*AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is intended to be a piece of satire. There is far more to college life than simply getting drunk on the weekends, and this article merely intends to point out how senseless the drinking culture at BC really is.
What did I do last weekend, you ask? I got drunk. I got trashed. I got sloshed, boozed, hammered, wasted, sauced, liquored up, ripped, wrecked, plastered, snockered, magoogled, blasted, spifflicated, jazzed, zonked, stewed, tanked, trollied, razzled, goosed, guttered, blootered— who even knew there were so many fun synonyms for what I was? Point being, my weekend was centered upon getting intoxicated. As was my weekend before. And my weekend before that. And my weekend before that.
Why do I do it? Why does the predominant aim of my weekly reprieve from classes become this taxing indulgence in which I recreationally depress my behavioral inhibitory centers, cavort about campus making poorly rationalized decisions, and wake up feeling like I spent the night with my ear pressed against a subwoofer at a discotech? Here are just a few reasons why I routinely ingest alcohol (booze, brew, hooch, sauce, goon, lunatic soup, giggle juice…) every weekend:
Everyone else is doing it. When another weekend rolls around, the urgency to become inebriated as quickly as possible becomes almost palpable. It’s usually about 3pm on Friday when the tweets start: “last class of the day. can’t w8 2 get SliZzArD 2nite!!!!! #BlackOut #ShotsOnShotsOnShots.” As I am a sheep and a hopeless victim to societal influence I, too, feel that urgency. I get crunk on weekends; therefore, I am.
All my friends drink. When the weekend commences with your group excitedly discussing pregames and party options, no one wants to be the one to timidly suggest a girl’s night in watching mind-numbingly-banal-yet-oh-so-enjoyable rom coms and giving each other back massages. Abstaining from alcohol while all your friends are going shot for shot means a night of designated photographer duties and the exasperation that comes with having to coax a pack of stumbling, giggling drunkards from party to party. If you can’t beat them, you’ll inevitable join them.
I don’t want to have to justify why I’m not drinking. Staying in for the night, for whatever reason, is always seen as anomalous—and therefore questionable—behavior. Why aren’t I going out? Am I sick? Depressed? A recluse with a social calendar as active as a shuffleboard court? Going out seems easier than having to explain why, when Friday night arrives, I would rather stay in bed spooning with my laptop than pouring liquor down my throat and wobbling down Comm Ave in a pair of heels.
I can’t handle parties sober. I’ve tried. I’ve gone off campus before with a clear head and full control of my faculties and I really found it difficult to enjoy myself. When everyone else around you is all aboard the Booze Bus and you’re the sole occupant in Sober City, every slurred shriek, every inappropriate touch, every drunken sway seems magnified by your sequestering sobriety, forcing you to go though the night with an deep, unshakable irritation towards every drunken body around you.
It feels like the only way to reward myself after a tough week. Yes, I could get myself some ice cream from White Mountain and pop in a movie, but when I hear the squeals and laughter emanating from the Mods through my window, I can’t help but feel like I’m doing it all wrong. Just finished my American Lit paper? I should take a shot for every page I wrote! Finally done with my internship? That deserves a bottle of wine to my face! I have become hardwired to believe that, when it comes to gratifying myself, the best way to do so is through liquid impairment.
I need it to be comfortable interacting with others. Approach me sober, and I will most likely engage you in a stilted conversation about work and classes that will leave us both feeling wearied and vaguely uncomfortable. Approach me after a few drinks, and you will find that I’ve been transformed from a socially maladroit caterpillar into a captivatingly verbose butterfly, able to chat the ear off of everyone and anyone about any number of subjects. After drinking, I’m suddenly more personable, more engaging, and the thought of conversing with a stranger doesn’t send me into heart palpitations.
I feel capable of doing things I wouldn’t do sober. If you dared me to say hi to the cute boy from my Spanish class on a weekday, I’d proclaim that I’d sooner dip my face in a vat of hot oil. And yet, when I spot him at City Side while I’m nursing my (fourth) vodka sour, I find myself not only having the courage to say hi to him, but to coyly proceed to dance up on him/demurely make out with him on the dance floor. With a little liquor courage running through my veins, consequences become nonexistent and possibilities become endless.
I am in college and drinking feels like what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve seen the movies. College is supposed to be the wildest time of my life. Every beer pong tournament I don’t attend and every Mod rager I skip out on feels like a quintessential piece of my college experience that I am denying myself. After all, my time in college is not measured by the connections I forge and the passions I realize, but by the beers I successfully chug through a funnel, right? Despite all the debilitating hangovers, all the alcohol-fueled confrontations that tested my friendships, all the injudicious decisions I’ve made under the influence that left me paralyzed with shame on Sunday morning, I continue to drink because, to me, if I am not drinking, then I’m not making the most of my four years.
Photo Sources:
http://travelcostamesa.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/girls-drinking-wine-sm.jpg
http://wineportfolio.com/c/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/7648251_print.jpg