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Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard

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by Thomas Vander Ven


  Much can be learned from my research. This unique data set contains rich details, for example, on how college drinkers consume alcohol. The strategies they employ include “pregaming” rituals (i.e., the preliminary drinking that occurs before students go out on the town), the drinking games that students play (e.g., beer pong, flip cup), and the strategies that they use to avoid getting “too” drunk or the methods they use to get “really hammered.” Furthermore, the drinking stories lend insights into why university students so aggressively chase intoxication. While the alcohol-expectancies literature tells us what drinkers expect to feel when drunk, the drinking stories describe their drinking motives in vivid detail (e.g., “it was a Thursday and we always drink on Thursday,” “my girlfriend broke up with me,” “getting wasted is an adventure where anything can happen”). In addition, the stories and interviews contain a phenomenological component. That is, students described what it felt like to be drunk and how they were transformed once intoxicated (e.g., “I was less shy,” “I was a social animal,” “I was a mean, reckless drunk”). The stories help to illuminate the manner in which alcohol intoxication shapes and contorts the self and social relations. And if the drinker had “fun” when he or she got intoxicated with friends, they tell us why it was fun. Remember that Jack Katz—the author of Seductions of Crime—complained that researchers have paid far too little attention to the pleasurable aspects of deviance. Thus, the current study pays close attention to understanding the ways in which college drinkers experience fun and adventure, as described in their own terms, during their drinking episodes.

  Finally, the research lends insight into the patterns through which college drinkers work together to define and manage drunkenness and its consequences. If a drinking episode “got ugly,” for example, the students discuss the evolution of events that marred a well-intentioned party and the manner in which they dealt with problems when things went awry. What do drinkers do, for example, when a cohort gets arrested, becomes sick, gets into a fight, or breaks up with a partner? Past research on the consequences of drinking treat “trouble” as an individual experience. Wechsler’s findings tell us, for example, about the variety of negative outcomes that spring from drinking and how drunks affect the quality of life of other students, but do not shed light on how codrinkers work together to manage the ill effects of drunkenness. This is not a realistic approach to drinking-related outcomes. As any sociologist would predict, the bad things that happen when students get drunk together are also dealt with collectively. Howard Becker showed us that marijuana intoxication and its negative effects are processed through a social filter. The current data suggest that a similar process goes into effect when students drink together.

  This study is unique because it allows the College Drinker to tell the story. According to college drinkers, getting wasted is more complicated than past researchers have suggested. Shit Shows, drunken blackouts, crisis-filled drinking episodes, and the routine collective “buzz” are curious events in that a powerful liquid has transformed social interaction into a constellation of unpredictable outcomes—some positive, some negative. This book is a scholarly attempt to capture the social dynamics of the college drinking scene—a world of new possibilities where anything can happen—so that we may see and understand college drinking in a new and productive way.

  2 GETTING WASTED

  The Intoxication Process

  I drank a 12 pack of Bud light by myself.… I had been drinking for a long time, so it was a mild to a strong buzz. I wasn’t wasted or anything, it was a perfect level for enjoyment.… I don’t know how to explain a buzz… but it makes me even more outlandish and crazy, and you’re really not afraid to do things like jump off houses into pools or whatever.

  (William, nineteen-year-old male)

  Go find a drunk and give him a breathalyzer test. The test results will reveal some number representing his blood alcohol concentration. And that figure will help you to determine whether or not he should operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery—but does that single measure really capture his intoxication? How did he get that way? What did he drink? Who was he with and where is he going now that you’ve finished experimenting on him? We can apprehend a person’s level of intoxication by using scientific methods to place drunkenness at a fixed point, but intoxication is much more than a blood condition. Drunkenness is a process, an arc, an evolution of events starting when one contemplates drinking, continuing down a crooked path of consumption stops and starts, and ending some hours later after the effects of the alcohol are no longer felt. To illustrate the complex circuitry of a night of drinking, consider the following drinking story provided by Tara,1 a twenty-year-old university female:

