Critical Drinking - A Reflection

There are those who drink for fun and to express themselves, but there will always be the students who drink endlessly. These are the students who fruitlessly drink to fill the hole that rests inside them. Go into the bar and see what types of customers appear. In the corner is the gaggle of girls doing shots. At a table a couple is enjoying their beer, talking animatedly. Then there is the one on the corner of the counter, slowly enjoying their beverage.

               

 During college I saw, and experienced, both worlds. My friends and I would make our way out of the Healthy Lifestyles floor, and settle into one of the seedier dorms. Drinks would be evenly distributed, and each of us would keep an eye on the other. Even when a close friend hosted a wine party, there was a sense of organization and safety. We were surprisingly responsible, for the drinking college stereotype. So what would fuel the drinking that the media likes to explore? Perhaps it is time to look closer at college students lives.

There was always a tradition of seniors drinking on the first day of classes for celebration. The image of a senior was one hand with a pen, the other with their drinking mug. Stress was so overwhelming for the thesising students that it was accepted, even supported, that they would go drinking. Often the seniors would say how they were going to treat themselves to a drink or several after they reached a certain goal. Drinking was a group activity, and the most relaxing way to distress besides taking other drugs.

Yet for every day that there is a party on campus, there is at least one student who is sitting by themselves with a bottle. As the workaholic seniors focus intensely on their work -abstaining from friends or the pursuit of friendships- they become isolated. Each student has to rely on their own abilities to get through the day. But since some students have never been so overwhelmed, they have poor coping skills (if any at all). That single senior tries to always have a drinking group ready, but will always have something in their room in case there are no groups to join for the night. So they are left alone, with their drinks. Even if the campus is dry, the student will find a way to acquire the needed drug.

Alcoholism and addiction can be enhanced by genetics, but the students need to be taught good habits before they reach critical mass during college. I remember feeling so overwhelmed by thesising, personal issues, dirty politics, mass abandonment, and damaged self-esteem that I tried to drown the pain with numbing salve. Each day was a struggle to exist, to muscle up the façade that would get me through the day. I would hear stories of others drinking unthinkingly, somehow enjoying the evening and letting go of stress. All that I knew, and remember, was a costly journey into long nights and sunrises, hearing the life around me wake up as I fell asleep. When colleges take the time to address the needs of the students, then we may be able to eliminate the need to drink and reduce the amount of alcoholic incidents on campuses.

Shedding Skin, Dandruff By Dandruff

I feel like I'm nit-picking at a whole stretch of skin. Except of dealing with dry skin, I am dealing with a personality that just doesn't work.

How do I properly vocalize that I am not even living my own life? For the longest time, I was thinking I was just plain depressed and didn't know what to do. Yet now I am thinking, no, I know what I want to do. But there is something that I keep falling back into. Maybe it is a habit, or a well-trained person. Just the good little girl that was expected of me.

Good god, if I was supposed to be someone's tool, then I'd rather be dead than to have someone else take over my mind.

F--k culture trying to brainwash kids into being the images that their parents want them to be. Gender-typifying, stereotyping standards, ect. It is enough to make me want to go screaming around in the stores cursing their intrusive advertising attacks. I can't even shop any more.

To be with my boyfriend or certain groups of friends, I feel awake, more myself than I ever have been. But the moment I go into "normal" situations, I feel the pressure of being plain boxy normal.

There is a reason that part of my depression has included anger. I HATE being pressured into being something that I am not.

There is so much ignorance, uneducated, and underdeveloped people who run on insufficient information. And to be dealing with the lack of their curiosity kills me. How do you not want to understand even just a few things about your life? Why live the life that someone else has prescribed for you? Does it even work for you? What makes you think that your diet is sufficient and will make you a healthy and efficient human being?

And to acknowledge my own laziness is beyond frustrating. I live in two realities with two personalities, and right now it is bothering the cr-p out of me. I feel as though my therapist talks down to me, saying I am "a good, sweet, innocent young lady".

A. Suggesting I am good, means that you will react negatively if I were to voice my anger and things that I would otherwise not tell my parents.

B. Fuck being sweet. I don't want to be sweet. I want to be taken seriously you old geezer.

C. Innocent? Naive? Maybe a bit because I haven't been in certain circumstances, but it does not make me an idiot. And I am certainly more aware then some dumb-asses out there in the world.

D. Are you suggesting that I know absolutely nothing?

E. Fuck you, that sounds insulting. Why can't I just be a woman? Do you see yourself as someone above me?

This pisses me off, and the fact that I act differently in two different arenas. I fucking hate that I can't speak out loud the way I want to. Why can't I just get down to the nitty-gritty? I do NOT want to fucking talk about the damn circles that I have talked about before. I am done with that part of my life. You are making me relive something I have already forgiven and forgotten and have moved on in my life.

I am pissed off more at the fact that I have to listen to your assumptions. We haven't even gotten to the good part yet, why are you jumping down my throat?

I want my own god-damned life, and at 23, I'd say it's long overdue for a teenage rebellion. Fuck being the good little girl. I've grown up and changed. It's about time that my surroundings have done the same.