Chances are I wouldn't, because countless studies show that despite all kinds of preventative tactics, warnings, and threats, many college students still drink too much. Can you blame them? It's almost a rite of passage, handed down generation after generation. I know from her journals that my grandma partied her ass off at UC Berkeley from 1926-'28, and then partied even harder at UCLA. I followed in her footsteps over half a century later, partying my ass off at the University of Oregon until academic suspension found me partying even harder at Arizona State.
Your college years are like practice years, the first and last time in your life that you have carte blanche to act like a goddamn baboon and remain cute and cherubic in the process. But in the spirit of the Faces and Ron Wood wishing that he knew what he knows now when he was younger, I'll present you with some facts I didn't have back then. Consider them however you will.
Fact: You're surrounded by binge drinkers.Every couple of years the pointy-headed researchers at Harvard conduct a survey tracking the rise of binge drinking during college years. Officially, binge drinking is defined as the consumption of five or more drinks in a two-hour period for men and four or more in the same time period for women, at least once or twice in two weeks. Of 10,000 students surveyed at 119 colleges in 2001 for a study published in the March 2002 issue of the Journal of American College Health, 44 percent were classified as binge drinkers. While the number may be alarming to some--parents, educators, and addiction counselors--it really doesn't seem all that different from what I see every night at the local bars. The difference, of course, is that what looks cute in youth appears hard, grizzled, and just plain stupid in maturity. If alcoholism runs in your family history, maybe you might want to ignore this partial permission slip, because if you start off binging you'll likely keep binging after graduation, right on through your first couple of jobs, partners, and DUIs. To see the full study, go to www.hsph.harvard.edu/.
Fact: Your brain starts dying at 20.This is not an effect of alcohol, but physiology. Twenty is the age when brain cells begin to die off, curbing the thrill-seeking urge first and foremost, remarkably. If you become a binge drinker in the sweet bloom of youth, before your brain alights on its death march, chances are four times more likely that you'll become an alcoholic later in life, whereas if you wait until you're 21, the statistics dwindle considerably. But where's the fun in that? Reading that your brain already has one foot in a bucket and the other on a banana peel should prove motivation enough to get shit-faced every single night like there's no tomorrow.
Fact: Leave the fucking "hair of the dog" theory to the dogs.In my 22-year reign as the Queen of Binge Drinking, I never once subscribed to the theory that having a beer in the morning is a cure-all for the previous night's debauchery. Take some fucking vitamins instead or just suffer, you baby. American Lit 101 tells you in so many words "the road to Hell is paved with stuffed dogs" (Bill to Jake in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises--a book you'll come to hate until you read it again at the mid-point of your life). "Hair of the dog" is for wimps and that's all there is to it.
Fact: If you think your girlfriend's cool because she can match you drink for drink, you might be helping her to an early grave.As women strive for equality, drinking can't help but be included. This is all fine so long as the binge drinking stops with graduation. The problem is, it doesn't, because once we're in the work force, women must socialize and bond with co-workers and the common ground for doing so is often set in situations that involve the consumption of alcohol. Because women metabolize alcohol differently and much slower than men, it's no wonder that recent reports show that more and more women are dying from cirrhosis of the liver and pancreatic cancer in their late 30s and early 40s. What a sad statistic that is, given that women are succumbing just as their lives are truly beginning.
Fact: Beer bongs are fun, time saving, and risky.If your aim is to get drunk fast, a beer bong (crafted from a funnel-like container and a garden hose) is your best friend. A pint of beer can be consumed relatively taste-free in less than five seconds once you learn to relax, open your throat, breathe through your nose, and swallow at the same time. All this economy of time, though, could set you up for a life-threatening bout of alcohol poisoning, as you never know until it's too late whether or not you've had too much. And don't expect your drunken friends to know either--I remember a bunch of us standing around our friend as he convulsed on the ground after too much beer bonging. Our laughter soon turned to disgust, as we were sure he was a big fat faker. He wasn't.
Fact: An open window is not a chair.This fact is not so much about common sense as it is about the roar of laughter and the thud your skull makes as it hits the pavement. The from-the-ass-up part of your body is much heavier than the lower part of your body and when sitting in a windowsill, or atop a balcony railing, holding a plastic cup in one hand means you're going over and down the minute someone cracks a joke. And people will laugh uproariously for a few more minutes until they realize your hilarious back flip was not a party trick.
And finally,
Fact: Bon Scott and John Bonham died so we'd all remember to turn our friends onto their stomachs when they pass out.When surrounded by tens of thousands of peers, there's absolutely no reason why people should die from choking on their own vomit. Take a second or two to roll that snoring, stinking sod over and you could save a life.
