They also bickered about rules and philosophized about the ethics of trying to sink a ball into a cup held by one of your opponents (throwing it into a cup actually held by your opponent is a game-winning move). One player called this strategy “sleazy.” The major point of this game appeared to be teasing each other and laughing at each other and telling war stories. Despite the ribbing, this group is clearly a unit and the game provided a structured context for their friendship. The drinking part seemed to be just a formality. (Field note, June 2009)
As demonstrated in the field note, this particular game of Beer Pong was a competitive mechanism for friends to challenge one another, to make fun of one another, and to build on an already-existing solidarity. It is no surprise, then, that Beer Pong was the most frequently referenced drinking game in the current data. Beer Pong, like other drinking games, is not just a pregame activity; it’s often the main event. It may serve as the entire context for a party and sometimes students mobilize for a tournament. This method of consumption adds the additional components of teamwork and competitive alliances to the drinking equation. In fact, this Beer Pong tandem finished a successful tournament by sharing a bed together:
Me and my housemates decided to throw a beer pong tournament.… Me and a female friend of mine went 6 and 1 on the table, we were pretty drunk after it and were having a good time. It was fun because everyone in the house was trying to dethrone us. So we finally got beat and then started to socialize with our friends. We stopped drinking at about 3:30 A.M. and after everyone left me and my teammate climbed into bed together and went to sleep. (twenty-year-old male)
It should be noted that recent scholarship shows that drinking games are not as harmless as the above accounts seem to suggest. In fact, on average, those who play games involving alcohol consumption increase their risk of becoming ill, missing class, getting into a fight, and being sexually assaulted.19 This should come as no surprise, since many drinking-game participants are indeed using competitive drinking to springboard their intoxication. Sometimes drinking to excess can be fashioned into a simple and elegant competition. Tasha, a twenty-one-year-old female, and her friend challenged one another to a test of drinking tolerance. In this case, neither competitor was victorious:
Q: How did you decide to drink on that occasion?
A: [Laughs.] Me and my friend had a competition.… Who could last the longest.
Q: Oh, okay, so who could last the longest? So what were you drinking?
A: Umm, a lot of stuff. Like Hennessy, Captain Morgan, umm, Smirnoff, like different flavors.
Q: So you were mixing a lot of stuff?
A: Like a lot of it was just shots and then we had a couple of mixed drinks.
Q: So you were going head-to-head, shot for shot, to see who could last the longest?
A: Yes.
Q: So this whole idea of the competition, where did it come from?
A: I don’t know, like he was saying that nobody could outlast him and stuff like that and I’ve actually outlasted one of his friends and his friend is a really light drinker and he’s a male… and so he’s like “Fine, I’m making you do a competition with me” and I’m like “I don’t want to” and he said, “Yeah, you are” so I like did it with him… so it was five other people; his friends and my sibling were there.… Like within one hour we downed two bottles already… and I guess I was passed out on the couch. I wasn’t passed out, I was lying down but everyone says that I was talking still… and then my friend took me up to his room and I just started puking everywhere… and the guy that was drinking with me, they had to care for him too because he passed out too.…
Q: … Sounds like you both lost?
A: [Laughs.] Yeah.
Another popular method of jumpstarting one’s buzz is the use of the “beer bong.” Generally speaking, a beer bong consists of a funnel with a length of tubing attached to the end and is used to accelerate the ingestion of large quantities of beer. The beer bong received national attention when presidential candidate John F. Kerry was offered a “funnel” at an Iowa State University tailgate party. Kerry politely refused the offer, but the inevitable photograph made the front page of major newspapers, introducing the beer bong to a national audience. Beer bongs are widely available at novelty stores and on the internet, but some college students take pride in constructing their own beer flow mechanisms. On some college campuses, possession of a beer bong can carry fines or other official sanctions. As university officials know, the beer bong is not for the casual drinker. Make no mistake about it—this method of consumption is designed to get the bong technician intoxicated in a hurry. Ray, a nineteen-year-old male, describes how he used a beer bong to reach his desired state of delirium: “When we arrived back home, my best friend and I decided we wanted to get ‘lit up’ before we threw our first party, so we each bonged six beers right after each other.”
Drinking games and beer bongs are vehicles to intoxication. Few (if any) drinkers engage in these activities in order to “just get a little tipsy.” And the popularity of these games—and the media attention they receive—suggests that most college drinkers frequently use these methods and others to seek extreme inebriation. This, however, is an oversimplification of the intoxication process. According to my data, many college drinkers do not generally intend to drink themselves into oblivion. While some respondents reported that their aim was, in fact, to get wasted, others claimed to be seeking a more subtle derangement of the senses. Moreover, my data demonstrate that the intoxication process can be a thoughtful one in that actors evaluate their level of intoxication throughout the drinking episode and attempt (though not always successfully) to make different kinds of adaptations to avoid intense drunkenness and drinking-related sickness.
Intoxication Management
You have decided to go out drinking with your roommates. It’s Friday, so no worries about class tomorrow. You are going to pregame in your apartment and then head out to the bars. How wasted do you intend to get? Remember Tara? She wanted to take it slow but ended up getting so drunk that “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.” Thus, you can plan for a night of responsible drinking, but there are no guarantees that it will turn out that way. You may not, for example, be able to count on your friends to help you stay true to your liquid itinerary. You may want to get a little “glow” on, but your friends want you crawling on your hands and knees before the night is over. Buzzes, Shit Shows, blackouts, and garden-variety drunkenness evolve over the course of a drinking episode. And drinkers are active participants in that evolution of events. A conscious and strategic decision about how intoxicated one wishes to become is often made early during the drinking episode: “I took it easy on Friday night because we knew we wanted to get really hammered on Saturday” (twenty-two-year-old male). And some drinkers claim to be seeking a mild level of intoxication and never plan to get wasted: “Personally I never have intentions of getting ‘wasted’: I’d rather just drink to the point where I know I need to stop before getting really drunk” (twenty-year-old female).
Thus, some drinkers are disciplined and approach the intoxication process as an exercise in self-control. Respondents described a variety of ways to avoid extreme, unwanted drunkenness. One strategy involved using food to soak up the oncoming onslaught of alcohol:
We relaxed, chatted, told stories and drank enough to be in control but were drunk. We made sure that our friends that came had eaten food so that no one would get sick on an empty stomach. (twenty-four-year-old male)
We totally took our time. We drank leisurely. We are really good about eating pretzels and taking our time with drinking so no one gets drunk too fast. (nineteen-year-old female)
Approximately 200+ people were attending [this party] and nearly 180 were consuming alcohol in some form. Before engaging in this atmosphere, I loaded my digestive system with a meal from Bojangle’s. (twenty-one-
year-old male)
Another popular and rather simple way to control the severity of an alcohol high is to monitor your intoxication during the consumption process and stop before you are plastered. In short, college drinkers often give themselves a buzz check. A buzz check is defined here as a reflective moment in the life of a drinking episode when the drinker asks him- or herself, “How drunk am I? Should I continue to drink or have I had enough?” While the ability to manage intoxication is surely diminished the more intoxicated one gets, the current data show that some college drinkers continually engage in a conversation with themselves about how drunk they are and whether or not they should go on. The following accounts illustrate this self-conscious process:
As soon as we got there we started bonging beers. I probably had 2 dacquiris and 2 shots in my room. And after being at the party for an hour I had finished 3 beers and bonged one. My guy friend was playing flipcup and he had bonged 4 beers plus the rum from earlier. He was really drunk and could hardly walk. It was only 12 am and I was pretty drunk and I knew if I stayed at the party any longer we would have been too drunk to walk home. I ended up walking back with him which was not any fun because he kept falling over and yelling. (nineteen-year-old female)
The house party consisted of probably 15-20 individuals. All were drinking beer and some were consuming shots of vodka. I just stuck to beer and had one more “Jager drop” at the house. That was enough for me with the shots as I had reached my “warm-fuzzy” point which I feel there is no point going after because that just leads to the bathroom. (twenty-two-year-old male)
I got drunk enough to not remember the ride over to the dance and then stopped drinking so that I got to the point of almost sobering up by the end of the dance. And then I just drank enough at the frat to get a good buzz again. (nineteen-year-old female)
Knowing one’s limits is an important skill because pushing those boundaries can have negative consequences. The story below showcases a young woman who knew that drinking more than four beers would prime her to make a decision that she would probably regret:
My friend wouldn’t buy me another beer so I walked up to this guy holding two beers and I started to dance with him. In the process, I grabbed one of his Miller Lites, took a sip, and just walked off with it. Then I ran into the hottest cowboy ever and danced with him for the rest of the night. He ended up asking me to go home with him and if I had more than 4 beers in me, then my answer might have been, “Ha! Alright.” But I didn’t… so I went home with my friends. (nineteen-year-old female)
The same sort of intoxication awareness is sometimes used by drinkers to determine that they have not had enough to drink. This twenty-year-old male gives himself a silent, internal sobriety check and decides that more drinking is required: “By the time we reached the next party, I wasn’t feeling the three beers from earlier anymore so I had to have more beers at the next party” (twenty-year-old male). At times, a buzz check can be a group project. Codrinkers, for example, may make a collective assessment of their group’s intoxication and decide that they have not hit it hard enough. The following story describes a pair of partiers who decided together that they were not trying hard enough and needed to drink more aggressively to reach their desired alcoholic haze:
I went to BP and bought a bottle of wine. A friend of mine and I drank it at our house while we watched “Phone Booth” and “The Real Cancun.” After the wine was gone, we decided that we weren’t drunk enough so we started drinking beer that had been sitting in our fridge from previous weekends. We didn’t play any drinking games, but I have to admit I drank the wine quickly to ensure that I got my fair share of it. (twenty-one-year-old female)
Similarly, this account describes a drinking group’s consensus belief that they were running out of time and, thus, had to “step it up”: “At first we just sat around and talked and drank, but as we realized it was getting later and later we had to start drinking faster. So we decided to play some drinking games with cards” (twenty-one-year-old female).
Finally, codrinkers and other nondrinking members of the audience may offer drinkers an external buzz check in order to help them see what kind of shape they are in. This supportive gesture may serve to encourage the drinker to monitor and/or alter his or her alcohol intake. In the following story, two nondrinkers critique the behavior of students at a dorm party and “check in” on their drunken friend’s stability:
I had 6 or 7 shots in a matter of an hour or two. There were two sober girls in the hall who told us when we were getting too loud to quiet down.… My initial feeling after taking the shots was happiness and carefree. The girls kept asking me how I felt and I would smile. (eighteen-year-old female)
Intoxication management may be a skill set that is learned and passed on to novice or inexperienced drinkers. For example, knowing how to take protective preemptive measures (e.g., eating before drinking), and having the inclination to buzz check yourself throughout the consumption process may be learned behaviors. Just as Howard Becker’s research subjects learned to recognize and appreciate the effects of marijuana, college drinkers may experience similar drinking tutorials. While getting wasted can be a dangerous activity, alcohol consumption does not have to be. The following drinkers claim that responsible drinking can be learned:
I think that drinking is part of growing up and people learn how to drink and not be stupid. (eighteen-year-old female)
When we left the dance we went to an after party which was okay but people were starting to get really wasted and I don’t like to see my friends making mistakes so my date and I went home and slept it off.… I am not a really crazy drinker.… I enjoy drinking but that’s because I have learned how to drink. There are plenty of experiences that were really crappy. It’s like learning to walk in a way. (twenty-year-old female)
Learning to control oneself and to drink “responsibly,” however, is no easy task for college drinkers. To illustrate, let’s return to Tara’s story once more. She ends her story with a question: “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?” The answer to Tara’s seemingly heartfelt question can be found throughout her story. Why could she not control herself? She could not stop, in part, because she was enjoying herself. Though “getting wasted” presents a variety of problems to college drinkers, the temporary euphoria, social bonding, lowered inhibitions, and “liquid courage” of being wasted may seem to be worth all the trouble. And “losing control” may, in fact, be a large part of the fun. Thus, an exploration into the functions and forms of “being wasted” is the mission of chapter 3.
3 BEING WASTED
Fun, Adventure, and Transformation in the World of College Drinking
Do you want to know why they drink? People ask me this all the time—like there’s one definitive answer. I’m not really sure why, but here’s one good reason—because of the love they get. So I’m sitting in a student bar watching the door. A group of young men and women congregate at the barside, some standing, some sitting on stools. A young man, baseball hat on, unshaven, walks in the front door and shows his ID. A woman at the bar notices his entrance. “Jason!” she shrieks. He looks over and smiles. The group with the shrieking woman all join in: “Jason!” They are literally cheering for him. I’m pretty sure that he’s not an Olympic hero or about to deliver them the Publisher’s Clearinghouse million. They are just thrilled to see him, to be drinking with him. He strolls over. He’s feeling good. It would be good to be Jason right now.
(Field notes, April 2007)
Who wouldn’t envy Jason? He had a cheering section! And this is no isolated incident. For college drinkers, being wasted often draws a good measure of peer support. While anger, tears, arguments, and violence can emerge during a drinking episode, students also reported feeling demonstrably appreciated—even celebrated—by their codrinkers. The mutual appreciation shared by fellow travelers is part of the emotional
payoff of the drinking episode:
It was actually a great night to go to Walt’s [a bar] because I walked in and knew just about everybody there and some people I hadn’t seen in a quite a while. They were also very happy to see me so that added to a pleasurable drinking experience. (twenty-two-year-old female)
One of the biggest reasons for my drinking Friday was because I hadn’t been out in a while and my friends were glad to see me. I think the flattery perpetuated my drinking. I’m a sucker. (twenty-one-year-old female)
We’re all “suckers.” Feeling appreciated, wanted, and loved is valued by all humans, but receiving a loud, collective ovation from one’s friends may be especially rewarding for a young adult. Such appreciation and the social pleasures of drinking are the focus of this chapter. While I do not mean to underplay the hazards that students encounter in the college drinking culture—particularly the potential for rape and sexual coercion for college women—I do want to shed light on the fun and excitement shared by codrinkers in the drinking scene. And feeling loved by peers is clearly part of the emotional payoff of serial intoxication for young adults on campus.
Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard Page 7