I’ll admit it. I’m a lowly freshman. In the past three weeks, I’ve managed to adjust to my new life full of dining hall delicacies and communal bathrooms, but one aspect of student life continues to baffle me. What is the appeal of binge drinking?
Let me preface this seemingly overly judgmental editorial with something: I have no problem with social drinking whatsoever. Believe me, I have my own share of drunken memories. Where I come from, alcohol is not usually the main event planned for the evening; while there may be alcohol at a party, there tends to be other things going on, such as music, conversation and even dancing. Although I don’t drink at all anymore (for a variety of reasons), I’ll be the first one to say that being a little tipsy can certainly make such a night more enjoyable.
With that said, I cannot conceive why anyone would, night after night, drink for the sole purpose of being so utterly trashed that you puke, pass out and don’t even get the chance to laugh about it with your buddies the next day because none of you can remember a damn thing! I am not attempting to dictate how you should live your own life. So long as you don’t actually puke on me, I couldn’t care less what you do. I am simply curious as to why people drink to the point that they’re incapable of having (what I would consider to be), any kind of fun? Granted, once in a while you drink too much and end up sick, but after a few times, wouldn’t you realize your limits and know better? Apparently not.
I’ve never had the privilege of being around so many otherwise promising individuals than those at UM. The very first Friday night of the semester, a certain fraternity member pitched his house to a bunch of guys that I was with: “We have binge drinkers here. Join this frat because, we, uh, yeah, we drink a lot here.” If that’s not an incentive, I don’t know what is. Along similar lines, I’ve met individuals who purposely drink too much so that if they happen to hook up with several random guys in the span of twenty minutes, they have a ready-made excuse in the morning.
If anyone has any insight regarding this truly perplexing behavior, feel free to enlighten the rest of us.
Alicia Kelman can be contacted at Bubbles356@hotmail.com.