It seems that the Lehigh University Women’s Center  is taking an important stand, opening up a much-needed conversation about the pressures college-aged women sometimes feel surrounding alcohol, according to an article on the Lehigh Valley Live website.

A part of the university’s Women and Health Speakers & Events Series–and as a follow-up to the screening of the documentary Miss Representation, which addressed the pressures surrounding the ideal of successful women–the event focused on issues such as body image, the prominence of alcohol on campus, and why women are now choosing to consume hard liquor instead of beer.

Rita Jones, the Director of the Women’s Center, said the event was meant to offer a space for conversation, and that it did, as students and faculty in attendance spoke candidly about the pressures and effects of alcohol on women in Lehigh’s community.

Apparently, many women are opting to drink hard liquor because it has fewer calories, validating that body image and calorie counting are affecting women’s choices. Most students at the event agreed that the “loudest social voice on campus is often one advocating partying,” and that alcohol has become a “social crutch since ”there’s there is nothing to do at a party but drink.”

Some students suggested they’d like to see more non-alcohol activities on campus and explained that when libraries closes early, “it practically encourages students to go out and consume alcohol on the weekends.”

For student-athletes, those at the event said that their team’s longest meetings focused on discussions of dry policies, which determine the times athletes cannot consume alcohol before and after sporting events.

Kudos to Lehigh for bringing these issues about women and alcohol to light and offering students a chance to speak out. Let’s hope that other colleges and universities follow suit.

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In less than a week, my daughter will be off to college. Sitting on a beach chair a few weeks ago, her eyes glanced at her computer screen under the glare of the sun and the ocean only steps away. I assumed she was watching some incredibly gripping movie from which she couldn’t tear herself away. But when I inquired, she rolled her eyes and explained that she was watching an alcohol awareness video—a mandatory assignment for her university.

Despite the efforts made by educational institutions, new psychological research suggests that the pitfalls from all those jello shots and games of beer pong aren’t bad enough to make students stop drinking.

On the USA Today website, an article, “College Drinking is Liberating, and a Good Excuse,” reports on why the efforts to raise awareness are not working.

“We thought if we could demonstrate to students that their performance deteriorated under alcohol, they would be convinced that their alcohol consumption has put them at risk,” says psychologis E. Scott Geller, director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems at Virginia Tech. But “knowing that one is impaired, physically and even emotionally, did not seem to reduce alcohol consumption.”

Geller, who’s been studying alcohol awareness since the mid-1980s, states clearly that the alcohol education hasn’t worked. “We have shown in several studies that their intentions influence their behavior. If they intend to get drunk, it’s difficult to stop that.”

Going for the effects is what it’s all about. One student, Brandie Pugh, a senior at Ohio University, says in the article: “I think everybody’s aim is to get drunk on the weekend. It’s not about the taste of the alcohol. It’s about the effects of it. It’s about the lowered inhibitions.”

In another study, researcher Laina Bay-Cheng, an associate professor of social work at the University at Buffalo-State University of New York, found that when teenagers drink, they think they can use their intoxicated state as an excuse for their actions. Students in her focus groups–there were 97 teens ranging in age from 14 to 17–described alcohol as emboldening and said it offers “liquid courage,” a phrase other researchers also have cited. Colleges, she says, need to “acknowledge and reckon with” alcohol’s appeal.

According to Bay Cheng, another result of drinking is that it can be an excuse for young women to “act out being sexually assertive, carefree, liberated,” she explains. ”If you have sex, you’re a slut, and if you don’t, you’re a prude — but drinking allows you to do both. You can go out, get drunk, have sex and the next day say, ‘I’m still a good girl.’”

In the USA Today article, Pugh goes on to say that she has seen this scenario play out on her campus repeatedly: “‘I was drunk so I hooked up with that guy.’ ‘I was drunk so I missed my class this morning.’ ‘I was drunk so I got in a fight.’ If it’s something they’re not proud of, it gives them an excuse.”

After next Wednesday, I’ll hope from afar that my daughter doesn’t ever feel that she needs to use alcohol as an excuse for anything.

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By Annabelle Kathryn

“I don’t drink.” It’s a phrase I’ve imagined myself saying for the past two years, especially the morning after a particularly bad night, when I wonder if giving up drinking would ever be something I could actually do. Sometimes, I’d even practice it out loud, trying to get just the right inflection so it conveys just the right combination of aloof nonchalance and hard-earned knowledge. With those few words, I wanted anyone I’d met to know I wasn’t someone who’d never touched alcohol, or had gotten scared straight from just one night spent puking in the communal dorms at college. With that phrase, I wanted people to hear all the inherent subtext: that I wasn’t naïve. I’d had experiences.

But I always just sounded young and dumb, or self-conscious, so I’d shrug and head off to the bar and drink, where I’d usually black out, wonder if I had a problem, practice saying I don’t drink a few times, then start the whole cycle all over again.

It wasn’t until this year that I realized my drinking had moved past “kind of out of control” and towards “seriously fucked up.” I was drinking every night, blacking out at least once a week, and, on a few occasions, sneaking vodka into Sprite at work. And while I tried to justify it by all the mitigating factors that had recently occurred up in my life—in the past six months, I broke up with my boyfriend, had an abortion, sat by my mom’s hospital bed as she died of cancer, and, just two months after that, had to do the same for my grandmother—the fact was, I had a problem.

So I knew that I needed to eventually give up drinking for real, but didn’t feel any impetus from within to stop, which terrified me. If losing my wallet and my shoes and my jewelry and my iPhone all in one night hadn’t stopped me, if spraining my wrist hadn’t stopped me, if having unprotected sex that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy hadn’t stopped me—what would? Every time I’d go out, I’d feel an anticipatory sense of dread. Sometimes I went out almost hoping I’d wake up in a hospital, because then, at least the answer would be obvious.

But I didn’t. And as it was, the night I realized I needed to go to A.A. was pretty tame. I went to a friend’s house and drank a bottle of wine before meeting a guy who I desperately wanted to be my boyfriend for a third date at a bar.

I concentrated on acting sober. But from tripping on the step into the bar to talking too loudly to drinking two and a half vodka sodas before he even finished his first drink, I knew it wasn’t working. I realized he knew I was hammered, but I thought I had a shot with him, especially when he suggested we leave. I assumed that meant he wanted me to come home with him and when he didn’t, saying he had to get up early the next morning, I started sobbing. I felt rejected, alone. Drunk. I cried my way to the subway, took the wrong train and ended up in Queens instead of Brooklyn, where I lived and finally got home at four AM.

The next morning, I woke up, disappointed and exhausted and embarrassed and just done. It wasn’t the specifics so much as the utter, been there done that blaseness I felt from the core of my being. For the first time, I truly realized that this would keep happening and happening and happening unless I did something.

So I decided to go to a meeting, spending more time figuring out what to wear than I usually do when I’m going on a date. I decided I wanted to look very Mary Louise Parker in Weeds—a tough and sexy woman who always ends up in situations just beyond her control. I wore skinny jeans, an oversized white T-shirt with a nautical-striped scarf. Lots of leather bracelets. Leather jacket. Pink sunglasses. Marc Jacobs bag. Extra-large iced latte as a prop. I knew my posturing was both ridiculous and the only thing that would get me out the door.

I chose one that was far away from my neighborhood, arrived 15 minutes early, and froze at the door. I was terrified. I’ve interviewed A-list celebrities, traveled abroad on my own with just a plane ticket and a backpack, and have shown up on strangers doorsteps to exchange sex for coke, but a meeting in a church basement terrified me.

So I left, frantically searching for another meeting on my iPhone. I found one a few blocks down, and the same thing happened. I just couldn’t make myself go in. Which is why finally, on my third try, I ended up at a lesbian, transgender, and bisexual focus meeting. I’m none of those things, but, frustrated with my fear and the fact I’d wasted almost two hours, I forced myself to walk in and sit the fuck down.

And it was fine. It wasn’t earth shattering and it was mostly like how I’d imagined. Some hand-holding. A lot of gratitude. Coffee. I sat in the back and didn’t speak, but did listen.

And then I went to another meeting, and another. And it’s just the first week, only five meetings in—so I know I don’t know anything yet, not really. But the only thing I know is that I’m going to try to keep going—even if at first it takes a few outfit changes to actually get out the door.

This piece originally appeared on The Fix, a website about addiction and recovery. Annabelle Kathryn is the pseudonym for a writer living in New York City.

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For those of us who have watched–and enjoyed–the epic frat party film, Animal House, it’s easy to see that these boys are having one good, drunken time throughout. According to a recent study, the alcohol-induced male elation is not purely fictional.

The study, published in Biological Psychology, shows that men experience greater pleasure form drinking alcohol than women do. Apparently, liquor triggers the male brain to release a higher amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that causes euphoria and pleasure.

