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

Page 11

by Thomas Vander Ven


  After leaving the last bar I was struck with a hunger that is common to me when I am drinking, so we stopped in at a pizza place for slices of pizza. Upon going back to my dorm room, I got back, sat at my computer for a moment, then decided to use the bathroom and smoke a cigarette. Perhaps in my inebriated state my memory wasn’t working the best, but as I left and shut my door I forgot my keys, my cigarettes, and my wallet. My RA would not answer his door, or was out, so I had to return to the apartment of the friend where I started out the evening so I could have a place to sleep. Luckily, he was still awake and let me in. I found an empty bed and went to sleep.… All in all, it was a pleasurable drinking experience. I look at every night of drinking as another adventure. Anything can happen. All is left to chance.

  Adam’s description of drunkworld suggests that the drinking episode is pleasurable because of its unpredictability. His drunkenness led to a brief period of homelessness—an unpredictable adventure that required resourcefulness and help from a friend. Drinking can be fun, then, because it is an adventure. It presents trials that must be overcome. The boring, everyday routines that we mindlessly execute become problematic, daunting, and more interesting. Walking home from a bar or party, for example, can become a challenging journey that requires a cooperative effort: “After playing caps [a drinking game] for a long time all of us were hammered so my roommate and I decided to head back. Our walk was a long and adventurous one, but we made it home!” (eighteen-year-old female). Walking home—something that college students do hundreds of times during the course of a college career—often becomes a creative affair in the twisted world of group drunkenness. The following march back to the dorms included an unusual mode of transportation:

  Inside the doors of Taco Bell there was a rolling desk chair. One of the legs was broken so we decided it was fair game. For some strange reason one of my friends happened to have duct tape, so we fixed the chair and took it with us. My roommate sat in the chair while we rolled her down Front Street and down Rockaway Hill. We all made it safely back to the dorm and used our Taco Bell freebie as our computer chair. (Kelly, twenty-year-old female)

  The simple and childlike joy of rolling their friend down the street in a desk chair was made possible by alcohol. Would Kelly and her friends have commandeered the castaway chair when they were sober? Probably not. It is experiences like this that reinforce the college drinking culture. Drinking can be fun because it allows people to express themselves more freely in a world full of other people who have temporarily developed that same free-spiritedness. This combination leads to absurd sequences of events where anything can happen, giving birth to war stories that may last a lifetime. Consider Terry’s account of a birthday party that took a surreal turn and became out of control:

  In addition to trying to sleep with my girlfriend’s sister early on in the night it was a birthday party for my friend who was turning 22 at the time. They lit the cake and sang happy birthday and I thought it would be a good idea to wish him happy birthday so I took the cake and creamed it into his face. Then I proceeded to smear it all over his hair and his face and it turned into a bit of a food fight beside the pool, for which the police showed up for a noise complaint. We had to hide in the pool. I was hiding in the pool because I was underage at the time.… The cops just stood at the side of the pool and waited for me to come up for air. I mean, the water was clear. They could obviously see me in there. What was I doing? And I was trying to get all the cake off of me. It was a long night. (twenty-two-year-old male)

  Why are college students seeking out these absurd episodes? Maybe everyday life feels static, scripted, and flavorless to them. Maybe college drinkers are seeking ecstasy. According to sociologist Peter Berger, ecstasy is “the act of standing or stepping outside (literally, ekstasis) the taken-for-granted routines of society.”28 Beyond the physiological effects of alcohol use, university drinkers may enjoy nonsanctioned, unsupervised drinking rituals because they represent a rejection of the constraints and social determinism of the adult world. As emerging adults, college students are recently liberated from many of the regulations and sanctions that their parents delivered to them at home. Drunkworld can be appealing because it is characterized by a dramatic absence of behavioral regulations. According to Grant, a twenty-year-old male, there are no rules in drunkworld:

  It’s Saturday night, it’s time to party. There is a need to drink but doing so makes you feel like there are no rules.… I got some free breakfast, some free Taco Bell, had great sex twice, then fooling around in the dorms, met some new people, made a lot of people laugh. I only climbed a few things. Ha ha.

  Grant got a lot accomplished in one reckless night. His account shows that a drinking episode can be pleasurably chaotic. Those who seek chaos are different in kind from the “responsible” drinkers (featured in chapter 2) who took special precautionary measures to avoid out-of-control drunkenness (e.g., scheduling their drinking around classes, employing the buzz check). But, clearly, many college drinkers are looking to participate in collective irresponsibility. For these drinkers, getting drunk with friends is about extreme sensation seeking.29 They are seeking temporary derangement; they are using alcohol to rent a few hours of insanity. And it may be the only time in their lives when they will be roundly congratulated for being out of control. When people set their sights on recreational chaos, however, real problems emerge. And even when drinkers try to be responsible, the web that holds the social order together can unravel quickly when alcohol is involved. When drinking rises to the level of the Shit Show and everything falls apart, college drinkers must find ways to manage the mess that they have made. This is the subject of chapter 4.

