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

by Thomas Vander Ven

  [Salt Lake City] Gang Project community coordinator Michelle Arciaga says it’s only 10 to 20 percent of the local Straight Edge movement that espouses violence and mayhem, but they’re a very fierce minority. “I would guess we’ve gotten 15 or 20 media calls regarding Straight Edge over the past six months,” says Arciaga. “People are fascinated by it because kids who don’t drink or use drugs usually flies in the face of what you’d call gang behavior.” The event culminating in all of this publicity was an alleged Straight Edge attack on members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity for smoking cigarettes outside the Pie Pizzeria this April. After spraying mace over the small crowd gathered at the restaurant, fraternity member Michael Larsen says a gang of about 30 Straight Edgers went after people with tire irons, bats, chains and brass knuckles. “They maced even the women, then they attacked while everyone’s eyes were out,” says Larsen, who suffered a black eye after the incident. While some escaped with only bruises and knots, one person suffered a broken foot, while another spent the night at a hospital, Larsen says.8

  Generally speaking, though, straight edge leaders do not encourage their members to “get medieval” on drinkers, drug users, and smokers. Most straight edge devotees are nonviolent. The straight edge lifestyle instructs its adherents to take control of their own lives. For example, consider the comments of one of my abstaining informants. Jenny, a nineteen-year-old female, appreciates some of the fleeting benefits of alcohol intoxication, but swore it off after becoming a member of the straight edge movement:

  Drinking was a semi-enjoyable practice at the time. Of course alcohol makes you an easy talker and for me in particular puts me in a good mood. However, in truth the consumption of this alcohol did little to improve my life experience. The next day I had a terrible headache and cottonmouth which I treated with some aspirin. However, I would add that after that night I stopped drinking and became what is known as “straight edge.” I realized I didn’t need alcohol to have a good time. Presently I am very against the consumption of drugs and alcohol and believe they have no place on our college campuses. I support the straight edge movement which believes in not letting anything rule your life… alcohol often rules people’s lives and can even destroy them.

  While straight edgers make up a relatively small fraction of the college population, participation in other, more common pursuits and organizations may also facilitate abstention. One might assume, for example, that college athletes would avoid heavy drinking because it could hamper their performance on the field of competition. But the empirical research on this topic tells a very different story. In fact, heavy college drinking is actually associated with participation in collegiate sports. Jason Ford, a sociologist at the University of Central Florida, maintains that collegiate athletes are more likely to abuse alcohol than the general college student population. On the basis of a review of the literature, Ford argues that university athletes are at a greater risk for alcohol use and tend to report that they engage in more extreme practices of alcohol consumption than other students. Furthermore, the literature suggests that on average, binge drinking increases as involvement in sports increases and that athletes are more likely to experience a variety of drinking-related negative outcomes—like hangovers, school problems, injuries, and risky sex—than are nonathletes.9 Some of my respondents, however, named sports as a chief reason for their abstention. Reed, a nineteen-year-old male, avoided drinking initially because he didn’t want liquor to be an obstacle to his athleticism. Furthermore, he is mystified that people are willing to allow alcohol to rob them of their self-control:

  I have never consumed alcohol so far in my lifetime. During high school I was always involved in sports so the fact that alcohol could affect what I was doing kinda gave me a whole negative outlook on the intoxication deal. Drinking alcohol really doesn’t make sense to me, why someone would want to not have control of theirself and what’s going on around them just blows my mind. Many people who have the outlook I have were probably raised that way, but I wasn’t. My mother and stepfather drink but I just don’t find it beneficial. So I can’t see myself ever drinking. I know it might seem far-fetched but it’s the truth.

  According to the research literature on alcohol abstainers, Reed is correct in assuming that most people who avoid alcohol were “probably raised that way.” In a recent cross-national study of alcohol abstainers, lifetime abstainers were significantly more likely to claim that they do not drink because “I was brought up not to drink.” Furthermore, “upbringing” is a commonly given reason for alcohol avoidance in nations with high rates of abstention.10 Not surprisingly, college alcohol abstainers are relatively more likely to have nondrinking parents as well.11 Here one of my research informants explains her abstention in terms of the social learning that takes place inside a family relationship: “I have never consumed alcohol in my life and don’t plan to start any time soon. Most of my decision was based on my parents. They don’t drink and they taught my siblings and me about the problems that can result from drinking” (nineteen-year-old female).

  The Limits of Abstention

  Total abstention is probably not a realistic goal for most college students. Take, for example, one of the main empirical predictors of abstention, abstaining in high school. Since the majority of entering college freshmen have already tried alcohol before starting college, the cow is already out of the proverbial barn for them. Furthermore, it would be difficult to base policies on many of the other predictors of alcohol abstention. Policymakers and university officials cannot turn back the clock and make the parents of college students nondrinkers, and they cannot affect the religiosity of college students in order to trigger abstention. Abstention is a personal choice based on a variety of factors that have already impinged upon college students long before they ever arrive on campus. Convincing most college students to avoid alcohol altogether, then, may be an unrealistic goal. Programs that take a “just say no” approach have had limited effects on a variety of youth behaviors. For example, an independent research panel commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that multifaceted sexual education programs are more effective at reducing unwanted pregnancies and disease for teens than abstinence-only programs.12 For many college drinkers, it is necessary to learn a hard and painful lesson about the risks of overconsumption before they quit drinking. The next section focuses on this group, the desistors.

