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

by Thomas Vander Ven

  And unlike many adult drinkers—who might have work, home, and family responsibilities throughout the week—Sunday is truly a day of rest for the College Drinker. The foregoing account describes the hangover experience of a nineteen-year-old female who woke up intoxicated and disoriented but whose hangover had little effect on her empty Sunday agenda:

  The next morning I woke up with my roommate in my bed and our room was trashed. We had no idea how she got there. The boys down the hall had also left us messages on our dry erase board about a sleepover, but we never made it down the hall. We went to brunch still drunk. We didn’t do anything productive all day. I just watched movies in bed. I had a small hangover but we drank water and rested all day and I was fine by the evening.

  Hangovers: No Pain, No Gain!

  The hangover experience, as physically and mentally taxing as it may be, might simply be regarded as a small price to pay for a night of laughter and unbridled adventure. College drinking may result in a blistering headache and sick stomach the next morning, but, hey, it was worth it. This sentiment was commonly reported by respondents who acknowledged having a painful or uncomfortable post-drinking experience but were able to minimize it by arguing that the pain was worth it considering what a great time they had during their drinking episode: “Although I felt terrible in the morning, I had a great time being with all my friends and having some laughs” (twenty-one-year-old female); “The morning after was miserable cuz I always feel yucky the morning after I drink. I drank lots of water and just rested during the day till I felt better. It was worth it though cuz I had so much fun on Friday” (eighteen-year-old female).

  Furthermore, being hungover may in fact be regarded as part of the fun. When codrinkers wake up next to one another in similar states of disrepair, the hangover becomes a pleasant, collective experience that involves commiserating over their mutual sickness, telling war stories from the night before, and laughing at the sorry shape they are in. A shared hangover can take a lot of the “bite” out of the aches and pains associated with alcohol withdrawal. In the following story, Macy, a twenty-year-old female, describes her drinking group’s struggle with a collective hangover and demonstrates how easy it was for them to plan their next party:

  But the next day we sat around and discussed what happened. We tried to piece together the night and we all agreed that we would never play that game again [strip beer pong]. We were so hung over that we were the biggest wastes of space. All we did was lay on our couches and watch football. It was a battle to get up to eat and go to the bathroom. Even though we did things that soberly we would not even think about and we could not function properly the next day, you can be sure that this weekend will be filled with alcohol. We are already planning on making mixed drinks and having people over again. We figure since we work so hard during the week, we owe it to ourselves to let loose on the weekends. It’s dumb logic I know, but it works for us.

  Like Macy, several other informants seemed to suggest that waking up with a hangover can be pleasurable if the illness is a shared experience with codrinkers. Feeling sick can be reframed as humorous. In this case, rather than being a negative consequence, a hangover is simply an amusing (if somewhat nauseating) extension of the drinking episode:

  It was funny cuz we were all like draped on couches like, “I’m gonna die.” This happened at the beginning of the school year and we’re like, we all had things that you know we wanted to get taken care of in the house. Cuz school hadn’t started yet and we wanted to get some things hung up in the house. I remember lying on that couch like, “I’m gonna die, I really think I’m dying.” I couldn’t stand up for 2 minutes without being sick to my stomach. And, usually, since it doesn’t happen too often, we treat it as a joke… we think it’s kind of funny. We’re like, “Wow, we’re train wrecks!” (twenty-year-old female)

  Apparently, being sick together is part of the codrinking experience. In everyday life, sharing an illness and all of its attendant symptoms with close friends is uncommon. But for drinking partners—especially those who live together— the morning after a drinking episode is a time for friends to wallow in their misery together while reconstructing the fun parts of the previous evening together. Being hungover together also provides an opportunity for friends to care for one another and express genuine empathy. Waking up in a contorted mess in the clothes you wore the night before might not make your parents proud, but sharing this experience with an empathetic friend may help to redefine the situation as a positive one:

  Q: So being hungover is kind of a shared experience?

  A: Yeah… usually it’s kind of funny, because you just recall something, like a lot of times in my case we would come back home and just be doing something stupid before we went to sleep and I’ll wake up and look around and see somebody, like their legs are on the couch but their head and arms are on the floor and I’m like “Wow!” so I wait for them to wake up and see how they feel.… (eighteen-year-old male)

  All of the accounts above come from respondents who appear to have adequately adapted to their post-drinking symptoms in ways that leave the door open for further alcohol abuse. Denying the hangover, arguing that it had no significant effects on their formal obligations, claiming that the effects were “worth it” given the fun they experienced, and treating the hangover with well-established folk methods all seem to minimize whatever negative consequences they felt. Even when the difficult post-drinking experience inspires the college drinker to make the familiar hungover pledge of “never again,” the allure of the next party may make the hangover seem like a distant memory. Brandy, a twenty-year-old female, claimed that she often awoke with a hangover that was painful enough to make her want to quit drinking for good. Her commitment to sobriety, however, was only fleeting:

  Even when I’m really, really drunk… I’m always like okay to drink the next day.… I just don’t think about it. I don’t think about alcohol. I just drink water, I try to do other things like watch TV or get on Facebook or go out. I go work out. Um, I don’t know, I just do a lot of things just to keep my mind off of it. And then when everyone starts talking about “What’re you doing tonight?”—Cause that’s about like two o’clock, people start asking. I’ll be like “Going to the bar!” Like “Yeah! Party!”

  Post-Intoxication Regrets: The Experience and Management of Disappointment, Embarrassment, and Shame

  Hangovers may be relatively easy to brush off. The passage of time may be the best remedy for a hangover, and the clock never stops ticking. But the psychic pains that heavy drinkers sometimes face on the morning after a drinking episode may not be so easily discharged. While pulsating headaches fade away and ravenous thirst can eventually be quenched, it is more difficult to wash away the overwhelming regrets related to engaging in risky or unprotected sex, behaving in ways that destroyed a valued relationship, or acting foolishly or out of character in public. Regrets linger. Consider the case of Carmen, a twenty-two-year-old female:

  Two nights ago [Saturday night] I went to a party with my friends. The people at the party had beer and almost a full bar. I drank mixed drinks (liquor) outside.… Later we went downtown to the bars where I continued to drink mixed drinks and shots and I ended up getting pretty wasted. I’ll also say it was one of the most fun nights at the bar. I was walking around talking to several people and having a very good time. I also receive several drinks that are just given to me. I left the bar with this guy I like and drove to his apartment. That was stupid! At his apartment we engaged in sexual acts (not intercourse). Also at his apartment I realized I had way too much because I started to feel spinny. That wore off. I drove back to my place at about 4:00 A.M. and got a call from a guy that works at the bar I was at that likes me. He came over at about 5:00 A.M. and we engaged in sexual intercourse. That was stupid also! I did not go to bed until about 6:00 A.M. and did not awake until 1:00 P.M. I felt kind of jittery all day the next day. I had a hangover but it wasn’t until last night and this morning that I star
ted feeling really bad about sleeping with some guy I hardly know. Alcohol is no excuse for my actions but I think those things would not have happened if it weren’t for all the alcohol I drank. Now for all I know I could’ve contracted some sort of STD which is the worst thing that could happen. Now I have stress and anxiety about that.

  Carmen’s sober self judges the behavior of her intoxicated self as “stupid.” She engaged in casual sexual relations with two different men in one night17 (one of whom she “hardly knew”) and got behind the wheel of her car after a night of heavy drinking. Her post-intoxication experience is shadowed by a looming sense of disappointment, shame, stress, and anxiety. In hindsight, Carmen sees her behavior as ill advised and acknowledges that she could have gotten a sexually transmitted disease, which according to her is “the worst thing that can happen.” She wrote this account two days after the events occurred and she continued to wrestle with regret, a feeling often reported by many of my respondents.

  Regrets are defined by psychologists as negative emotions connected to thoughts about how past actions might have achieved better outcomes.18 Furthermore, feeling regret serves as an informal form of social control because it functions as sort of a self-administered punishment for the commission of wayward behavior.19 The regretful person might say to himself or herself, “I shouldn’t have done that. That’s not me. I’m better than that.” Thus, the regretful college drinker may devise plans for the future to behave more in line with his or her values and self-concept. On the other hand, the behaviors that stimulate regret may be redefined in ways that allow the regretful person to disavow his or her actions (e.g., “That wasn’t me doing and saying those things. That was the alcohol.”) College drinkers often find ways to distance themselves from drunken misdeeds, thereby perpetuating the behavior.

  My respondents’ regrets varied by degree and according to the kinds of behaviors they were regretful about. Regrets are associated with, or perhaps driven by, feelings of disappointment and shame. In the most minor cases, regretful drinkers were merely disappointed about the manner in which their alcohol consumption affected their ability to achieve valued goals. According to psychologists, people experience disappointment when negative outcomes disconfirm positive expectations.20 When college drinkers disappoint themselves, it is because they feel as though they have let themselves down by being unable to accomplish their goals or to meet their role requirements. The disappointed drinker says, “I’m better than that. I had good intentions and I let alcohol get in the way.”

  According to my respondents, drinking usually resulted in feelings of disappointment when it got in the way of accomplishing academic tasks (e.g., studying, going to class). This is no great revelation. While many of my respondents claimed to structure their binging around their course schedule and the academic calendar, alcohol has a way of sabotaging the most carefully choreographed “work and then play” plan. Here, one of my respondents describes his struggle with the composition of his “drinking story” due to post-intoxication illness: “In the morning I went to class on about three hours of sleep. I am nauseated and I can’t really write well, and I am still very hung over as I’m writing this essay” (twenty-year old male).

  A large body of research suggests that heavy-drinking college students are more likely to experience all sorts of academic failure. According to sociologist H. Wesley Perkins, a review of the empirical research findings on the damages caused by college drinking shows a strong connection between alcohol use and impaired academic performance. Based on the estimates of various studies, it appears that approximately 20 to 30 percent of college students surveyed have missed class, gotten behind in schoolwork, and performed poorly on an examination or class project due to drinking.21 Many of my respondents acknowledged that one of the negative consequences of their drinking was a failure to meet academic obligations on the day after a drinking episode. The following stories illustrate the incompatibility between hangovers and class performance:

  [After pregaming] I had four shots of liquor and about four more beers [at a bar]. For the first time ever that night I puked from drinking too much. The next morning I felt like crap and had to go to a 10:00 A.M. class. I really didn’t pay attention because my head hurt and I was thirsty. I asked some girl for a sip of her bottled water and drank the whole thing. (nineteen-year-old male)

  I consumed one beer, three martinis, and two shots.… I enjoy going out to the bar and having a good time with my friends. The day after, however, I had to go to class in the morning and barely made it. My friend who I was with ended up missing class and puking until 6 P.M. that night. She also missed a presentation that she was supposed to give. (twenty-one-year-old female)

  When college drinkers “let themselves down” by allowing alcohol to interfere with their academic pursuits, they have the opportunity to repair the situation by altering their behaviors to better conform to their identity as a student. Vowing to never drink again the night before an early class, for example, is an obvious way to reform oneself. At times, students feel disappointed in themselves because they allowed their alcohol consumption to get between them and their own personal health or their desired body image. The clash between heavy drinking and a desire to maintain a trim figure may present a problem for frequent alcohol abusers. Heavy drinking, of course, is a high-calorie activity and, thus, may interfere with the goal of maintaining one’s weight in line with cultural standards for beauty and health. This issue is especially pertinent for college women, whose anxieties about maintaining a thin frame are well documented. These anxieties may help to explain the high prevalence of eating disorders among American college women:

  More and more students every year identify themselves or others as having eating disorders or being in recovery from them. Various studies indicate that as many as 20-30 percent of college women engage in bulimic behavior.… [S]ome group-living situations… may actually encourage anorexic or bulimic behaviors. When students focus their conversations on physical attractiveness, weight, diets, and food, the atmosphere can induce unhealthy eating patterns.22

  Even when body-image concerns do not develop into eating disorders, most college women are at least a little mindful about weight gain. Conventional wisdom suggests that weight gain is common in the first years of college. In order to keep off the “freshman fifteen” (the mythologized fifteen-pound weight gain that freshman women supposedly experience), many college women may obsess about their caloric intake. The following respondents feel weight-gain-related regret due to a high-calorie drinking episode:

  That night we drank Jagermeister and beer… but then my boyfriend’s friend invited the RA in and we got busted.… The RA situation sucked and was a buzz kill, but I had a good time before and after that.… I don’t think there was a lot of consequences [from the drinking episode] besides getting into trouble. I wasn’t hung over because I didn’t get that drunk. Oh yeah, I put on like 11,000 calories. (nineteen-year-old female)

  I went to visit my friend in Dayton and we wanted to have fun so we got wasted. We chugged beer ‘cause we wanted to get drunk quickly.… We had tons of fun, we laughed, and sang, and danced. Then we went home and acted crazy. The negative effect was that we went back to the dorm and ordered pizza and I ate tons. (nineteen-year-old female)

  Concerns about weight gain are generally associated with female students, but a few of my male respondents also cited alcohol-related bloating as a regret: “The only bad thing [about the drinking episode] I feel is that I feel fat, but I will go to the fitness center later and work out just for that reason” (twenty-year-old male).

  As discussed earlier, adult alcoholics are in a perpetual war with an addiction that continually damages valued relationships and delivers shame to their loved ones. The following female alcoholic—cited in Norman Denzin’s Alcoholic Self—struggles with drunken misbehaviors that are brought to the attention of her husband in public settings: “I kept telling myself that if I could only drink a little bit before par
ties, and not talk too loud, that nobody would know that I had been drinking. Except that I’d drink too much before parties because I was nervous about talking too loud. Then I’d talk too loud and people would whisper to my husband that I was drunk.”23

  Hard-partying students may also feel a sense of guilt and disappointment in themselves if they perceive that their drinking has gotten in the way of family relationships and responsibilities. While most emerging adults on campus tend to have few routine family obligations to fulfill, some college drinkers acknowledged that heavy drinking caused them to default on a promise to a loved one. This twenty-three-year-old male let his mother down after a night of drinking:

  Q: What is your biggest regret related to something that you did when you were drinking?

  A: My biggest regret.… I don’t know, I don’t think I would do anything drunk that I wouldn’t do if I was sober. Sometimes I might go out drinking the night before and my mom wants me to do something in the morning and I might sleep through that and I will feel bad about that.

  Q: So missing a family obligation?

  A: Yeah…

  Acting a Fool: Shame-Producing Drunken Performances

  As the previous accounts suggest, missing a class, becoming a calorie-chugging glutton, and failing to meet a family obligation are all sources of next-morning disappointment for college drinkers. While these experiences may produce mild guilt, they are nothing compared to the self-doubts produced by shameful public performances. Many of my respondents spoke of feeling extremely embarrassed about their drunken behaviors. Grace, a twenty-year-old female, regrets her intoxicated habit of repeating herself when she’s polluted with alcohol: