Like it or not, college life and drinking often go hand in hand. So what do you do, or think, or say when your own baby is soon to enter that four-year phase of alcohol meets academia? I guess I’ve got a year and a half to come up with answers before my daughter leaves our cozy nest.

When I think back to my own college experience, the images that come to mind include lush green quads and the boundless energy of the students walking across them, the classes filled with youthful, eager faces (okay, not all were so eager) and most certainly, the rousing football games with pitchers of bloody marys, the games of quarters and cheap beer, and the colorful jello shots that were a main attraction at many a late-night party.

Do I tell my daughter that nearly every night of the week, starting on tuesday, my crew of friends and I had a different bar we’d frequent once our studies were put to bed?

Times are different now. The legal drinking age isn’t 18, like it was when I was in college, and it seems that any level of moderation went out the window with the younger drinking age. Binge drinking is up. So are incidents of sexual abuse, drunk driving, assault and death. (For a more elaborate list, check out A Snapshot of Annual High-Risk College Drinking Consequences.)

“On average, college students in the U.S. purchase an estimated 430 million gallons of alcoholic beverages, including 4 billion cans of beer annually,” reports an article titled, How Much Drinking is too Much for Students? in Marshall University’s newspaper.

Those are pretty astounding numbers.

So I’ll just have to hope that when my kid goes off to school, she’ll use her brain both in class and at parties. It’d be naive to think that her college experience will be alcohol-free. And that’s okay. I hope.

by Maura Kelly

The first time I got drunk was during a New Year’s Eve party my parents
threw when I was a kid. I stole three unattended glasses of red wine and
secretly gulped them down while sitting underneath the kitchen table. Less than an hour later, my Dad tells me, I passed out in the middle of the living room, snoring.

I was 3 years old.

Getting my lips on booze was an easy thing to do in my Irish
immigrant family. As a kid, I sipped the foam off the top of my dad’s
beers, or sneaked slurps of his favorite drink, gin and tonic. I liked
to surreptitiously fill up on ignored champagne during weddings and
holiday parties. More than anything else, I craved the giddiness the
bubbly affected in me.

Though I was usually able to keep my habit a secret, I unintentionally outed myself when I was a high school sophomore, the day a distant relative got married. During the reception, as I table-hopped looking for flutes filled with toasting fluid, I introduced myself to an older man. The stranger was so friendly that I asked him if he’d give me his champagne. He not only obliged but poured me my own glass of red wine. When he saw how quickly I drank the stuff, he poured me another and another.

Trying to consume as many as possible before our transgression was
detected, I drank furiously until, a few Zinfandels in, I wondered why
my head didn’t feel connected to my body anymore. I glanced down to look
for my nose, which I was sure had fallen off and was mingling with the
leftover scraps of filet mignon and baby potatoes on the plates in front
of me.

I excused myself in alarm to go to the ladies’ room. But my aunt,
unaware that I was drunk, intercepted me, dragged me to the dance floor
and forced me to do the Chicken with her. Eager to appear normal, I
wiggled my butt as hard as I could — so hard, in fact, that I lost my
balance and plowed headfirst into the dance floor.

Following my performance, I passed out in a private room. After my
dad found me there, he told me we were going home. I stumbled out to his
car, sat in the passenger seat and threw up in his lap before he even
started the engine.

In front of my dad, I feigned shame about what I’d done, but the
next day I bragged to my friends about it. Barfing meant I’d been really
wasted, and I thought that was as cool as sneaking cigarettes in the
school bathroom. Of course I was getting drunk in non-family
settings by that point, too, and generally doing my best to develop a
wild reputation. Every once in a while when I was intoxicated I did
something really dangerous, like drunk driving or walking along the
railing of a third-story porch. But I thought those things, while
regrettable, added to my tough-girl legend.

My boozing increased exponentially during four years at an Ivy
League college. I was never competitive about grades or
extracurriculars, but I was competitive about partying. As an undergrad,
I spent most of my hours getting intoxicated or recovering from a
hangover. By the time I graduated, I was getting drunk at least three or
four times a week. Most boozing nights, I would have at least eight
or nine before I started to lose count. Wild Turkey and Diet Coke — a Diet Turkey — was my cocktail of choice
since the alcohol content was high, the calories were low and it went
down fast. But I also drank  just about anything I could get my hands on except beer, because it never
messed me up fast enough.

One night, a little more than a year after I had finished college,
I did something I had done a number of times already: Inebriated, I took
home a stranger I met in a bar. (I hooked up drunkenly as an undergrad
all the time, but my campus was so small it was almost impossible to
find someone I didn’t know.) The next morning, when the guy left my
Adams Morgan apartment, I figured I’d never have to see him again. But
he got my number from information and called every night for a week.
When I wouldn’t pick up his calls or ring him back, he started coming to
my window at night and screaming my name from the sidewalk. After a few
nights I was unsettled enough to pick up the phone the next time he
began leaving a message and ask him to please leave me alone. He
repeatedly asked why I had acted so passionately that night, angrily
resisting the explanation that I had done so primarily because I’d been
blind drunk. Luckily, after we hung up I never heard from him again.

