I don’t drink.
First, a word on terminology: when I mention “drinking” in this column, I mean drinking for the purpose of getting drunk. I don’t mean relaxing with a nice glass of wine or having a beer with friends during the game. I mean getting hammered. Smashed. Shitfaced.
It seems as though half of the college population sees class, personal development, and social activities only as interruptions in between opportunities to get drunk. Every weekend, I end up walking by Anderson Hall and seeing a group of obnoxious frat boys and sorority girls jamming themselves into cars so they can go get smashed. I’ll get onto the shuttle bus with a friend and there are “pre-gamed” idiots screaming their heads off about nonsense that is absolutely hysterical to them in their messed-up mindsets, but annoys the hell out of everyone else around them.
To be sure, I have had fairly negative personal experiences with drunks. My drunk ex-roommate once spat up little chunks of vomit onto some of my books while on his way to the bathroom. A random drunkard last week randomly pushed her way into the room where friends and I were talking and spilled her life troubles to me. When I challenged her assumptions about drinking, she was so distraught that she was on the verge of punching me. This is seriously what you drinkers consider fun, escapist recreation?
Invariably, when I speak to people who do drink, they tell me that they enjoy getting drunk because it helps them escape from life. They usually tend to dislike their lives. Whether it’s problems with family or friends, a bad class, boyfriend problems, or whatever else — they drink to get away from it. This explanation makes sense: I cannot envision a person drinking who truly enjoys being herself and is comfortable in her own skin or with her own life.
A few may say it is for the state of uninhibitedness, but to what end? I’m uninhibited in my life anyway — because I’m comfortable in my own skin. So to claim it’s valid to drink because it makes you in uninhibited only begs the question of why a person can’t be uninhibited without being drunk. Does the drinking make one’s insecurities go away? Of course not: it only masks the deeper problems. With this thought in mind, you’ll forgive me if the inevitable reaction of “God, Alex, stop hating on people who know how to have a good time!” doesn’t fly with me. I know how to have a good time. I just don’t need to totally abandon my judgment and reason to do so. When I see some hapless drunkard shipped back to the university in a transport, or hear about sex that a person wishes she hadn’t had, or a person writhing around on the dirty bathroom floor, desperately vomiting into the toilet, what am I supposed to think? “Good party, man!” Are you kidding me?
To people who know me, I’m seen as a bit eccentric. And I’ll be the first to admit that I am. People have asked me if I’m drunk or high literally dozens of times, and the answer has always been and always will be an unequivocal no: I am simply comfortable in my own skin. What do I need alcohol for when I have a guiding life philosophy that lets me live happily? People who drink should try to find a philosophy of their own beyond instant gratification.
Alex Knepper is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a classical liberal columnist for The Eagle. You can read him at edpage@theeagleonline.com.