  The Desistors

  Most heavy-drinking college students gradually age out of serial intoxication towards the end of their college careers. As career goals and family plans approach, chasing one drunken Shit Show with another may seem less rational to members of the college drinking scene. Desistance—the act of ceasing to use alcohol—during the college years is an understudied phenomenon. Currently, there is very little data on the nature of desistance from alcohol among college students. That is, we know little about how many college drinkers desist while they are in college, and there is a paucity of knowledge about why desistors quit. The current study was designed, in part, to capture desistance stories. Since my survey respondents were asked to give a true account of the last time they drank to intoxication, many of the drinking stories detail the events of a drinking episode that drove the respondent to desist from further abuse. In other words, their last (or most recent) drinking experience was truly their last. For example, consider the following account. Robin, an eighteen-year-old female, describes her last drinking episode as a traumatic, life-threatening event that put her on the wagon for good:

  Because of my experience with alcohol… getting too drunk and having to drink charcoal at the hospital [Medical personnel often employ the use of a charcoal compound to absorb the alcohol.], I do not drink, period. I have experienced the negative effects of alcohol poisoning—not fun—and it just was not worth it to me in the long run of things. I think that kids take alcohol too lightly now a days, too many people getting drunk all the time!

  Robin rejected alcohol immediately
after it sent her to the hospital. But quitting anything “cold turkey” is a relatively rare occurrence. There is a large body of research on desistance from crime and substance abuse that suggests that the transition out of crime or addiction tends to be a more gradual experience. Generally, key events like marriage, emerging parenthood, or a break in friendship with criminal or substance-abusing associates trigger the desistance process.13 The transition from single to married, for instance, may result in desistance because

  marriage marks a transition from heavy peer involvement to a preoccupation with one’s spouse and family of procreation. For those with a history of crime or delinquency, that transition is likely to reduce interaction with former friends and accomplices and thereby reduce the opportunities as well as the motivation to engage in crime.… [M]arriage appears to discourage crime by severing or weakening former criminal associations.14

  Similarly, college drinkers may age out of chronic drunkenness when they enter into serious relationships or when they get married, thereby weakening their ties to their usual drinking affiliates. In some cases, desistance may occur during the college years when a drinker becomes involved with someone who is a nondrinker. This eighteen-year-old female never had a particularly bad experience with alcohol but decided that she can enjoy herself without drinking, with the support of her nondrinking boyfriend: “I don’t really feel the need to [drink] anymore. I realized that I can have fun without alcohol and my boyfriend doesn’t drink either so I have him for support!” Apparently desistance, like heavy drinking, is often embedded in the development of new relationships.

  Sometimes, however, desistance is dramatic and abrupt. Many adult alcoholics, for example, refer to giving up drinking after hitting “rock bottom.” Rock bottom is the lowest point in a drinker’s career and is often marked by the drinker discovering a serious drinking-related illness or injury, facing the loss of his or her family, or being severed from a job, social relationship, or valued affiliation. These events may trigger a “moment of clarity” when the problem drinker truly sees the extent of his or her addiction for the first time. According to sociologist Norman Denzin, “hitting bottom” is a kind of collapse during which the alcoholic realizes that, as significant others pull away, he or she is alone in the world and must make a dramatic change in order to reengage with humanity. The following “rock bottom” account (drawn from Denzin’s data) depicts a forty-eight-year-old male alcoholic coming to terms with his addiction:

  S [his wife] and I had gone to Detroit to visit her family. I was drinking heavily. We had a fight and I went to a hotel. I took two six packs with me. I got drunk. I was in my underpants. I went out in the hallway and closed the door to the room. I passed out, blacked out. I came to in the hotel lobby, in my underpants, asking the hotel clerk for my room key. There I was, practically naked. My God! What was wrong with me? I knew then that I was an alcoholic.… After that night in Detroit I knew I couldn’t control it any longer. I called A.A. when we got home. I’ve been going ever since. That first year I went every night to a meeting.15

  Adult alcoholics have a higher potential for hitting rock bottom than most serious college drinkers because they are more likely to be formally connected to spouses, children, and jobs. Heavy-drinking college students may hit rock bottom if their partying results in dismissal from school or if their intoxication serves to distance them from parents, friends, or romantic partners. More commonly, according to my respondents, a dramatic decision to desist from further alcohol abuse occurs after a near-death experience. Mallory, an eighteen-year-old female, quit drinking after waking up in the hospital:

  Apparently I was very drunk because I actually got caught by the Resident Advisor of my floor. I was vomiting and they called the paramedics. From that point on I blacked out and I don’t remember anything. I woke up in the hospital at 5 in the morning requesting to go home. I felt like shit, they told me to drink water and sleep because my blood alcohol levels were extremely high. Late that afternoon I was discharged with a severe hangover. The benefit of that is that I have not consumed alcohol ever again. Also I have lacked the desire to do it anytime again. From that point on it has made me look harder at the things I put in my body and second guess the choice to go to the bars.… I did learn a lot of self-discipline that night.