Though that incident seriously spooked me, I decided the problem
was him, not me. So I didn’t change my ways. My next significant
and inevitable scare came when I was 25. Around 10 p.m. one Saturday, I
went to an open-bar party for a friend. The next thing I remember, it
was Sunday afternoon and I was lying in my West Village apartment in my
underwear. It seemed clear a visitor had spent the night with me, and my
apartment door was unlocked, as if a person without a key had let
himself out. Later that afternoon, after I had tried for hours to dredge
up any memory of what had happened, I started phoning friends to see if
anyone knew what I had done. No one was surprised I couldn’t recall
much. They were used to my blackouts, which had been happening regularly
since college. Only one friend knew anything: She had watched me getting
into a cab with a guy she had never seen before.

Another friend — who was not that much of a drinker — happened to
call that day and was shocked when I told her about the mystery du jour.
”I’ve been volunteering with a rape crisis hotline and it sounds like
you’re a rapist’s ideal target,” she said. “Are you sure you weren’t
attacked last night?”

Though I thought she was overreacting, her response helped me realize
my behavior was not cool, and potentially life-threatening. I was lucky
the guy, like all the other unknowns I have been alone with over the
years, wasn’t a rapist or a murderer.

The thing that finally made me turn a corner was telling my therapist that I had never kissed a
guy sober in my life. Not in my whole life, and I was in my
mid-twenties. The fact had never shocked me until that moment, when I
said it out loud. While alcohol might have helped me get physically
intimate, it was preventing me from getting emotionally intimate and
from developing into a mature, healthy, normal adult. I always thought
alcohol made me sexy, powerful, brave and interesting. But I started to
realize that more than anything, it made me ugly, weak, cowardly and
boring. It made me a loser. And that reality was scarier than the threat
of death.

So the last time I got drunk was March 3, 2001. Have I missed it? Sure, it was difficult to get through the first few parties without it.
And often, when I feel frustrated or unhappy, I am tempted to whiskey my
woes away. But then I realize a vicious hangover will only make my
dissatisfaction with life worse, and that a meaningless sexual encounter with a stranger will not provide happy memories. It’s also been great to find that kissing and all that goes with it is actually better when I’m
sober. Though I never thought I would, I feel more in control of myself,
my prospects and my experiences now that I’m not drinking.

I desperately wish I could be a kid again and do it all over.
Instead of sharpening my drinking skills during my young adulthood, I
would have read more poetry, written more short stories, acted in more
plays, maybe learned to play the guitar. Maybe I would have fallen in
love. And I often wonder how different my writing career might be if I
had never had the handicap of a heavy boozing habit.

Getting wasted isn’t cool. It’s not courageous or tough or
rebellious or bold or beautiful. More than anything else, it’s a waste
of your time and your youth.

Maura Kelly recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, the New York Observer, The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications.  She writes a dating blog for Marie Claire www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/.

(*A longer version of this essay was originally printed in The Washington Post in 2002.)

by Susan La Scala Wood

If you’ve never admitted you’re an alcoholic, does that mean you never were? I only ask because back in my college days (okay, and those last two years of high school, too), I may have been known to “throw back a few.” I’m talking the cheap stuff (usually a choice between Tickled Pink champagne, Captain Morgan and Natural Light beer), but only because we couldn’t afford the good stuff.

Not that we would have known the difference. Back then, it wasn’t about savoring a fine wine so much as it was about getting shit-faced (for lack of a better term).

I say “we” because drinking always happened in a group. “We” decided what “we” would drink not to mention who would buy it (which generally involved a silky blouse and a boatload of makeup). “We” was comfortable. If we got drunk, got sick and woke up not really remembering a whole lot, we did it together. And not one of us ever raised the concern that we might be alcoholics. After all, don’t alcoholics drink alone, in the coat closet, the basement, the laundry room? And, it’s not like any of us could have downed a fifth of vodka like Meg Ryan did in “When a Man Loves a Woman.” We couldn’t even imagine it.

No. We needed mixers, big time. Plus, we could stop. At any time. Well, unless we were at a party and we spotted our crush. Then, stopping might be a little out of our control. But otherwise, sure, we could slam on the brakes, put the cap back on the wine cooler and go on home.

So were we alcoholics? Some might say “yes.” Some might say “no.” I guess what I say is, “Does it matter?” Eighteen was half my life ago. I’m a very different drinker now, and I didn’t get there by standing in front of an audience of alcohol abusers, abstaining entirely, or following twelve steps. That’s not to say I didn’t have a problem with alcohol. I think not remembering the events of one night is a problem. And I’d admit to blanking many more times than that. But somehow I changed course, we changed course, without trying too hard. I think what happened is we grew up. We realized we didn’t like feeling like crap, saying stupid things, having regrets. We realized a fine wine paired with the right cheese beats beer through a funnel any day. We realized who we were and that we no longer needed a numbing security blanket.

I never admitted to being an alcoholic, and I’m not sure that means I never was. But where I am in my life right now, I’m not sure I care.