  Last Thursday night, two of my roommates and I were sitting around eating dinner and began discussing the idea of going out for a little bit. So we decided to get dressed up and go up to a local bar for a “few” drinks. One roommate and I were very persistent in the fact that we had to go home early and could not get too wasted because we had 8 A.M. classes the next morning. With all said and done, we walked up to the bar around 6:30 with my fake ID in my purse. With arrival into the bar, we see all the bartenders that we socialize with so we took a seat at the bar and ordered our first pitcher of domestic beer at $3 a pitcher. And we began talking amongst ourselves and with the bartenders. As the night progressed and more and more pitchers were bought the bartenders decided to treat us to our favorite shot … great! Free shots! So we, my roommates and I, chose sour apple shots which consist of Bacardi 151 and sour apple mix, a very strong shot. Needless to say between 3 people we had already purchased and drank 6 pitchers. So at this point, we are all feeling good and “buzzed” and with our inhibitions down now we decide to buy another shot and order another pitcher… with my conscience saying no because I had to get up so early. I still decided to do it, you only live once right? So we decided to take another shot of sour apple… the night became a blur at this point. But I kept drinking approx 6 to 7 beers and 2 shots of 151 and at this point I’m feeling a little “out of it.” It was about 10 pm at this point and I was keeping my cool but still drinking beer. I was engaged in a conversation with my roommate and I turned around to see my other drunk roommate flashing her bare chest to the bartender in order to receive a free t-shirt. WOW! That takes confidence or wait, was it just that she was drunk and her inhibitions were down? So after the bartenders got a show they decided to buy us all another shot… so we take it, you can’t give up a free shot, right? And at this point I realized I had too much. I walked into the nasty unclean bathroom of the bar and threw up into the toilet! So I felt better, I had gotten all of it, that was too much, out of my system. So I walk out of the bathroom, finish my beer I was drinking, glance at the clock to see if it is 11 P.M. and beg my roommates to go home with me. So we leave the bar, after finishing our final beers and stumble home. Well, I don’t remember walking home, nor do I remember going to bed. But I do remember the horrible headache I felt when that alarm went off at 7:20 A.M. In fact, it is still possible that I was still drunk. But I got up, brushed my teeth to get that horrible taste out of my mouth and realized that I had to go back to bed. I couldn’t make it to class… now I was upset with myself. I had let myself down. Why couldn’t I have had more control of myself to determine when to stop?

  Tara had such good intentions. What went wrong? For one thing, her account demonstrates what I would call the “dynamic interactionism” that drives the intoxication process. To help the reader to “see” intoxication as a process, I will briefly discuss symbolic interactionism and explain how this perspective would frame Tara’s drinking story. Symbolic interactionism is a broad sociological perspective that sees society as an accomplished, negotiated system of symbols, definitions, language, and rituals. Society, then, is not a big, monolithic thing that we can point at like the Washington Monument, the Grand Canyon, or Lollapalooza. Society is a process; it’s what we do every day when we interact with one another.


  According to sociologist Joel Charon,2 there are five central ideas that make up the core of symbolic interactionism: (1) Human beings are social and interaction between people produces behavior. (2) The human being must be seen as a thinking being. Symbolic interactionists are interested not only in interaction between people but also in the interaction that occurs within individuals in the form of thinking. (3) Humans cannot objectively and directly measure their environment. Instead, humans work together to define the situation that they are in. (4) Human behavior emerges in context; it is not predetermined or scripted. People work together to create social reality. (5) Human beings are active agents; they are actively engaged with their environments. In other words, people are not simply imprisoned by the rules and structures of the social settings they inhabit. They work together with other actors to create their own social realities.

  With the symbolic interactionist perspective as a lens through which to see college drinking practices, let’s return to Tara’s story and to the rest of the data to discuss the process of “getting wasted,” starting with the decision to drink.

  Deciding to Drink

  Getting drunk is a thoughtful process. Critical decisions must be made in order for the drinking episode to get started. The first of these decisions is to designate the use of alcohol as a principal activity (e.g., “Let’s go out drinking tonight”). And for college students, the decision to drink is made within a unique context dominated by the concern (or lack of concern) for academic obligations. The student’s reference group—his or her college peers, friends, and roommates—provides a perspective with which to guide decisions about whether or not to drink and how much to drink. Tara’s story begins with such a decision: “Last Thursday night, two of my roommates and I were sitting around eating dinner and began discussing the idea of going out for a little bit. So we decided to get dressed up and go up to a local bar for a ‘few’ drinks.” The decision to drink was a collaborative effort. Notice that Tara claims that “we” decided to get dressed up and go to a bar. The decision sounds rather spontaneous and textured, too. In fact, while all three codrinkers agreed to have a “few drinks,” Tara and her 8:00 A.M. classmate/roommate set some specific parameters. They had an early class, so they “were very persistent in the fact that we had to go home early and could not get too wasted.” In the language of symbolic interactionism, their definition of the situation was that this would be a night of light drinking; they would go out for a “few drinks” and come home early so they could rise and attend an early morning class. As we already know, the “wheels came off” Tara’s plan in dramatic fashion (in part because one of her codrinkers and the people she met along the way had a different definition of the situation and in part because Tara’s definition of the situation also changed). Like Tara’s and her friends’ plan, most decisions to drink begin simply and innocently. According to the current data, these reasons can be broken down into a few categories.

  College Is Synonymous with Drinking

  Of course, a college student’s definition of college itself may be heavily loaded with the language of alcohol. For some students, any time is a good time to drink at college. Remember, social beings are thinking actors who construct definitions within their reference groups to plan and execute patterns of action. To some university students, the decision to drink at college is a redundancy. To them, college means drinking:

  Well, I drink every weekend, I am a college student. So I guess I didn’t really have to decide to drink, the decision was made three years ago. (twenty-one-year-old female)

  Since I’m a college student, I decided to drink on Friday. And it was Cinco de Mayo so of course we were gonna’ drink. (nineteen-year-old male)

  I was with my friends and it isn’t really something to decide anymore. Getting drunk is what we do every weekend. I didn’t really think about drinking more like assumed it was what we were doing on Saturday night. (nineteen-year-old female)

  The last time I drank was last Saturday night. I drink every weekend since I’ve been at college, so it wasn’t really a decision, it was just an assumed action. (nineteen-year-old male)

  Similarly, the following quotation from Liz, a twenty-year-old sophomore, demonstrates that some see college itself as the occasion to drink and see most days and events as good candidates for drinking episodes:

  Q: What was the occasion for your drinking?

  A: There is always an occasion; it’s college. Like normally it could be after midterms we all celebrate or after a game or hump day, which is Wednesday, or Thursday or Friday, and always Saturday.… It’s like a social thing, nobody is trying to race and drink, you know, a case of beer or a keg or whatever, it’s just I would say more of a relaxed mode, especially after midterms or after the beginning part of the week is over and the weekend is coming, we tend to drink in the latter part of the week because it’s leading up to the weekend. We drink during a game which, well, I would have to say that most recently was the NBA playoffs, and it was Saturday.…

  “Because It’s Thursday!”

  For most college drinkers, like Liz, commonly reported motivations for deciding to drink are quite unremarkable—usually having something to do with the day of the week.3 Students feel at least some obligation to attend class, to study, to write papers, and to take examinations. One way to avoid the clash between drinking practices and school responsibilities is to classify certain nights of the week as “drinking nights.” According to the current data, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are often defined as drinking nights because the consequences of intoxication (e.g., sleep deprivation, hangovers) will not interfere with attending to course responsibilities on the following day. Thus, as the following quotations suggest, the decision to drink is often calendar driven:

  We decided to drink because it was Thursday and we always drink on Thursday. (nineteen-year-old male)

  My friends and I decided, it’s a Thursday night, why not drink? It’s always that way. (twenty-year-old female)

  Q: Okay, so last Friday, how did you decide to drink alcohol on this particular occasion?

  A: Umm, you just said it. It was Friday. You know, it’s time to party. (eighteen-year-old female)

  Tanya, a deliberate twenty-one-year-old junior, worked together with her roommates to find a common “drinking night” that would be least disruptive of their academic pursuits. In contrast to media images of “drunk and out of control” university students, this group systematically built drinking into their schedule:

  Monday night my roommates and I decided that Tuesday nights are our drinking nights during the week, not Thursdays like most people. All 4 of us have classes later in the day on Wednesdays than any other day. So Tuesday rolled around, I took a nap, woke up around 8 or 9 P.M., showered and then went downstairs to find my roomies already drinking. I sat down, played some drinking card games, then our neighbor came over and we went to the bar.

  The term “drinking responsibly” is generally used to refer to moderate drinking that does not escalate into full-blown drunkenness. But responsible drinking could just as easily describe the act of planning one’s drinking around school and work obligations. Like Tanya, this twenty-year-old male appears to act responsibly by organizing his drinking around class and work assignments: “I actually plan my serious drinking around times when I don’t have class or work the next morning, which is very rarely.” Letting the calendar organize your drinking habits is a pretty efficient way to decide to drink. At some point in the week, it’s simply time to drink. And since some days are reserved for sports spectatorship, gameday is another typical drinking occasion.

  It’s Gameday

  The importance of sports on our nation’s campuses has intensified in recent decades. According to sports administration scholar John Gerdy, college sports represent “big business”:

  [F]rom a commercial standpoint, professional college athletics is booming. Basketball and football games can be seen on television virtually every nig
ht of the week. CBS paid the NCAA more than $6 billion for the rights to telecast the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for 11 years.… Corporations pay millions of dollars for sponsorship rights for events and for skyboxes in stadiums. There is now a 24-hour college sports cable network. Colleges also rake in millions from the sale of sports apparel and related merchandise. Corporate logos are plastered on fields, courts, equipment, and uniforms, and coaches are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to hawk their products.4

 

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