When the high subsides, however, it’s not all fun and beer pong. Researchers say that the additional dopamine may help expain why men, especially those who can hold their liquor, are twice as likely as women to become alcoholics.

“It’s not just that people who release more dopamine like it better,” says John H. Krystal, chair of the Yale University psychiatrity department and one of 11 authors of the study. “They also learn to want it more.”

On two separate days, the researchers tested how the brains of 21 young social drinkers reacted to alcohol. On one day, the men and women were given juice mixed with a tiny amount of alcohol. Then the researchers used PET scanners to measure the dopamine release in the subjects’ brain. They expected the effect to be minimal, Krystal says, and it was. But they wanted to control for the possibility that people would feel euphoric just because they thought they were getting drunk. On the second day, when the subjects were given stronger drinks, dopamine levels were higher–and the men’s brains released more than twice as much dopamine as the women’s.

The researchers’ goal is to develop ways to “damp down” dopamine release in the brains of people predisposed to alcoholism. With the use of medications and other treatments, young drinkers with a family history of alcoholism may be able to lessen their chances of becoming problem drinkers.

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This past weekend, I went back to my college with my husband and my three kids, who range in age from 7 to 13. I wasn’t coming for a reunion—just a vacation–but after the weekend was over, I understood why I had chosen to go to my twentieth college reunion (a year or two before) with friends rather than family.

At my 20^th reunion, I happily threw myself back into the spirit of camaraderie and drinks at my favorite dive bars. Going back with my family was a different matter.  I was cringingly aware of how on a college campus, alcohol is, seemingly, everywhere. Suddenly, Collegetown seemed to be just a collection of bars with a few stores sprinkled between them.

We went to a popular lunch spot on Friday before noon, and sat at a counter near the cash register. My 13 and 10-year-old daughters watched, wide-eyed, as fresh-faced girls who looked like they could be in high school ordered beer and sangria, waiting with sparkly-eyed anticipation for their drinks. The guys behind them, proudly wearing their Greek-lettered sweatshirts, ordered pitchers from the tap. “Are they allowed to drink?” my daughter asked. “What’s a growler?” my 7-year-old son asked.  I had no idea, but then I realized that it had something to do with the beers and taps and pitchers arrayed before us.

Um, see, I know we’ve been talking about this thing called the drinking age, but all that goes out the window in college. We went to visit a relative of ours at a neighboring college, who proudly showed us her fake id. Woops.

Sometimes, these issues just hit us in the face, whether we’re ready to talk to our kids or not. How can I talk about college drinking to my kids? How can I expain that sometimes, the drinking was fun. But for me, it got out of hand. Out of proportion. It became too central; too key.

I looked at that girl at the counter, waiting for her Friday-before-12 sangria, with a sparkle in her eye, and I saw myself at her age, saw the absurdity of letting life constrict down to a liquid in a bottle of a glass—as if that magic elixir could take away the doubts and uncertainties that go with approaching adulthood.

“Mom, that girl said the d word and the a word,” my son said. Later, in a parking lot, a guy let out a loud burp, much to my kids’ delight. Students clustered outside the downtown bars, smoking.

Smoking. Drinking. Burping. Cursing. After all those years of living at home, some of these kids are tasting freedom for the first time. Part of that is freedom to make bad decisions. These may be the only four years in a person’s life that they can really let loose. I didn’t say these things, but I will, when they’re older.

All these years later, as I explored the campus and the town with my children in search of wholesome activities, I realized there were plenty. The outdoor pursuits were endless—hiking, biking, kayaking, canoeing, running.  I dabbled in some. But why had I never ventured out to the Plantations, after my brief stint on the crew team freshman year. Why hadn’t I gone to the bird sanctuary, Sapsucker Woods? What peace I could have found there. I could have hiked to one of the many gorges and waterfalls when I felt anxious, instead of heading over to the campus pub.

“Dad; did you drink a lot in college?” the kids asked in the car, on the way home. I was relieved they didn’t ask me, because I’m not sure what I would have said. Should I have told them that I regret placing so much importance on drinking and serve myself up as a cautionary tale?  But what good are regrets? And, my warring mind says, I was learning important lessons–testing the boundaries as I never did in adolescence, experimenting, learning my limits.

Or should I have fudged the truth and said I really didn’t drink that much at all?