Susan La Scala Wood is an award-winning advertising copywriter. She is currently working on her second novel, and has high hopes for getting this one published. If she does, she will celebrate with a bottle of Prosecco, with friends, of course.

by Laurie Lindeen

I grew up in the 1970’s in Madison, Wisconsin–number one party town in the “If it feels good, do it” state. Being able to drink with the big boys was a cultural expectation:

“So here’s to sister Laurie, sister Laurie, sister Laurie. Here’s to sister Laurie she’s with us right now. So drink motherfucker, drink motherfucker, drink motherfucker…” At sixteen, I was doing everything within my power not to puke up the Pabst Blue Ribbon I guzzled in front of everyone who was anyone in my high school. The beer tasted like it smelled, and I wasn’t good at drinking yet, so my stomach lurched and my throat constricted. But I couldn’t boot in front of everyone; I’d never live that one down.

By the time I was in college, I had gotten pretty good in the drinking arena. I threw up a lot in the dormitory bathroom in the wee hours after overdrinking, and that probably saved me from alcohol poisoning.

After I dropped out of college for the umpteenth time, the only job that jived with my drinking habit was to play in a rock and roll band (of course there were many other forces driving me toward that career choice).

“You mean you’ve never tried Jagermeister?”  My bandmates and I stared at the British journalist in utter disbelief.  Someone–a drinker, no less–who’d never tried our black gold, our show business enabler, our nightcap du jour, Jagermeister?

That was then, this is now:  I’m the author of the memoir, Petal Pusher, a wife, and the mother of an eleven-year-old boy. I hold an MFA in creative writing, which I now teach.  I don’t get around much any more by choice and have tempered my wayward drinking.

Last spring, I was a literary guest at a charming small town Midwestern university. In the company of two talented writers—one, a poet, the other, a writer of fiction–we read, discussed the writer’s life, and spoke to classes. The college was old enough and the town small enough to inspire that feeling of being immersed in another era–a feeling I love.

After a fun day spent talking shop and fielding questions by on-fire up-and-coming writers, we’d unwind over a beer and cheese fries at said town’s campus watering hole, which also happened to be a sports bar during the ever-popular NCAA basketball tournaments.

As night two came to a close, and we were all scheduled to return to our homelands the following morning, one of our hosts muttered, while looking over our shoulders and rooting for Memphis, “I know this great seedy bar downtown.”

Maybe it was the sports bar thing, or the old rocker in me, or the tired busy mom sprung loose and basking in the glow of professional attention that made the idea of a seedy bar sound appealing. It had been some time since I’d been taken to a good seedy bar; I used to love them for the camaraderie amongst the regulars, as well as for the jukebox and décor.

It should be noted that I adore alcohol and nicotine, and for those reasons, I keep a tight reign on myself a majority of the time.

But that night I told myself, “When I drink, it’s not like I make bad choices that jeopardize my relationships, or anything.” (Never mind my weak justification, all that really needs to be said here is yes indeed, I was game.)

After endless glasses of strong ale and half a pack of American Spirits, our once high-brau/low-brau literary/cultural conversation became increasingly snarky and unintelligent. Fittingly the bar was named after an obscure lit. snob villain — was it Grendel?  And thankfully, it closed.

Safely re-deposited at our “guest” dorm,, I offered a hyper-enunciated “Goodnight” to my colleagues that I hoped said, “Really, I’m not that wasted,” and I closed my door behind me.

I couldn’t make it to the toilet fast enough. A silver pipe attached to the throne jutted out of the wall, my knees dug into institutional bathroom tile, and I heaved and hurled off and on until early morning. When the polite graduate student who would be driving me to the airport knocked on my door, I was still shaky and uncertain as to whether or not I could hold it together for the forty-minute trip.

Ghostly, dizzy, and still churning, I gripped the dashboard. After five minutes I rasped, “Can you please pull over now?” How cute is that: Mrs. Roper ruping on the side of the road after tying one on in a seedy bar with a pretentious name. This scene occurred twice.

The rosy shades of embarrassment and self-disgust brought color back to my face and I apologized and over-joked for the remainder of the ride. Poor guy—my driver was so cute; he actually tried to make me feel better by claiming that he’d been in the same predicament earlier that week.

After checking in for my flight, trembling and pale, I administered to myself a steady stream of Tums, Pepto, a plain McDonald’s cheeseburger and diet Coke, just like I had in the old days.

By boarding time, my crisis was under control, though I looked and smelled like a middle-aged celebrity DUI mug shot minus the celebrity.

Lesson learned: There’s nothing cute, charming, or witty about a middle-aged drunk writer. Sad, yet comforting realization: I don’t still have it in me.

In spite of the fact that I feel like I’m twenty-two on the inside–all wild, enthused, and energetic–I’m not. And I can’t party like I used to. That, I conclude with wary resignation, is a very good thing.

Laurie Lindeen is the author of Petal Pusher, A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story. She was the lead singer of Zuzu’s Petals. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone’s anthology Altarockorama and the online magazine, The Morning News. Find her on the web at www.laurielindeen.com