Student Voices on Alcohol: April 2008

April Postings

James M. Dean, April 28, 2008 Owen O‘Brien, April 21, 2008 Lindsay Cole, April 15, 2008 Allison Brummet, April 7, 2008

James M. Dean
April 28, 2008

Graduation Haze
As the second semester of my sophomore year comes to a close, I realize that I have just completed half of my undergraduate career. Though only four years are spent in this wonderful stage of life teetering on the edge of the working world, I feel the need to the absorb every little moment of this experience as it presents itself. I watched some of my older friends graduate yesterday and become the first alumni that I can actually call and hang out with on a regular basis. As always, any graduation gives us areason to celebrate – and a college graduation usually appears at the top of the list. Of course, for my newly anointed alumni friends, the celebrations with family and food during the day gradually morphed into celebrations with friends and drinking at night.

I sat on the porch of my fraternity with some brothers,relaxing, as it was my official “first day of summer” – exams had ended earlier in the week. The commencement was coming up on Saturday, and many of my friends had family arriving before the weekend. I had already been invited to a party on Saturday night, and it seemed most of my soon-to-be alumni friends would be in attendance, too. I could hardly contain the excitement, and the conversation amongst my brothers also turned toward the subject. The seniors talked about how the ceremony would be too long, and laughed at the idea that drinking the entire day would be a much better choice. I beg to differ.

The weekend arrived, and Saturday came and went much too fast for anyone’s liking. I walked with one of my friends to the party, and opened the door to find just ten or twelve people scattered about the living room. They were enjoying food left over from parties earlier in the day – most of them enjoying it not for the flavor, but for its purposes of satisfying a drunken hunger. The majority of them had graduated, and spent the better half of the night at the bar. I would usually feel uncomfortable walking into a house party with such a small amount of guests, but luckily almost all of them were friends – close ones at that. I couldn’t help but notice one of them talking on the phone. He was pushing it against his ear with his entire hand, and I could see from his food-splattered face that he was nowhere near sober. I have never before heard someone slur entire sentences, but he managed to spurt out an entire paragraph without one cohesive phrase. And this is his graduation day.

The others sat giggling at his drunken performance while I took him to the bathroom after his last bite of pizza. I couldn’t stand seeing him there in the chair, looking like a complete idiot trying to talk on the phone, eat food, and fall asleep at the same time. I brought him to the toilet where he hung his head for about ten minutes. He’s twenty-four years old, and here I am waiting for a grown man to puke his guts out in the bathroom. He was what some college students may call a “SuperSenior” – remaining an undergraduate for an extra year. Age irrelevant, I think he should know his limits. I still can’t believe this is how he chose to end his graduation day. We came out of the bathroom – most of his body weight on my left shoulder – and the friend I had arrived with agreed to drive him back to his apartment. What an end to a day of recognition and accomplishment, what an end.

I would like to congratulate the Classes of 2008 and wish them luck far into the future. I hope that piece of paper labeled “Diploma” only leads you further down the path of positive decision-making, and serves as a tangible reminder that you are an intelligent human being capable of realizing limits that are meant to be seen, and exceeding boundaries that stand in the way of success.

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Owen O‘Brien
April 21, 2008

Who are you?
I should have seen it coming. The tension between my sober existence and my roommates’ vodka-powered social life had been brewing for months. Last Thursday, this unspoken conflict finally exploded into an all-out philosophical war: does drinking bring a person closer to who she is or does it take her further away from her true self?

It all began when my friend Stephen called me. He confessed that he had a severe substance abuse problem involving a dependence on a number of drugs–the worst addiction being alcohol. After four years of struggling with his worsening alcoholism, he was finally going to check into rehab. The bittersweet news, his melancholy voice hit me hard. I hadn’t wanted to spend my Thursday night in a sea of over-consumption in the first place, but after talking to my suffering friend for an hour, I really did not feel like watching a bunch of people black out.

Minutes after Stephen and I had ended our conversation, the tension erupted. My roommates came home from dinner expecting to see me dressed in downtown attire but instead I was cuddled up in my pajamas.

“Why aren’t you going out?!” Cynthia exclaimed when she and Rita walked into my room and saw my slippers poking out from under my blanket

“I really don’t feel like it,” I replied with a guilty smile. Although I didn’t think I should be required to go out by any means, I still felt badly for letting my friends down.

