Am I Going to Die Today?

Ninety percent of the alcohol consumed under the age of 21 in the United States is in the form of binge drinking. Eight weeks ago, the percentage of my friends that chose to binge drink at least four nights a week hovered somewhere between 99.5 and 100. They were the only people I would hang out, because that was what I did too. I’m in a sorority: it’s not an excuse, it’s a lifestyle. A typical night out in the world of the Greek System here at the University of Maryland follows as such: generally if we can get our act together on time, we get to “pre-game” around 11 pm which is usually a local house being rented out for the a year by a fraternity.

We’ll have about four to seven shots, more if we don’t want to spend money on drinks at the bar. We then go to the bars where a guy will usually buy a girl a drink or two if he doesn’t think she’s buzzed enough. After about an hour and a half, we go from the bar to the “post game” where we don’t know how much we’re drinking because we all end up consuming it directly from the numerous half-gallon vodka bottles being passed around until three or four in the morning. Then we walk home in the dark by ourselves or we black out.

I didn’t always act like this. I was raised overseas where the legal drinking limit is nonexistent. My parents always taught me how to control my alcohol. When we lived in Italy I was trained to enjoy my wine slowly and analyze it for its flavors. Was it fruity? Did it have a hint of oak. I never drank at high school parties in the U.S. because I didn’t like beer and because I knew my parents would let me have alcohol in moderation in the house if I chose to. The first semester in college, before I joined a sorority, I drank responsibly and I always made it to my dorm safely. After I joined, everything changed.

The way that my sisters abuse alcohol is really a strange dynamic. We are encouraged, even applauded, to down as much as we can in one sitting, yet we are admonished when we are so drunk that we need to be walked home or taken to the hospital for it. We are expected to tread that fine line between “life of the party” and “that girl throwing up in the bathroom.” Alcohol is involved in every one of our nighttime activities. It’s impossible to avoid. This is why eight weeks ago, when I was challenged by my professor to give up alcohol, I accepted.

It wasn’t entirely his challenge that made me give it up, but it was the final push I needed. Over the past two semesters, my body has not taken kindly to binge drinking Since the spring of 2010 I can’t even count the number of times I have hurt myself accidentally. I have been sexually assaulted twice, slipped and hit the back of my head on concrete, vomited on my sister’s new futon, pulled out my friend’s hair, smashed my knee, and fell so hard head first onto the sidewalk that I cracked open my forehead.

My sisters didn’t want to get in trouble with the police so instead of taking me to the hospital to get stitches they took me back to the house to “patch me up” themselves. I still have the dress covered in blood and the raised lump filled with scar tissue on my head to remind me of the incident.

I didn’t want to gain weight by drinking too much, so instead of drinking less, I stopped eating. A morning after a night of heavy drinking without eating for 24 hours would result in my curling up on my bedroom floor shaking as my entire body fought back with everything it had. Drinking was hurting me more than when I was getting punched as a member of the boxing team.

But these are just the outward physical manifestations of my alcohol abuse. These are things you can see. What are not visible are the hurtful words I have said to people while under the influence, the relationship that suffered because neither of us could spend enough time sober to make it work, the probably damage done to my liver, kidneys and heart. I have lost my phone, keys, money, ID, and my entire purse to a night of hard partying in D.C. because I wasn’t coherent enough to hold on to it. It’s all probably

still under the chair on the floor of some dingy nightclub.

The past eight weeks have been strange. The first part was excruciating. At first I tried to go out and not drink, which was just boring. Having drunk kids fall all over or try to grab you is not as fun when you’re the only one who’s not tipsy. My room in the sorority has five people who I used to party with all the time. We would have our own “pre-pre-game” where we’d drink our own alcohol before going out and getting even more wasted than everyone else. Now, on the nights when they go out, I try to go to bed early only to be inevitably woken up by them as they stumble in, drunken messes. They flip on the lights, drink some more, and then go to bed as I lie there, now wide awake. I always worry when one of the doesn’t come back at night.

We don’t talk anymore, we’re different people. If we do talk, it’s because they feel the need to tell me I’m not fun anymore, that I’ve changed.

But I’m glad that I have, because for every night that my old friends go out and don’t remember the night before, I’m spending quality time with the sisters in the house who don’t drink—ones I never had the chance to get to know. The girls who, in all honesty, I never cared to get to know. When the partiers sleep in until four in the afternoon, I’m waking up at 8:30, going for a run, and getting my homework done. I take time to enjoy the sunlight. Colors are sharper. My skin is clearer, my hair is thicker and I’m not tired all the time. When I go home and see my Mom, she no longer has to comment on how I smell like a distillery.

Someone made a comment to me about how I won’t be able to keep this up forever.

That’s another challenge I accept.

Georgia Harper is a student in the Honors Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. This essay was written for her course “Journalism and Peace,” taught by NCR columnist Colman McCarthy.