For now, I’m choosing a middle path. We talk about what we see, alcohol-wise, and we talk about peoples’ choices and how those choices determine the course of their lives. The truth is, I don’t think I would have earned a spot at such a great university if drinking had been central to my high school life.

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Last week, my daughter went to a frat party while visiting a friend at college. When I asked her the following morning what people were drinking, she told me that they’d been drinking Four Lokos, also known as “blackout in a can.”

It seemed like only minutes after she told me, Four Loko and the other companies that have been producing alcoholic beverages combining alcohol and caffeine were plastered all over the headlines.

In his “Tipsy Diaries” column, Frank Bruni described the beverage as a “flavored malt liquor that has caffeine as well as alcohol: a double whammy that permits its consumers — users might be a more felicitous term — to keep drinking longer and later than they would normally be able to in their inebriated states.”

Explained that way, it doesn’t sound so bad. But in actuality, Four Loko and its similar “cousins” revealed their dangerous impact when they caused several incidents in which “dozens of college students have been treated for alcohol poisoning after overindulging in Four Loko and similar products, and several states and universities then banned the drinks,” according to a piece in the Washington Post.

New York State Senator Chuck Schumer described the drinks as “dangerous and toxic brews.” And subsequently, the Food and Drug Administration deemed the alcoholic energy drinks unsafe and illegal.

I don’t know about you, but I’d say that caffeine has its role, and alcohol another. And now it seems that never the two shall meet–legally, anyway.

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“Red red wine, go to my head, make me forget…”

There are drinking songs—songs that make you want to drink—and then there are songs that remind you of certain nights, certain drinks.

Every time I hear UB40’s song, “Red Red Wine,” I’m transported back to a night, freshman year of college, when the guy who lived across the hall from me and I decided to play “drinking” Trivial Pursuit (yes, this was back in the 80s).  Our drink of choice: a gallon jug of Ernest & Julio Gallo red.

I was pretty good at Trivial Pursuit, but there were still lots of stumpers like: Name the dancers on the Jackie Gleason show (Answer: The June Taylor dancers).

By the end of a few hours or so, my roommate walked in and found four legs, twined together. Turns out we were under the bed, making out while “Red Red Wine” looped over and over on the record player (yes, that’s how old I am).

We want to know…what’s your favorite drinking song? A literal drinking song, or a song that makes you think about drinking.

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by Katherine, college student

It’s true that alcohol is a part of college for many people.  Whether you attend a wet campus or a dry one, it doesn’t really matter—most students will have had experience with alcohol by the time they graduate. As a college student myself, the thing I look forward to each week is going out on the weekends with my roommates and friends. It’s the social aspect I value, not the alcohol, but alcohol generally accompanies our evenings.

Throughout college, I’ve always considered my immediate group of friends to be a pretty healthy, responsible bunch. We drink socially, but in moderation. We all value our grades, health and jobs, so finding a balance is important. I remember being nervous freshman year about the decision to join a sorority because of the media stereotypes of dumb and skinny “sorority girls” who meticulously count calories and drink heavily. The group of friends I found, however, seemed to be just like me and valued the same things I did.

My senior year of college, I grew closer with a few girls who had previously only been friends of friends. I started to notice some strange behaviors among them. Thursday night was always the big night out, and we would often eat lunch at the sorority house together.  One particular young woman’s eating habits stood out to me. She would nibble on a few fries or maybe a salad, but that’s it. Later at night, while we were all getting ready to go out and eating dinner or munching on snacks to make sure we all had something in our system, she would take four or five shots instead.  By the time she got to the bar, she was wasted because there were no nutrients or calories in her body to sustain her. That didn’t stop her from drinking more. Blacking out seemed to be a typical occurrence for her.  I wasn’t surprised if I heard in the morning that she had lost her wallet, phone or some other valuable.

Our friends had hushed conversations about it, because we didn’t really understand what she was doing. Generally, anorexics are so worried about calories that they don’t even drink alcohol. She would eat, technically, but not enough to sustain her for a night of drinking. So what could she be doing? There were also whispers that laxatives were a daily part of her diet. Still, though, no one ever really addressed her about it. Personally, I didn’t feel close enough to her to say anything about it.

Spring break was the point where I realized this was truly disordered eating. Her suitemates and close friends were worried about her because she barely ate anything the whole week. Our resort was all-inclusive, which meant that we had meal service available at almost any time of the day. As hearty eaters and lovers of all things food, my immediate friends and I took full advantage of the all-inclusive dining. However, I rarely saw her sit down to eat a meal. When she did, she would pick at the food on her plate, saying she wasn’t hungry. She did, however, take advantage of the all-inclusive drinking, which was available from morning to night. The only time I really saw her eat anything the whole week was near the pool, where there was a buffet of snack foods for guests.  She would pick at chicken fingers or wings only after she had been drinking heavily all day and didn’t have as much control over her inhibitions.