  4 WHEN EVERYTHING FALLS APART

  Meeting the Challenges of the College Drinking Scene

  The most recent time I drank almost killed me. … My friend bought my roommate and I alcohol after we gave him money. We played drinking games at his apartment, drank Bacardi Raspberry, and did straight shots of Vodka. At the open house party we drank beer from the keg. At the private house party, we drank shots of vanilla vodka and wine coolers. I drank glasses of Bacardi, 2 glasses of beer, 8 vanilla vodka shots, 2 regular vodka shots, and a wine cooler. During the drinking everything was funny and fun. I remember laughing a lot. The next day, I had the worst hangover of my life. It took me 2 or 3 days to recover. It affected my relationships because I yelled at a friend for no reason and neglected to speak to my now ex-boyfriend who was angry because of it. I have been told, though I don’t remember, that I threw up for numerous hours after being told to do so or the house owners would call the police or an ambulance. We slept on couches at the house because we couldn’t walk home. In the morning (a Sunday), I felt humiliated and severely ill. I ate to quench my hunger, took Excedrin to kill the headache, and slept all day. I accomplished nothing that day. I hated walking home on a Sunday, while people are going to church. My roommate, friend, and I walked home (or stumbled) in smeared makeup and our “going out” clothing. I felt intensely guilty because of this. I have stopped drinking completely. It is difficult because I love to party, but I am happier and hope to be happier because of it.

  (Kim, twenty-year-old female)

  Kim had a rough night. Her claim that it “almost killed” her is one we should take seriously given the large amount of alcohol that she reportedly ingested. If her recollection of how much alcohol she consumed is accurate, bystanders should have made sure that she received medical attention. Kim was lucky. Tragically, some college drinkers are not so fortunate. Consider journalist Barrett Seaman’s account of a fatal night of drinking:

  Over the 2004 Labor Day weekend … 19-year-old Samantha Spady, a sophomore at Colorado State University … told a friend in an IM exchange that she planned on getting “extremely wasted this weekend, not just because it’s Labor Day, but because Colorado State plays Colorado in football tomorrow.”… Colorado State lost the football game; Samantha lost her life. In the company of a few friends througho
ut Saturday, Spady knocked back enough beer and later vodka—roughly the equivalent of nearly 30 shots—over eleven hours to bring her blood alcohol concentration (BAC) up to 0.43. Early Sunday morning, Samantha was wandering around the Sigma Pi fraternity house, her eyes glazed, her speech slurred. When last seen alive just before dawn, she was unable to stand on her own. Two friends carried her to a second-floor lounge to sleep it off. It was not until Sunday evening that a Sigma Pi brother who was taking his mother on a tour of the house found her body.1

  Unlike Samantha, Kim survived her careless drinking episode. But there were other effects of her severe drunkenness. In addition to the perilous state of intoxication she found herself in, Kim’s drunkenness damaged her relationships and caused her to feel a tremendous amount of psychic strain on the morning after. To summarize, her story involves yelling at a friend “for no reason,” neglecting her boyfriend, getting dangerously intoxicated and severely ill, having the worst hangover of her life, and feeling guilty and humiliated during her stumbling, makeup-smeared walk home the next morning. According to her, these outcomes were enough to drive her to resolve to reject alcohol for good. This desistance story demonstrates that dangerous and unpleasant drinking experiences sometimes inspire college drinkers to “get on the wagon.” But painful drinking episodes do not always result in desistance. Why do some drinkers decide to quit abusing alcohol after a drinking crisis while others shrug it off and continue to flirt with intoxication?

  A “drinking crisis” is defined here as a negative outcome or series of negative events resulting from or related to the use of alcohol during a drinking episode. A drinking crisis could include getting “pinched” by a cop or resident advisor for underage drinking or public intoxication, becoming ill after overindulging, having relational conflicts with friends, roommates, or partners, getting into physical fights with codrinkers or other drunks encountered during a drinking episode, or engaging in a risky hookup. As Kim’s story illustrates, a drinking crisis may spoil the fun and drive a person to desistance. On the other hand, many students who have negative encounters with alcohol find the motivation to persist. Why would someone continue to engage in the party scene, for example, after becoming violently ill or after behaving so boorishly that a relationship was irreparably damaged?

  According to Howard Becker’s study of marijuana users, the negative features of intoxication are often filtered through a social process through which sickness, disorientation, and discomfort are redefined in positive ways. Since most criminal and deviant acts—including drug and alcohol abuse—tend to be collective activities, it is likely that the negative experiences that occur during the act are processed in ways that lessen the blow, thus encouraging the person to take his or her chances again. Just as the joys of deviance are shared, so then are the troubles that emerge when deviant people co-offend. The sharing and managing of these crises may be an important part of the social experience and may be critical to understanding the persistence of certain deviant practices that come with potential costs. According to my data, when things fall apart during a drinking episode, drinkers mobilize to correct the crises that confront them. Consider the following account supplied by April, a nineteen-year-old female:

  The night started out well. We went out for Chinese food to commemorate the last night with a friend of mine.… When we got back to the dorms, we had to figure a way into our rooms with two cases of beer and some Smirnoff without being caught. We then put the alcohol in two large duffel bags and carried them up to our rooms. This is where we proceeded to get drunk. I didn’t want to get too drunk because I had to get up fairly early in the morning, but after three Smirnoffs, I decided I would have some beer also.… For the most part I had a good time, laughing at everything and hanging out with friends, but then things got unpleasant. Mixing the two types of alcohol plus the Chinese food was not a good idea. I suddenly became sick (my first time ever), but my friends looked after me. I was almost on the verge of passing out, but they kept me awake. After a couple hours, I thought I could keep it down, so I tried to sit up. When I went to the bathroom, this is where I found my roommate, throwing up in the toilet and not with it at all. So, I sobered up quite quickly to help her. I put her to bed and I went also. Then around 7:00 A.M., I was going to be sick again so I ran to the bathroom. This time I found my roommate passed out on the floor of the hallway by our R.A.’s room. Once again, I got her and took her back to our room and put her to bed.

  April was both a recipient and a giver of codrinker goodwill during an emergent crisis. After she was aided in her time of need by friends, she rescued her roommate by first assisting her at the toilet and then, hours later, preventing her from being collared by an authority figure. To make the transition from drunk-in-need to rescuer, she reports that she quickly sobered up. The successful management of an emergent drinking crisis is made possible by a seemingly miraculous act of mind over intoxicant.

  April’s story is a good example of a common thematic thread that runs through the student accounts. That is, college drinkers give and receive a tremendous amount of social support during drinking episodes. When young adults comingle with the multiple risks presented by heavy drinking, eventually something is bound to go wrong. The crises that emerge, however, generally do not turn college drinkers away from alcohol. One is tempted to say that college drinkers continue to get wasted in spite of the drinking crises they endure. That statement, however, is not wholly accurate. My research suggests that college students continue to drink, in part, because of drinking crises and the social processes that are triggered when problems arise. In short, the drinking crisis is part of the fun, can be redefined in favorable ways, and serves a function by generating opportunities for emerging adults to rise to meet a challenge by taking care of one another. Rather than seeing the drinking crisis as an unfortunate, unintended consequence of collective intoxication, we should view the problems that almost inevitably arise as part of the emotional payoff of heavy drinking. Thus, the drinking crisis serves a function.

  Drunk Support

  Codrinkers don’t always assist their fallen comrades. Sometimes, as we know, they draw obscenities and cartoonish moustaches on the faces of their passed-out friends or leave their blackout-drunk drinking partners at the bar to fend for themselves. But, more often than not, my research findings suggest that drinking associates take care of each other. Drunk support involves the perceived or actual instrumental and/or expressive provisions delivered from one person to an intoxicated other when trouble arises during a drinking episode.2 Drunk support may include nurturing, protection, moral support, counseling, or physical “backup” when confrontations escalate into violence. Thus, drunk support is the intoxicated relative of a well-traveled sociological concept, social support. Social support has been variously defined as a network of people who provide resources; the knowledge a person has that he or she is valued, cared for, loved, and belongs to a network of mutual emotional support; and a coping resource or social “fund” from which people may draw when handling stressors.3

  Needless to say, social support is a good thing. At a very fundamental level, the give and take of social support helps to make us human. Research suggests that supportive relationships, beginning at birth, are integral to healthy human development, that social support serves as a buffer against stressful and noxious events, and that receiving social support helps individuals to cope with negative life events, can assist people in fighting their way out of the stranglehold of mental illness, and can reduce criminal involvement.4 Social support is a resource that we call upon to successfully navigate through the variety of crises that we meet in the social world. And overcoming a personal crisis can be an important marker in one’s developmental history. Scholars have demonstrated that negative events are not always disabling and can, in the long run, be beneficial to development. According to sociologist Peggy Thoits: “Negative life events do not necessarily have negative health or mental health consequences, at least over
the long run. In part this is because individuals often actively solve the problems which confront them. Less frequently recognized by stress researchers, individuals also learn and grow from negative experiences, even from those that cannot be reversed or escaped.”5

  For emerging adults on campus, giving social support may be as important as receiving it. According to recent developments in identity research, the college years are a critical time for identity development. Having been recently released from the matrix of parental controls they experienced at home, college students are presented with a new array of opportunities to explore identities by auditioning for adult social roles. Scholars interested in the psychosocial development of first-year university students maintain that

  [f]or many youth the transition to university is a major step in their journey to the adult world of work. Universities also provide youth with an institutionalized moratorium, relatively free from adult responsibilities, where they can experiment with various roles, values, and identity images before constructing a stable sense of identity formation.6

  Going away to college provides a rehearsal for the real thing, an opportunity to be away from home and friends, to make a new life among strangers, while still retaining the possibilities of affiliation with the old. In the dormitory … one finds himself on his own but at the same time surrounded by strangers who may become friends. One has the experience of learning to shift for oneself and making friends among strangers.7

 

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