On Friday night, my roommate wakes me up as she walks into our room at 1 a.m.
“Sam’s super drunk and we think he’s going to throw up,” she mumbles, grabbing her extra trash can, “I’m getting him a bucket.” She leaves and I soon hear banging on the door next to mine, where the only nursing student on the floor lives. I groan and roll over.
Five minutes later, she’s back. “They called GERMS. He couldn’t stop puking, and he was like, getting more and more drunk. Alex was having to push him forward to throw up. They found someone else passed out in the hallway too, apparently.”
“Oh,” I say, “I guess GERMS had a busy night.”
We chuckle softly and I go back to sleep.
Myself, I don’t drink.
There’s no real reason. I guess alcohol’s just never appealed to me. Couple that with a friend group that calls a “party” sitting in someone’s basement playing board games and eating kettle corn, and my high school experience was markedly dry. I liked it that way, and since there was no pressure to change, alcohol was something I rarely thought about.
Many people seemed to assume that would change when I got to college, but my first Friday night at Georgetown, I stayed in my room and colored in an adult coloring book while my entire floor celebrated their parents’ departure by taking shots.
Despite the connotations of this unfortunate anecdote, I don’t consider myself to be antisocial. I’ve found a really great group of friends, some of whom share my views on alcohol, and some of whom don’t. I’m decidedly extroverted– I’m not alone all that much, and when I am, it’s mostly by choice. I’m not lonely here. I overshare, I yell in quiet rooms, I argue things I have no idea about. I put myself out there in almost every way I can.
But even so, I don’t go out much. In fact, the only party I’ve actually been to was Club Lau, if you can call something a party when it takes place in a library. When people ask about it, I say that I think most of the reason for that is my aversion to alcohol.
It isn’t just that I don’t drink it, necessarily. It’s that I feel awkward in a room where everyone’s drinking and I’m not. Alcohol leads to a certain behavioral pattern that makes me uncomfortable. Drunk men are more likely to be aggressive or predatory, which puts me on edge. I can’t stand the smell of vomit. The sober person at a party tends to become everyone’s mother, which isn’t a role I take to easily.
So I just don’t go out much.
But my roommate does, and she also doesn’t drink. She says she’s taken a shot or two before because “everyone was,” but she’s never had enough alcohol to feel anything. Still, she’s out most Friday and Saturday nights, coming home long after I’m asleep.
Why the difference?
I mean, neither of us really consume alcohol, right? Well, I realized, it isn’t about alcohol consumption itself. Nobody cares—probably, nobody knows—whether or not or how much you’re drinking at a party. A cup of water could just as easily be filled with vodka. (Xanax) A shot of coffee could be bourbon.
As I kept thinking, I started to realize that I’m the one who chose to color in the coloring book instead of going to the party. I’m the one who leaves the common room when a friend of mine stumbles in. I’m the one who rolls over and puts the pillow over my head when the ambulance is taking my friend away. They had never told me to leave. I decided that all on my own. Those choices were mine.
See, it doesn’t matter if you drink alcohol. It matters that you’re comfortable around it.
Personally, I don’t have much experience around drunk people, especially not drunk people my own age. It’s a bit of a mystical world for me, and as a consequence, it isn’t something I feel comfortable being around.
So now the question is, if I do want to go to more parties, where do I go from here? I mean, I don’t want to drink, and I’m going to stick to that for now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and change my mind, but I’m not the kind of person who does anything that I don’t want to do.
Perhaps what I really need to do is to bite the bullet and go to a party. It would probably do me some good to observe people—to watch them drink too much, drink just enough to have a good night, watch them not drink at all—and get more comfortable around alcohol. There’s no reason to avoid parties because I don’t like a component of them. Besides, I’m so loud and uninhibited as it is, maybe I can pass for being drunk either way.
Rebecca Zaritsky is a freshman in the College.
Just wanted to say, I’ve been out of college for a few years, but this was helpful. I’m a sheltered person who’s just starting to hang out with other adults who have been around alcohol for years. I am similarly uncomfortable. But, it’s my choice to make a stink or leave, just as you said. I want to try to be more comfortable around it, and let loose. That doesn’t mean I have to drink, just… let go of my prejudices a bit. Be more present rather than hung up on the ideas of things.
Thanks, Rebecca.