When I saw a video a few weeks ago on Newsy.com about “drunkorexia,” it was like a light bulb went on. I realized this behavior was exactly what my friend was doing. I find this extremely sad because I have a hard time believing that the behavior will end once she is out of the binge-drinking days of college.  There must be deeper psychological issues rooted in this than just calorie counting. Aside from the mental effects, the combination of drinking and not eating is horrible for your body, stomach and liver.  Not all calories were created equal, and booze calories should not equate the calories you get from food and nutrients.  It’s one thing to skip the extra cookie if you want to have a glass of wine later, but skipping all your meals to make up for all the alcohol you’re planning to drink is a severe problem.

I found the Newsy video to be extremely insightful on what drunkorexia is and what sort of debate surrounds the issue.  It raises the question if swapping food for booze is a reasonable way to count calories, or if this is a serious problem. It includes clips from interviews with students who engage in the behavior as well as experts talking about drunkorexia’s dangerous effects.

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When I got to college, I was totally ready for the academics, more than a bit cowed by dorm life (as any introvert would be), but mostly–I was completely unprepared for the drinking life that dominated my Ivy League campus. I say Ivy League, because my university did not fit the stereotypical bill of a “party” school, yet it was. Oh yes, it was. Most schools are.

As I mentioned in an essay for Drinking Diaries, my dorm hosted a “rooms party,” that first week of college. We served gin and tonics, I passed out that night, and I’ve never been able to even smell a gin and tonic since. That, dear readers, was the start of my college drinking career, which included many near-comatose Saturdays and Sundays, times where I woke up with a guy whose name I wasn’t sure I knew, drinks in the shower before parties, pitchers of beer mid-week, while studying for finals, drinks, drinks, drinks!

I’d like to think it was just me, that maybe things have changed drastically now that the drinking age is no longer eighteen (as it was when I was a freshman). We even had a Campus Pub, where they served kamikaze shots in little plastic shot glasses. Has it all changed? Or are students just crafting better fake IDs? Perhaps I’m hopelessly out of touch.

Also–maybe I was just extra hard hit since my high school drinking career was practically nil. But does that mean I should encourage my kids to drink before college so they get a drinking education? Hmmm. That sounds dubious.

It would be great if they came to college armed with some information about alcohol, though. Would that help them moderate themselves through all those temptations? I’m not sure, but maybe.

While browsing an interesting site called College Drinking–Changing the Culture, I discovered that some colleges offer mandatory alcohol education courses, which incoming freshmen can take online. That’s a start, but it seems a bit impersonal.  It may have helped me more if college students had visited my high school during senior year for a frank and private (meaning no parents or teachers) round table on college drinking.

Readers: I’d love to hear your thoughts on college drinking. Should students get some practice by drinking in high school, or do you think that’s absurd, given that: A) underage drinking is illegal; B) the earlier kids start drinking, the more likely it is that drinking will be woven into the fabric of their lives; and C) drinking isn’t healthy for the developing body and brain.

Sad but true. A growing number of college-age women are starving themselves, not necessarily to lose weight, but to save calories for drinking alcohol and beer.

According to a recent article on HerCampus.com, a website started by three female Harvard students, the trend of late is Drunkorexia– a hybrid between anorexia, bulimia, and alcoholism. It was only a matter of time, say experts, before substance abuse and eating disorders merged.

Statistics from the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) suggest that 30 percent of women ages 18-24 skip meals in order to drink more, while an estimated up to 10 percent of college women suffer from some form of an eating disorder. And a 2002 study from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol suggested that 31 percent of college students met criteria for alcohol abuse, while another 6 percent met the criteria for alcohol dependence.

In the HerCampus.com piece, Nancy Mucciarone gets the inside scoop from a variety of college students who are on the front lines of the Drunkorexia craze.

One student described it like this: “One of my friends wouldn’t eat at all before she went out, then would get super drunk, and drunk eat a lot—pizza, macaroni and cheese, whatever she could get her hands on and would make herself throw it up. She’d claim she was so drunk and didn’t mean to throw up but it was clearly intentional.”

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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
g uy 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