“Well you can come out with us and not drink Owen…” Rita said.

“I know. But I just don’t want to be around alcohol right now. Stephen just called me completely depressed and told me he’s checking into rehab. He says he has hit rock-bottom.”

“Well Owen, I know. But that has nothing to do with you. He has a serious problem, but that doesn’t mean that you should be antisocial and hide out alone in your room instead of hanging out with your friends.” Cynthia was becoming angrier and angrier as the discussion escalated. Following her lead, I, too, began to let my emotions get the best of me.

“But it actually does have something to do with me! Finding out my close friend is so miserable upsets me really badly! Besides, just because I’m not going to a bar doesn’t mean I can’t socialize. I have more fun when I go swimming or have random dance parties…you know, sober fun.” I took a deep breath and continued.

“Yes, I do go to parties or 18-and-over bars on occasion, but the only reason I ever endure the binge-drinking scene is because I want to spend time with you guys. But I can’t make myself tonight…I’m sorry.”

I could plainly see that Cynthia’s patience with me had run out. Throwing caution to the wind, she revealed the true source of the animosity that had been plaguing our apartment. “Well why DON’T you like drinking or being around drunk people anyway?”

I should have recognized this question as a trap instantly. Any answer I gave would automatically insult their lifestyle. Regardless of how I felt about drinking, criticizing my friends–even implicitly–was the last thing I wanted to do.  But without thinking, I answered. I felt like I had to explain myself; maybe if they understood, my choice to stay in wouldn’t upset them.

“Well I think drinking makes everyone less and less like themselves the drunker they get. It upsets me to see a close friend become someone else.”

I had done it. By inadvertently putting down their way-of-life, I had declared a full-on culture war.

“That’s not true!” Rita exclaimed furiously. “If anything, drinking makes you more like yourself. I mean, you’re so much more likely to say what you think when you’re drunk and to do what you really want to do.”

At first glance, Rita’s logic was compelling: if alcohol lowers your imprisoning inhibitions, then the true you shines through more easily…right? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this theory neglects a huge part of human nature.

Alcohol does indeed allow people to express their impulses more easily, but these basic desires are only part of who we are. These urges make up the animalistic, hedonistic side of human nature: mating, eating, fighting, etc. But human nature has another side–the side with inhibitions, the side that sets us apart from other animals.

Alcohol facilitates the expression of our animalistic urges at the expense of our inhibitions. Yes, our basic desires are a part of who we are, but so is our self-control! People are not only defined by what they decide to do; they are largely–if not more so–defined by what they choose not to do. I can appreciate the nerve of someone who goes skydiving but I truly admire someone who has enough self-restraint to refrain from talking badly about someone behind his or her back. That takes true courage.

If alcohol really made people more like themselves, then having promiscuous, unprotected sex, crying for no reason, yelling at friends more easily, blatantly lying, getting into fist fights over nothing is the true identity of many people I know. I don’t buy it. I like my friends and family members better with their inhibitions.  I feel proud when my roommates choose not to skip class, when a friend holds herself back from saying something hurtful to a loved one, when Rita tells a selfish, mean boy, “No I will not go home with you because you don’t deserve me.” The sober versions of my roommates and friends–all their inhibitions included–are who they are to me.

I admittedly don’t understand why some people like believing otherwise. Why would anyone want to depend on a liquid to be his or her true self?         

My roommates and I eventually put the fight to bed before a clear winner emerged. We swallowed our anger and silently resolved to forevermore pretend like the discussion had never happened.

Lacking proper closure, the question, the tension still lingers in our apartment, making itself especially apparent as weekends approach. As I once again contemplate the unsolved debate–which theory is right, is it different for each person, does it really matter at all anyway–I am reminded of the way Stephen and I ended our conversation last Thursday.

“You know that summer we all spent together back in 2004, Owen? Swimming in the creek during the day, making sleeping-bag palettes and watching movies at night? That was before I started drinking or doing any of this. That was the last time I truly was happy. That was the last time I’ve felt like myself.”

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The first time I heard anyone publicly declare that she was an alcoholic, my immediate reaction was one of shock and disapproval. There's such a stigma placed on alcoholism. It is often called a disease, which makes it sound like an evil contagion, but it is also often viewed as the vice of the weak willed. When someone that is only twenty-two years old says she's an alcoholic, she becomes a "bad girl," with a disease and a weak will.

I had recently been bumped up from a hostess to waitress position at the seafood restaurant where I worked, and she was the hostess who was hired to replace me. Previous to her declaration, we had connected on various superficial levels, being about the same age and from the same area, and having in common our experiences being newbies in the serving world, which, if you've ever joined, you'll understand the need to attach to the other newbies because of the discriminating caste system imposed by the experienced serving/bartending clique.

Towards the end of a shift that I won't soon forget, this girl and I were "rolling," or folding silverware into cloth napkins–what servers do when they don't have tables or are waiting to be cut from their shifts. She began a conversation that I wasn't prepared to engage in, but felt myself obligated to respond to in the most compassionate way I knew how, which at the time was to listen and nod.

She described a difficult upbringing; she'd had an alcoholic, emotionally unstable father, and a mother and sister that were diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety disorders, though she had never sought professional help for her own anxiety and depressive tendencies. She explained that her father had impressed upon her from a young age that she had more potential for success than her sister, and that she had taken this message to heart. Thus, while she admitted to suffering from severe anxiety that she said made her want to drink, she was afraid to get help because she didn't want to disappoint her father. On top of all this, she was a college student working to pay off a hefty student loan.

The combination of stress, anxiety and genetic predisposition wasn't enough to justify her drinking problem to an ignorant society, so her feelings of guilt and shame prevented her from admitting her problem to anyone other than herself and, apparently, me. At the time, I was so ignorant about alcoholism that her announcement scared me, as if I was somehow going to catch her disease just by associating with her. After hearing her story, though, I realized that she wasn't a disease; she was hurting and had no one to turn to. I wasn't much help to her that day (what did I know) except perhaps as a good listener.

It's only been more recently that I've realized how brave this girl was to admit her problem to me. I've since learned that most alcoholics twice her age never admit their problem to themselves, let alone reach out for help. If I could go back, I would play an active role in helping this girl to get help. I could have offered to go to an AA meeting with her or encouraged her to see a school counselor. Even something as simple as inviting her to see a movie after work instead of cashing out and saying goodbye, knowing that she was heading to a bar up the street, could have helped. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Since then, I've only known one other person that admitted to me that he was an alcoholic. Fortunately for him, his father found him blacked out in his room one night and put two and two together. He ended up in two stints in rehab, went straight to a halfway house, and has been sober ever since. I don't know if he would have admitted to his problem if he hadn't been found out, but he's completely rehabilitated now and is one of the happier people I know. I hope the girl from work is in the same place now.

Having known both of these brave young people really changed my perception of alcoholism. Often as I'm rushing past seas of people on campus, I can't help but wonder how many struggling alcoholics I'm among. I wonder how many of them would love to tell somebody and start the healing process, but they are too ashamed to say anything.

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This month has gone by so quickly. Mother Nature transformed the weather into a roller coaster of rainy mornings followed by sunny afternoons and cold nights. My classes have been going very well, and I've made Dean's List once again (yay for me!). And yet, with all of this change and accomplishment, I still miss home.

I have two months left here before I graduate with my associate's degree. I often catch myself daydreaming about home: seeing my friends for the first time since Christmas, going on adventures, working at my old job, taking my younger sister on a girls' day out. It's just as hard this year living away from home as it was last year.

I want spring to be here so badly. I'm tired of having to stay inside all of the time. I want to feel the warm sun on my face and the cool breeze on my back. I want to wear shorts again. I hate the cold. I'm becoming restless and easily bored, a sign that cabin fever has finally caught up to me.

My family came to visit me during my Easter break, only four days long. We had a blast. We ate out a lot and went antique shopping. We saw The Lion King on Broadway, our first Broadway musical. I think my family had a good time. I was so pleased to see them. They came and went so quickly.

I've been thinking about the different seasons of the year and drinking alcohol. Will people drink less because they can do activities outside? Or will they just drink and then proceed to outdoor activities? All I know is I can't wait to find a shady spot under a tall tree to read, write, or listen to music. I don't need alcohol to have a good time, especially when the weather is absolutely gorgeous. How can people enjoy the view if they're seeing double?

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