Current Events

Is It Possible To Have Fun Without Taking A Drink?

CHRISTINA TKACIK

I’m getting my Master’s degree at a university with a dry campus -- no booze in sight. Spring concerts, soccer games, orientations, all of these happen at the American University of Beirut … sober.

Being here is making me look back on my own college days and wonder: Are college kids back in the United States learning that the only way to have fun is if we’re drunk?

I graduated from the University of Virginia (“U-Va“), where legend has it that the school mascot, the wahoo, is a fish that can drink twice its own body weight. U-Va was, you might say if you were being honest, a bit of a party school -- as much as this will offend those who still refer to its founder as “Mr. Jefferson,” as though he will wake from the dead any second now and walk through the “Academical Village.”

At U-Va, we pre-gamed football games and we turned the annual Foxfield horse race into a regular lost weekend. I personally initiated a weekly “Get Trashed Tuesdays” night on my freshman hall, which should make my mama proud. I once saw a T-shirt that I believed summed up the general gestalt quite nicely: drink now, it warned, because once you graduate it’s just called alcoholism.

The T-shirts were right.

I kept drinking like a wahoo for three years and a few months after I picked up my diploma from U-Va in 2008. And then, like many alcoholics, I eventually realized I had to stop, and entered a 12-step program. The drinking was taking its toll on my body and my brain, and it was either keep drinking or face the consequences.

Today, I am three and a half years sober.

In sobriety, I began my master’s work in Beirut -- half a world away from U-Va. American University of Beirut (“AUB”) was founded by American missionaries in 1866 and, since its beginning, has been a dry campus. I didn’t think about this as I was preparing to move. Actually, I decided to move here while I was drunk.

Beirut has long had a reputation for its hedonistic and liquored-up nightlife. There’s even an ancient temple to Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, just a few hours away, at the famous ruins of Baalbek.

But once I moved to Beirut -- sober -- I found to my happy surprise that there’s also plenty of people here who don’t drink much, or at all. Part of it’s simply the absence of the hard-drinking, frat-dominated culture I knew as a college student. (There are no fraternities at AUB.)

A few restaurants in my West Beirut neighborhood don’t even serve alcohol -- some of them no doubt out of respect to their Muslim clientele, who are generally less likely to drink. Instead, people might have Arabic coffee, frozen mint lemonade or fresh carrot juice.

I regularly see students hanging out late at night on Bliss Street opposite campus -- eating ice cream, talking -- seemingly all of them sober. Not that I’m handing out breathalyzer tests, but no one’s screaming or puking. It’s a scene I’m not accustomed to among college students.

Last year, I attended the school’s annual spring festival, AUB Outdoors. The theme was “New York City,” and the music boomed from blocks away. By instinct, I braced myself for chaos, pushing, shoving, the general tomfoolery I’ve always associated with outdoor university events. Instead, I saw people eating and having fun, listening attentively to comedy routines and live music -- all, apparently, without the influence of alcohol.

There were no drunken frat guys whooping. Not one coed could be seen vomiting in the bushes, her mascara smeared down to her chin. No one was defacing school property, or using the recycling bin as a urinal. What was happening?

When I was an undergrad, all of my notions of having fun were tied up with drinking. To be sure, this stemmed from my own alcoholic tendencies, which made me see a bottle as the solution to any problem. But these tendencies took root and flourished in an environment where just about every school event was accompanied by Solo cups and at least a keg or two.

To be fair, U-Va tried. They hosted a special alcohol-free event called “HooFest.” Featuring “mocktails” and performances by a capella groups, it was organized to raise awareness about the importance of understanding blood alcohol content. I thought it sounded awful, and skipped it.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, nearly 40 percent of American college students have engaged in “binge drinking” in the past month -- that is, consumed four drinks within two hours. (I challenge scientists to put ankle monitors on a sample of U-Va students and tell me 60 percent don’t “binge drink” in a month.)

A 2008 survey -- coincidentally, the same year I graduated -- found that 20 percent of U-Va students had “serious problems with alcohol.”

Sounds right.

Early in my sobriety, I was hanging out with some sober friends on a Friday night. We’d just gone to a recovery meeting, then eaten dinner in Georgetown and were now cracking dirty jokes as we walked back to our cars. My new friends were hilarious. My stomach hurt from laughing so hard. I suddenly realized, it was the first time since high school I’d had this much fun without being drunk or high.

I didn’t even remember it was possible.

Now, I’m not necessarily advocating that U-Va or any other school go dry. God knows Mr. Jefferson might actually wake from the dead if I did. (He famously declared wine a “necessary of life.” Well, that and hair powder.) And AUB’s not perfect.

But I call on today’s undergrads to remember, as you’re enjoying the end of the semester and possibly checking your friends into the hospital later for alcohol poisoning … it really is possible to have fun without taking a drink.


Christina Tkacik is a writer and video producer in Beirut.

[Courtesy: Washington Post]
May 25, 2015
 

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