  Mallory got scared sober. But things could have gone differently. Vomiting and blacking out are fairly normal outcomes for some college drinkers. What if the resident advisor hadn’t discovered Mallory? She might have died or she might have survived her toxic state and cursed her hangover the next morning, but wouldn’t have recognized the extent of her intoxication had she not been attended to by medical personnel. She might have continued her drinking career. As many of the current study’s drinking stories demonstrate, college drinkers often persist in their heavy consumption practices even after a troubling drinking episode. Why do they persist? To answer this question, we must return to some of the previous themes presented in the book.

  Why Do College Drinkers Persist?

  In the following section I will revisit some of the data from chapters 2 through 5 to lay out an argument about why some university students continue to drink even though it is common knowledge that frequent intoxication can present a variety of problematic outcomes. In general, I will argue that the practice of collective intoxication is loaded with emotional payoffs and satisfying interactions. This is not a new idea, but it is strangely absent from the massive body of theoretical and empirical studies of college alcohol use. On second thought, maybe this neglect of the pleasurable aspects of alcohol use is not so strange after all. With very few exceptions, scholars and social critics have used a pathological frame to discuss the place of alcohol in our culture.16 The history of the study of alcohol use in America is largely the study of disease and destruction. But, while college drinkers subject themselves to a variety of risks (including disease and addiction), they are often enjoying themselves in the process. We can no longer afford to ignore the perceived “fun” that university alcohol abusers associate with collective intoxication. And there are other neglected aspects of the college drinking culture that are self-perpetuating. Specifically, I will argue that university students have constructed a culture around heavy drinking that creates the perception that they are protected from the crises related to intoxication. These reasons for the persistence of binge drinking will be presented as a series of three propositions supported by evidence from the current data.

  Proposition I

  College drinkers continue to seek intoxication, in spite of the risks associated with serial drunkenness, because they believe that they have developed systematic, socially facilitated strategies to avoid trouble.

  Of course, this proposition doesn’t describe all heavy drinkers. According to my research, some partiers appear to be looking for trouble. They like the unpredictability and chaotic scenes that alcohol can deliver. On the other hand, other student drinkers appear to have built damage-control mechanisms into their drinking process. These mechanisms were put on display in chapter 2 (“Getting Wasted”). First, in order to keep their binge drinking from affecting their academic pursuits, some students strategically plan their drinking episodes around their school obligations. While these strategies sometimes fail, some college drinkers attempt to avoid dramatic intoxication on nights preceding class days, examinations, and other school obligations. Tanya and her friends, for example, decided one quarter that Tuesday would become their primary drinking night during the week, since none of them had early classes on Wednesday. This plan may or may not have worked. Tanya and her drinking cohorts might get really ripped on a Tuesday and, like many of their binge drinking peers, might end up sleeping through their late Wednesday classes because they feel too horrible to attend them. The best-laid plans are often sabotaged by alcohol consumption. The point, however, is that college drinkers believe that they can work intoxication into their schedules without drastically harming their grade point averages. Many
believe that they are responsible drinkers despite periodic evidence to the contrary. This belief provides a sense of security that helps to facilitate patterned drunkenness. One of the oldest axioms in the sociology of knowledge was crafted by pioneering sociologist W. I. Thomas. According to Thomas, “If men define things as real, they are real in their consequences.”17 Thus, if college drinkers define themselves as responsible consumers of alcohol, this self-definition will lead to persistence, even when troublesome outcomes seem to contradict that image.

  Moreover, the college drinking culture is full of folk strategies and supportive mechanisms that are used—with varying degrees of success—to limit the negative consequences of intoxication. To highlight these strategies, let us return again to the “Intoxication Management” section of chapter 2. One method of avoiding extreme drunkenness and alcohol-related sickness is the use of dietary supplements. Some respondents, in fact, reminded one another to never drink on an empty stomach, to consume food during the drinking process, and to drink large quantities of water during and after the drinking episode to avoid extreme dehydration. These methods for muting the effects of alcohol appear to have some empirical support. Apparently, eating does slow down the intoxication process, especially if the drinker consumes foods that are high in protein, fatty foods, and high-carbohydrate items.18

  Another strategy aimed at keeping intoxication to a manageable level is the buzz check. During the typical buzz check, college drinkers have an internal dialogue with themselves about their state of intoxication. This conversation involves an assessment of how drunk they currently perceive themselves to be and whether or not it makes sense to consume more. Sometimes the buzz check is a solitary activity. In this case, the drinker often has a predetermined sense about how he or she wants the buzz to feel. This twenty-two-year-old male respondent, for example, knows exactly what kind of drunk he wants to be: “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.” In other instances, the buzz check requires a collective effort. Although checking in on the intoxication of drinking partners appears to be all too rare (there will be more on this point later), some codrinkers intervene when they believe that their cohorts are drinking outside of their safety zone. In short, college drinkers have developed a variety of methods to give themselves the perception that they are somewhat insulated against the potential risks of heavy drinking.