I have been drunk since Thursday. I’m completely drunk as I write this. Thank God for spell check and my editor. Without them, the entire campus would just be subjected to mass reprints of my texts from last night. And the night before that. And maybe a couple of awkward ones from the morning after that… but anyway. That’s all beside the point.

In light of my recently passed 21st birthday and my first alcoholic drink ever, I felt that it was time to shed some light on a topic that many of us know and love (those of us that are 21 and over, of course): alcohol — friend or foe?

It’s so hard to say. As I’ve pleasantly (and might I add again, very recently) discovered, alcohol, much like Red Bull, gives you wings. It makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do, say things you wouldn’t normally say, go places you wouldn’t normally go. It can also make you miss things: deadlines, classes, menstrual cycles — you get my drift.

And yet, where would we all be without alcohol? I think I officially realized just how much our lives revolve around it when I received the following congratulatory phone call from my mother on my birthday: ‘Happy birthday, sweetie! You can finally go to that Chuckies place now!’ (This is coming from the same woman who wouldn’t let me eat chocolate since I was 4 years old so I ‘could learn the value of staying in shape early on.’)  

Honestly, though, without alcohol in your life, what would you do with all that extra free time? You would study, and then everyone would have 4.0 grade point averages, and we wouldn’t be able to categorize one another as smart or dumb anymore. You would work out, and then everyone would be in shape, and we wouldn’t be able to make fun of fat people anymore. You would frolic in the grass, laugh and play, and enjoy sunshine and flowers.

But then again, you would never lose your credit cards or your Blackberry, and bums off the street would never be able to find it and sell it and make some much-needed money for crack. You’d never make bad decisions, and your fondest memory of college would be of that one ridiculous study session when you got every question on the review sheet right. You badass, you.

Part of the college experience is improving — or in some cases, developing — your social skills. Alcohol plays a big part in that. Your Facebook status has probably been ‘never. drinking. again.’ on at least 20 separate occasions, and it never gets old. People will totally still ‘like’ it and comment on it. And you’ll experience that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with bonding, knowing that at that very moment, others just like you are also curled up in bed, in a half-pool of their own vomit, sharing your pain.

Senior finance major Greg Orlowski said, ‘Alcohol is a social lubricant. Drinking is a great way by which to end a tough week and, most importantly, a lot of fun.’

How can anyone argue with that? So go ahead. Pour yourself a little drink. Here’s to alcohol! Lubricating our lovely university since 1870.

Marina Charny is a senior English and textual studies and writing major. Her column appears every Thursday, and she can be reached at mcharny@syr.edu.

 

Published on November 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm