Have you ever thought, “College is hard; I need to blow off a little steam”? The answer, I’m assuming, would be a definite “Are you kidding me?” The college culture has taught that partying can be one of the ways we finish off a hard week. Besides dancing and mingling with friends, a key factor at all these parties is a thing we all love and hate: alcohol.
Alcohol not only pushes people to be more outgoing and let loose, but over time, it becomes a stimulant that some feel they can’t live without if they want to have fun. Casually disregarding all the negative side effects alcohol can pose on your liver, brain, and other vital organs, the priority of alcohol and partying can shape your college experience drastically.
Have you ever wondered how different your life would be if you never drank alcohol? What if you never gave into that one friend who makes you drink when they do, if you said no to that shot placed in your hand, if you decided that maybe going out at night and then waking up at 11 a.m. to pregame was not the smartest idea? Sophomore Adi Miriyala and First-year Kimiko Alise have never given into alcohol and the drinking culture.
“I chose not to drink because I just never felt like it had a benefit. I’m loud enough and social enough without it. The other side is that I have a history of alcoholism in my family,” Alise remarked as her reasoning.
Miriyala added another reason by saying, “Alcohol has never really been prevalent in my life. My parents don’t drink too much. I don’t think it’s one thing that makes or breaks my college experience. If I don’t drink, I feel more comfortable knowing that everything I choose to do is of my own choice and not because alcohol is making my decisions for me.” He also included a well-known fact that many choose to actively ignore: drinking can lead to an addiction of this party culture.
What if you decide sometime in your college career that you want to take a break from drinking and see how it goes? Alise remarked, “It’s going to be different from knowing experiences having drank while having the same experiences sober. You’re having fun and you’re dancing but you don’t have alcohol messing with your system.”
After realizing he was getting caught in the party culture of Santa Clara, Junior Spencer Stubblefield decided to take this year off from drinking. “Whenever I would drink, it would be in a social setting, and I had fun of course, but began to question why it seemed like every big social gathering that I found myself to be a part of at SCU involved alcohol,” he said. Not only does Stubblefield now push himself to discover new ways of having fun, but he also said that he is “thinking more clearly” and it has come to be “a great change in [his] life.”
So, no one is forcing anyone to give up drinking completely, but it’s important to ask yourself if alcohol has become your extent of fun. Maybe also ask yourself next time: What could I be doing with my friends that would make us happy while not putting alcohol in our system? Do I have an extreme case of FOMO? Would this party be fun if I hadn’t taken three shots and drank two beers?
Drink for thought.