Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard Read online

  To be fair, some university students do not drink at all, and “getting wasted” does not describe all (or maybe even most) college drinking. Some drinkers are just looking for a nice “buzz,” and many others claim they are “responsible” drinkers. Popular media images of the hell-raising, Viking helmet–wearing fraternity lout surely do not capture the full range of alcohol users on our college campuses. But extreme intoxication and its effects are what college administrators, social critics, and parents are most concerned about. In Binge: What Your College Student Won’t Tell You, a recent book about the current college drinking culture, Barrett Seaman provides a graphic list of hazing-related drinking fatalities, tragic deaths caused by alcohol poisoning, and other stories that suggest that excessive university alcohol use has reached dangerous levels with catastrophic consequences for some students and their families.2 In a recent attempt to respond to this perceived “culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking” on our nation’s campuses, a group of university presidents circulated a petition known as the Amethyst Initiative. The initiative called for a unified effort to fight the problems generated by college drinking by lowering the drinking age. According to the authors of the initiative, “21 is not working.”3 By 2009, over one hundred college and university presidents had signed the petition, sparking a hostile response from activist groups, like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), who claim that raising the drinking age to twenty-one has saved thousands of lives. According to a MADD press release,

  As students head back to school, more than 100 college and university presidents have signed on to a misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public on the effectiveness of the 21 law. The initiative is led by another organization with a political agenda of lowering the drinking age in the name of reducing college binge drinking. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) National President Laura Dean-Mooney said, “Underage and binge drinking is a tough problem and we welcome an honest discussion about how to address this challenge but that discussion must honor the science behind the 21 law which unequivocally shows that the 21 law has reduced drunk driving and underage and binge drinking.” MADD, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the American Medical Association (AMA), National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Governors Highway Safety Association and other science, medical and public health organizations, and all members of the Support 21 Coalition call on these college and university presidents to remove their names from this list and urge them to work with the public health community and law enforcement on real solutions to underage and binge drinking.4

  The Amethyst Initiative’s petition is just one example of countless strategies aimed at curbing the college drinking problem. University prevention and treatment programs have taken the form of brief motivational interventions, cognitive-behavioral skills training, feedback-based interventions, computer-administered alcohol prevention approaches, and programs aimed at college drinkers who have been caught and mandated to undergo alcohol education.5 In general, these attempts to reduce problem drinking behaviors have, at best, resulted in small, short-term reductions in alcohol abuse. Other highly touted programs, like “A Matter of Degree” (a systems-based approach focused on the interaction among college students, drinking norms, and alcohol-related access and availability) have been credited with making only modest gains in the battle to reduce college alcohol abuse.6 People are getting desperate about college alcohol abuse, and yet no one seems to agree on the solution.

  In this highly politicized social context, the current study seeks to raise our understanding about the social circumstances of “getting wasted.” This emphasis on “getting wasted” is not a sensationalist attempt to dramatize the dangers of college drinking, but is, instead, an effort to investigate a phenomenon—frequent and potentially harmful intoxication—that has raised so many concerns. And studies of college drinking do suggest that the current patterns of alcohol abuse are related to trouble. College students who binge drink—defined for men as the consumption of five or more alcoholic drinks in a row at least once in the prior two weeks, and for women as the consumption of four or more drinks in a row at least once in the prior two weeks—are more likely to do poorly in school, miss class, vandalize property, get into fights and get injured, and get sexually victimized than their nonbinging counterparts.7 According to college alcohol scholars Henry Wechsler and Bernice Wuethrich,

  A large proportion of college students have reported being victimized by intoxicated individuals. Heavy drinkers were themselves more likely to be victimized by a fellow intoxicated student. Similarly, at high-binge schools—which we define as a school where more than 50 percent of the student body binge drinks—86 percent of college administrators said that sexual assault was a problem on their campuses; 61 percent said that physical assaults were a problem; and 53 percent noted a problem with damage to campus property.8

  The relationship between college drinking and sexual victimization is particularly troubling. Indeed, a large body of research has shown that binge drinking by college students has been associated with an increased risk for rape and sexual victimization, especially for women. For example, Wechsler and Wuethrich found that 23 percent of their survey respondents who attended heavy-drinking universities experienced unwanted sexual advances while at school.9 Furthermore, scholars routinely find that women who are sexually victimized at college are more likely to be actively involved in the college drinking scene and consume more alcohol than other women when they go out and that over ninety thousand university students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or rape each year.10

  Furthermore, extreme alcohol consumption in college is associated with a variety of other types of catastrophic consequences, including drunk-driving fatalities and other kinds of “drinking-related” deaths.11 Most college drinkers do not drink themselves to death, get sexually victimized, or become seriously injured, but most of them, at some point, get sick, get into fights, and have relational problems that they attribute to being wasted. All these bad things happen and yet, students continue to chase the alcohol high. Why do student drinkers persist in their drunkenness when so many bad outcomes can occur?

