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

by Thomas Vander Ven

  The Animosity of Support

  To be fair, some codrinkers are not exactly thrilled to be taking care of their hammered cohorts. Taking care of your drunksick roommate time and time again, for example, can become a drag. People don’t always help when others experience crises, and when they do, they don’t always enjoy it. “Bad drunks” may overstep the goodwill of their codrinkers. This twenty-two-year-old female explains:

  Q: So did I hear you say that when you’re out with her you feel an obligation to take care of her?

  A: Oh yeah.

  Q: Okay, and, and so what do you do?

  A: Well, you just watch her and make sure, ’cause she might walk off by herself and go meet other people, make sure she doesn’t do that. Like the night that I was out with her, already we had had the same amount to drink because… and I could tell that she was… because she gets a certain way and all of us that lived together last year knows about her and she knows that about herself and when she’s drunk she doesn’t realize it, when she’s sober she does. We definitely feel obligated to make sure she’s okay. But it gets to the point where you just don’t even feel like being around her sometimes.

  Q: Okay, so, you’re trying to keep her out of trouble but then it gets to a point where it’s like you can’t deal with it anymore?

  A: Uh-huh, and she has a friend that’s even worse than her. [Laughs.] I just don’t deal with [her] at all.

  But the overwhelming level of support that many university students give to their fellow drinkers suggests that help is often given willingly and without reluctance. It is no wonder, then, that so many college drinkers continue to get severely intoxicated even though they have had some unpleasant bouts with drinking. The persistence of heavy drinking must be accompanied by social support because it is a fateful activity. According to sociologist Erving Goffman, fateful action is a voluntary exercise where participants knowingly enter into a risky situation. Gambling with outcomes is part of the thrill. While some drinkers are cautious not to exceed a mild alcohol high or “buzz,” many choose to push the limits and are challenging fate. The thrill of challenging fate may be an important part of alcohol abuse, and codrinkers often work together to strategically avoid negative drinking outcomes. As these accounts demonstrate, however, some of the rewards of alcohol intoxication occur after the fun ends and “everything falls apart.” Drinking partners help each other in times of sickness, social discord, and potential conflict with authority figures. The drinking crisis provides an opportunity for peers to take on powerful and celebrated social roles. When a drinking episode begins to spiral into trouble, these young adults quickly embrace adult responsibilities: the nurturing parent (e.g., caring for a vomiting friend) and the rescuer (e.g., a boyfriend who bails out his arrested girlfriend). This positive reframing of a problematic situation may help to explain why drinkers who experience sickness and conflict keep coming back for more. College drinkers develop an understanding that their friends are there for them and will catch them when they fall. Fully aware of the risks that await them, some drinkers won’t enter the party scene at all without their most trusted allies:

  Needless to say, that night I did some stupid things such as hooking up with some nasty guy who took advantage of me, hooking up with a friend, walking into a wall, etc. … Because the embarrassment was so high, I never went back to that location till 6 months after the talking (gossip) stopped. I now rarely drink and if I do, I make sure I have someone to watch and take care of me (someone I trust with my life). (Amy, twenty-year-old female)

  Amy won’t party without a human safety net. But sometimes drinkers aren’t in crisis until the following morning when they feel hungover and regretful. The next chapter covers the ways in which they deal with sickness, regret, and shame. And when they feel hungover and full of regret, they need their friends, roommates, and codrinkers to help them through that, too. This is the subject of chapter 5.

  5 THE MORNING AFTER

  Hangovers and Regrets

  I mean, every time I wake up with a hangover I’m like, “I’m never drinking again.” But then, by four o’clock I’ll be like “Let’s go to the bar.”

  (twenty-year-old female)

  Okay, so you got obliterated last night. You got staggering drunk, puked in front of the burrito vendor, peed your pants, and got in an argument with a complete stranger because you didn’t like the “stupid” hat he was wearing. That’s alright. Your friends were there for you. They apologized to the burrito guy, assisted you home so you wouldn’t get pinched for public intoxication, and helped you change out of your pants. And the guy with the stupid hat was wasted too. He probably forgot the whole thing. You are out of the woods, right? Wrong. The College Drinker still must deal with the aftertremors of a “straight Shit Show.” That is, heavy drinkers still have debts to pay on the “morning after.”

  As detailed in chapter 4, college drinkers have found ways to navigate through the minefields of collective intoxication in order to minimize the impact of emergent crises. The mechanisms of support manufactured by codrinkers help to explain why heavy drinkers continue to get wasted even after experiencing a problematic drinking episode. But many of the negative effects of heavy drinking do not reveal themselves until the painful morning after. Party-scene devotees must manage the grinding hangovers, nagging regrets, and shame-producing performances from the night before in order to gain successful closure on their drinking episode. The following accounts depict college drinkers agonizing over their drunken exploits:

  I proceeded to become quite drunk, loud and aggressive like I usually become. From there, the enjoyment of the bar was waning so we concluded the night briefly at Paddy’s [a bar]. We then went back to my apartment, ordered food, watched a movie, then proceeded to smoke a joint. After that I passed out for a while then proceeded to sleep with my friend’s little sister (no sex was involved).… While I had a fun night, I have to now deal with the fact that I hooked up with my friend’s little sister and must deal with this situation as it is. This excessive night of drinking resulted in me achieving nothing for the next day except for laying around and watching TV till I went to sleep. (twenty-two-year-old male)

  I drank a few more there and ended up wrestling around with a friend. I made an idiot of myself. I woke up the next morning feeling sick and ashamed. I knew I drank too much and I have not been in that condition in over a year. (twenty-one-year-old male)

  Clearly, after a night of serious drinking there is often work to be done. Regretful or hungover partiers must develop strategies to repair the damages wrought by intoxication. An ailing or regretful drinker, for example, might find ways to justify his or her behavior; he or she may employ rhetorical strategies to suggest that no harm was done after all. Like Howard Becker’s marijuana users, a severely hungover individual must develop strategies to reframe his or her flawed experience or he or she is not likely to continue to drink to excess. If the ailing drinker is not able to put the “best face” on the consequences of drinking, he or she may decide that the alcohol intoxication is not worth the trouble. To illustrate this point, consider Howard Becker’s commentary on the negative experiences of marijuana users:

  He may blame it on an overdose or be more careful in the future. But he may make this the occasion for the rethinking of his attitude toward the drug and decide that it can no longer give him pleasure. When this occurs and is not followed by a redefinition of the drug as capable of producing pleasure, use will cease.1

  When college drinkers are able to put a positive “spin” on problematic drinking, it helps to perpetuate serial intoxication. But there are other reasons why university alcohol abusers continue to gladly suffer hangovers and regrets. One important factor relates to their relative lack of social responsibility during the college years. As emerging adults, college students are less likely to have to attend to important work and family responsibilities—obligations that make recovering from drunkenness a more challenging task for many adults. Accordin
g to psychologist Jeffrey Arnett,

  Emerging adults can pursue novel and intense experiences more freely than adolescents because they are less likely to be monitored by parents and can pursue them more freely than adults because they are less constrained by roles. After marriage, adults are constrained from taking part in risk behavior by the responsibilities of the marriage role, and once they have a child, they are constrained by the responsibilities of the parenting role.2

  Based on this logic, one would assume that most college drinkers “age out” of their heavy drinking practices after graduation when they start careers and families. A large body of research findings seems to support this assumption. In fact, alcohol use typically begins during the high school years, escalates soon after entering college, gradually decreases during late college, and then decreases significantly after graduates leave college.3 Researchers have estimated that nearly 80 percent of “high-risk” college drinkers will moderate their drinking after college to the point where it does not cause persistent problems in adulthood.4 Much of this aging-out effect can be attributed to the impact of marriage, parenthood, and careers. Clearly, a life of chronic intoxication is not compatible with the compelling demands of adult roles. Adult alcohol abusers have to contend with greater work and family responsibilities, making it harder to ride the wave of drunkenness through their role obligations. American novelist John Cheever wrote in excruciating detail about his struggles with alcohol and how the “bottle” competed with his family for his attention.5 The following quotation from Cheever’s personal journals depicts the alcoholic writer grappling with morning-after alcohol cravings and agonizing over his need to hide his addiction from his family:

  The gin bottle, the gin bottle. This is painful to record. The gin bottle is empty. I go to the post office and stay away from the gin shop. “If you drink you’ll kill yourself,” says my son. His eyes are filled with tears. “Listen,” say I. “If I thought it would benefit you I’d jump off a ten-story building.” He doesn’t want that, and there isn’t a ten-story building in the village. I drive up the hill to get the mail and make a detour to the gin store. I hide the bottle under the car seat. We swim, and I wonder how I will get the bottle from the car to the house. I read while brooding on this problem. When I think that my beloved son has gone upstairs, I hide the bottle by the side of the house and lace my iced tea.

  Cheever’s predicament articulates a battle between competing selves. On the one hand, his alcoholic self obsesses endlessly about where and when he will get his next drink. His commitment to his role as father, on the other hand, compels him to construct elaborate plans to hide his addiction from his son. Such is the life of many adult heavy drinkers. In his classic work The Alcoholic Self, sociologist Norman Denzin describes the torturous role conflict that many adult alcoholics endure. This forty-seven-year-old male (one of Denzin’s informants) describes the clash between his alcoholism and his marriage on the mornings after a “bender”:

  My wife would bring these conversations back to me in the morning. She’d report vile things that I’d said, violent actions I threatened, crude sexual gestures, promises I’d made. I could remember none of it. I’d say she was making it all up just to get back at me. I hated her for it. Who does she think she is? I’d never never say things like that. I guess it’s what they call a blackout. I just don’t say things like that.6

  The adult alcoholic typically wrestles alone with his or her morning after regret. The loneliness and self-loathing of the adult drunk is generated, in part, by the manner in which self-destructive drinking alienates one from loved ones. Patterns of heavy drinking lead to depression and self-flagellation when the drinker becomes aware that his or her drinking behavior has become an obstacle to family role enactment. When heavy drinking becomes entangled with work and family life, opportunities are lost. American journalist Pete Hamill discusses this painful realization:

  [After living in various places throughout the world] I would return to New York, settle in, start working at my trade. Then routine would assert itself. The routine of work. The routine of family. The multiple routines of the drinking life. These couldn’t be separated. If I wrote a good column for the newspaper, I’d go to a bar to celebrate; if I wrote a poor column, I would drink away my regret. Then I’d go home, another dinner missed, another chance to play with the children gone, and in the morning, hung over, thick-tongued, and thick-fingered, I’d attempt through my disgust to make amends. That was a routine too.7

  The adult alcoholics quoted above were forced to combat their post-intoxication experience in a dreadful sort of self-imposed, solitary confinement. Justifying their drinking behaviors and the family neglect and mistreatment that accompanied their illness was no easy task. But most college drinkers live in a different social world. Certainly, heavy-drinking university students have the unique task of hiding their unlawful drinking and intoxication from a host of university officials and law enforcement agents. They are not likely, however, to have the same role responsibilities as adult drinkers do. In fact, many college drinkers live in a community of fellow drinkers who often support them through their morning-after hangovers and regrets. Furthermore, the college drinking scene is partly facilitated by a culture that offers easy forgiveness for the missteps of inebriated students. Unlike John Cheever—who had to comfort his weeping son—and Pete Hamill, who recognized that his drinking caused him to neglect his family, the College Drinker often operates within a culture that not only accepts heavy drinking and hammered misbehavior, but readily excuses objectionable conduct and sometimes even celebrates it. Armed with the knowledge that he or she will be forgiven for his or her drunken trespasses, the College Drinker is not likely to desist after delivering a mean-spirited or otherwise socially objectionable public performance. Thus drunken mis-behavior is often processed through the social filter of the college drinking scene in ways that hold drinkers less accountable for their actions. One of the skills that a heavy drinker learns to develop is the ability to treat or otherwise manage an alcohol hangover. The hangover—an objective indicator of the damage of heavy drinking—is sometimes redefined in tolerable ways within the college drinking scene. The next section describes a variety of methods that college drinkers use to navigate through post-intoxication illness.

  Hangover Management

  Painful, slightly uncomfortable, or totally debilitating hangovers can be a compelling reminder of the recklessness of the night before. But the unpleasantness of an alcohol hangover may or may not compel one to change one’s drinking behavior. To be sure, if every college drinker who ever experienced a hangover desisted from future alcohol abuse, there would be very few adult alcohol abusers. Hangovers, then, must be made tolerable or defined in ways by drinkers and their peers as “worth it” given the pleasure they experienced during the drinking episode. Methods of defining, treating, tolerating, and justifying the hangover may be learned and practiced, then, in order for alcohol abuse practices to continue after a challenging encounter with a post-intoxication illness. Recent empirical studies have demonstrated that young alcohol abusers may not “learn their lesson” from a negative experience with alcohol intoxication. In fact, one study suggested that the heaviest drinkers in a college sample did not learn from their mistakes, but instead they overestimated the level of alcohol consumption that it would take to experience a similarly negative consequence.8 Other investigators have found that negative expectancy outcomes are sometimes reported as motivations for future alcohol use.9 These findings suggest that alcohol abusers develop strategies to justify or neutralize the negative consequences delivered by alcohol abuse. And like most of the residual effects of college drinking, hangovers and regrets are often dealt with in socially cooperative ways. It is important that we understand these social processes because doing so may help to reveal why chronic alcohol abusers persist in their pursuit of intoxication, even after suffering through sickness, headaches, and psychic strain.

  What Is a Hangover?r />
  Charles Herman, a heavy-drinking character in the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, said this about post-intoxication illness: “Did you know that having a hangover is not having enough water in your body to run your Krebs cycles, which is exactly what happens to you when you are dying of thirst? So dying of thirst would probably feel pretty much like the hangover that finally bloody kills you.”10 The Krebs cycles involve a series of chemical reactions that are essential for the human body to metabolize glucose and other simple sugars.11 Thus, the dehydration produced by alcohol consumption prevents the body from removing toxins from the body due to an insufficient supply of water. The extreme ingestion of alcohol does, indeed, result in dehydration as well as other biochemical effects. According to alcohol researcher Christopher Martin, the nausea and dizziness experienced during an alcohol hangover may be related to a phenomenon known as Positional Alcohol Nystagmus II (PAN II). PAN II—usually occurring between five and ten hours after the ingestion of alcohol—involves the body’s elimination of alcohol from its system. As alcohol in the semicircular canals is removed faster than the fluid that surrounds it, it disrupts the body’s balance, which is controlled in part by the semicircular canals. This disruption contributes to the feelings of vertigo and nausea often experienced during a hangover.12