose constant boyfriend drama is mildly entertaining at best and a tremendous distraction for our entire suite at worst. She defined her on-again-off-again guy as "a Cosmopolitan. He's high-maintenance, more trouble than he's worth, and too much of him makes me really sick." When asked about the guy who'd attempted to date-rape her last semester, she cringed and immediately answered, "Oh God, tequila. Even at his best, he always made me feel like puking."
I asked several more of my friends the same question and, without fail, everyone sampled associated guys with whom they'd had healthy relationships with nonalcoholic drinks and their not-so-good guys with alcoholic ones. Honestly, these results surprised me. Even though I know that my peers have seen, heard about, and experienced firsthand many of alcohol's harmful consequences, I didn't expect all of my sampled female friends to have internalized such a negative conception of alcohol to the extent that they would automatically associate it with other unhealthy or regrettable components of their lives.
Then again, though, these same friends of mine who clearly understand the negative effects of alcohol, perhaps even now on a subconscious level, are the friends with whom I've spent many a weekend night at parties or bars, drinking. We reconvene in the bathroom of our suite the following morning and complain about our hangovers and the stupid things (including, but not limited to, guys) we did the night before ... and the talk never fails to turn to our probable drinking plans for the rest of the weekend.
Perhaps educators and college students alike should be relieved that, at least to an extent, the problem is not limited to alcohol. Yes, college students often use alcohol as a vehicle to self-destruction ... but if it weren't available, we'd likely turn to another medium. Like men. My friends may have automatically associated all of their unhealthy relationships with unhealthy alcoholic drinks but, for the most part, they've been equally unable to stop their addictions to both vices.
I stopped drinking beer a long time ago, and doing so was barely a sacrifice. But if Tyler called me this instant and asked me to come over, I doubt I'd be able to resist. And I definitely wouldn't feel so great about it or myself the next morning.
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