  Maybe they continue to get ripped because it is fun. This simple observation—that being bad is fun—is often overlooked by scholars of crime and deviance. Jack Katz, a sociologist who studied the “seductions of crime,” argued that scholars have focused the great majority of their efforts on discovering the background factors (e.g., psychological disorders, social disadvantages, family problems) that cause misbehavior and have given little attention to the “positive, often wonderful attractions within the lived experience of criminality.”12 In other words, being bad (e.g., getting intoxicated) can be its own reward. This is probably true for university drinkers, who view the pleasant parts of collective drunkenness as outweighing the potential for trouble. In fact, young alcohol users often have a simple explanation for their pursuit of intoxication. Getting intoxicated can be “fun,” “relaxing,” and an effective way to relieve stress. The perceived rewards of an alcohol high are well documented in studies of adolescent and young adult drinkers. According to scholars who study alcohol expectancies (i.e., what drinkers expect to experience when drunk), reducing anxiety, becoming more sociable, and fighting shyness are all commonly reported explanations for excessive alcohol use.13

  Alcohol does, indeed, relax people. The reasons for the relaxing effects of alcohol are not entirely clear, although alcohol scholars have provided some clues. Although the current study aims to illuminate the social dimensions of alcohol intoxication, some attention to the bio-chemical processes at work during alcohol consumption is needed. Alcohol may feel relaxing because it interferes with the brain’s circuitry. The most important bio-chemical effect of alcohol has to do with the way it changes the behavior of neurotransmitters. According to forensic scientists Alan Wayne Jones and Derrick J. Pounder, the mood and behavioral changes experienced when o
ne is under the influence of alcohol can be attributed to the manner in which ethanol interacts with the membrane receptors in the brain linked with the inhibitory neurotransmitters glutamate and gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA). Jones and Pounder suggest that “the behavioral effects of ethanol are dose-dependent and after drinking small amounts the individual relaxes, experiences mild euphoria, and becomes more talkative. … [M]any of the pharmacological effects of ethanol can be explained by an altered flux of ions through the chloride channel activated by the neurotransmitter GABA.”14 Thus, when alcohol enhances glutamate- and GABA-receptor functioning, it results in feelings of calm and anxiety reduction. Similarly, the increased release of endorphins during alcohol consumption creates a numb, calming sensation. Therefore, the intoxication euphemism “feeling no pain” makes sense in a scientific sense. The enhancement of the process activated by glutamate and GABA in addition to the release of endorphins may actually feel like a general sedative or pain reliever.

  There are, however, some powerful social processes that make drinking a relaxing, relatively carefree enterprise. Scholars have referred to the pocket of temporary, carefree irresponsibility provided by a night of drinking as a “time out.”15 The “time out” image suggests that the drinker receives a brief respite from the everyday work and family stresses that we all grapple with most of the time. But many college drinkers seem to be looking for a bit more than a “time out.” Collective drinking is an adventure. A night of drinking can become a matrix of unpredictable events. And the ways in which codrinkers respond to those events provide the groundwork for future “war stories.” Most people who attended college have their own cache of war stories that they dust off whenever they get together with old friends. Even the particularly troubling Shit Shows can seem funny and exciting many years later. To say that drinking with friends is fun, then, does not quite do justice to the constellation of rewards that college alcohol users experience. Past research has largely treated as unproblematic the idea that alcohol use is fun and relaxing. A closer examination into what exactly is fun about drinking—especially since so much can and does go wrong—is needed. We can all agree that partying with one’s friends can be pleasurable; still, the negative aspects of alcoholic intoxication must be navigated by young drinkers if they are to continue drinking. To aid in understanding this navigating the negative idea it is useful to refer to the work of the noted American sociologist Howard Becker.

  Over forty years ago, Becker studied the social practices of marijuana smokers.16 Becker was no stuffy intellectual. He was a sociologist, deviance scholar, and a professional dance musician in the Chicago club scene. Jamming with career musicians on a regular basis gave Becker good access to weed smokers. His interviews with them—and with laborers, machinists, and other users—allowed him to create a three-step model describing the process through which new marijuana users learned to use and enjoy the drug. According to the theory, rookie users had to successfully pass through three steps before they would become frequent pot smokers: first, they had to “learn the technique”; second, they needed to “learn to perceive the effects”; and third, they had to “learn to enjoy the effects.” Becker’s idea was that becoming a frequent smoker was a social process involving the learning of traditions and rituals and the redefinition of physiological effects so that inexperienced users would learn how to smoke properly to trigger the high (e.g., draw the smoke in deeply and hold it) and would learn to identify and truly appreciate the marijuana intoxication. One of Becker’s more provocative arguments was that inexperienced users would not continue to use marijuana if they did not learn to reframe some of the unpleasant aspects of the marijuana high in favorable ways:

  Marihuana-produced sensations are not automatically or necessarily pleasurable. The taste for such experience is a socially acquired one, not different in kind from acquired tastes for oysters or dry martinis. The user feels dizzy, thirsty; his scalp tingles; he misjudges time and distances. Are these things pleasurable? He isn’t sure. If he is to continue marihuana use, he must decide that they are. Otherwise, getting high, while a real enough experience, will be an unpleasant one he would rather avoid.17

  Perhaps Becker overstated the negative effects of the marijuana high. Again, most marijuana users will tell you that getting stoned is fun. It feels good. It enhances music, it accentuates one’s sense of taste, it warps one’s sense of humor in pleasant ways (some people actually enjoy uncontrollable laughter). But Becker’s central point—that getting high and learning to enjoy intoxication is a social process—is a powerful insight. This insight may serve as one lens through which to see the process of getting wasted. Just like unseasoned pot smokers, inexperienced drinkers may learn how to drink, how to define and appreciate intoxication, and how to evaluate their own drunken performances with the help of co-conspirators (i.e., other drunks). This is a highly sociological way of thinking about drinking. Instead of seeing intoxication as just an individual experience, we must see college drinking as a collective, social process. Getting wasted, “buzzed,” or somewhere in between is a collaborative effort.

  Thus, the current study is a sociological examination of university alcohol use. It seeks to understand the methods that college drinkers employ to get drunk and the collective efforts that they use to manage intoxication and its effects. A drinking episode18 involves the input of many people who share the experience, from the first sip to the hazy morning after. To help us understand the thrills, temptations, and regrets related to alcohol intoxication, this study draws from detailed student accounts (“drinking stories”) of the drinking process and the meanings that students attach to alcohol intoxication. But before we get to the “getting wasted” experience, as told by the drinkers themselves, a brief review of the history of college alcohol use and of the research literature on college drinking is in order. The next section discusses what we know (and what we don’t know) about university alcohol use.

  A Very Brief History of American College Drinking

  Alcohol use has been an important part of the American college experience since the eighteenth century. Scholars locate the early forms of drunken college debauchery within a lifestyle known as “the collegiate subculture.” According to Murray Sperber’s critique of college drinking culture, the collegiate subculture began in the 1700s when “the sons of the rich came to college for four years of pleasure and social contacts. They considered academic work an intrusion on their fun, and they were content to pass their courses with a ‘gentleman’s C’ grade. The collegiate subculture remained antieducational… with student social activities, particularly the campus party scene, taking precedence over academic endeavors.”19 Sound familiar? At some contemporary colleges and universities, the collegiate subculture has not changed very much.

  Although modern college drinking is an equal-opportunity endeavor (not so limited to the power elite), contemporary university partiers are descended from the wealthy, entitled “leisure class” students who used the conspicuous consumption of alcohol, in part, to demonstrate their privileged status.20 College, for them, was not a pathway to achieving goals; they had already achieved material success through their privileged family backgrounds. Drunken socializing was one way to demonstrate their status—they did not need to struggle and toil at their studies. Drunken frivolity helped to display to their audiences that they had already “made it.” The party culture continued to thrive on American campuses throughout the nineteenth century. And rich kids at prestigious schools continued to set the cultural standard: “To an amazing degree the pattern set by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton after 1880 became that of colleges all over the country. The clubs, the social organization, the athletics—even the clothes and the slang—of the ‘big three’ were copied by college youth throughout the nation.”21 The typical college man gambled and drank, went to church, and was a rabid supporter of university athletics. The collegiate subculture was simple and hedonistic and was met with little resistance by university officials.22


  College drinking, of course, was not restricted to male students. Women began to join the collegiate subculture in the 1860s. Georgia Female College (now Wesleyan College), established in 1839, is recognized as the first institution of higher education for women, but the most significant wave of female college students in the United States began in 1865 with the establishment of Vassar College in New York.23 Other large, private women’s colleges soon emerged, including Smith College (1875), Wellesley College (1875), Bryn Mawr (1885), and Barnard (1889). Women also began to enter public institutions in significant numbers in the 1850s. According to author Lynn Peril, the University of Iowa became the first state school to admit women in 1855 when it enrolled forty-one female students.24 It did not take long for women to take part in the alcohol consumption that was already so fully embedded in college culture. For women, however, university officials exerted additional social controls. Administrators at women’s colleges aimed to control their students’ consumption patterns as well as their interactions with males:

  In 1871, Vassar’s faculty minutes recorded that “five students have smoked cigarettes, three have drank [sic] wine, three have corresponded with Bisbee students [a local men’s school], two of them with strangers.” As a result, the girls were placed on probation and lost both the right to leave campus and to receive gentleman callers. Perhaps most shamefully, the offenders’ names and punishments were read aloud in chapel “in the presence of [their fellow] students.”25