This column is going to be unpopular. Don't care.
Real Talk: Alcohol makes you a terrible person. This is a truth we're all aware of, but nobody feels like discussing in its broader implications.
You know what I call somebody who snores, who guzzles EBAs, who takes too many liberties with the opposite sex, who is insensitive, who smells and who vomits everywhere? A piece of shit. And that's what many people become when they're drunk. Just to clarify: When I say drunk, I don't mean tipsy. There are tons of people who are fun and energetic when they've had a little to drink. But everybody has their tipping point.
Just so that there can be full disclosure regarding the high horse that I'm on: I don't drink. I stopped drinking my sophomore Spring. So I've spent two years of Dartmouth as a drinker, and two years as a non-drinker. I know both sides of the coin well.
I should also state that I'm not blaming anything systemic for the fact that alcohol makes you a terrible person. It's not the fault of the Greek system, of Jim Kim, of Hanover Police or of Anheuser-Busch. It's just the way things are.
When you drink, you become a worse version of yourself. You become incredibly self-centered. You become a hedonist of the highest degree. And you can use the "sorry for partying" excuse, but it's still you doing these terrible things. Your drunk self is not a distinct entity.
People do things drunk that they would never do sober. I know that sounds really obvious, and it is. But let's take a step back and think about it. You're going to consume something that will make you more likely to get arrested, more likely to hook up with an ugly person, more likely to start a fight and more likely to pee your pants. You're making that decision.
I'm a big believer in America and the freedom for people to do what they want, so long as they aren't infringing on somebody else's liberties. You wanna get blacked out and be a complete mess? That's your right as an American, and I strongly support it. You do you. Just so long as you know what you're doing.
It's amazing that we spend so much of our time actively working to become worse versions of ourselves. I mean, I get that boozing is fun, I really do. And we're young. College is the time to make a few harmless mistakes. It's the time to be an occasional idiot. We aren't (and shouldn't be) held to the same standards that people in the real world are held to. We have our own code of values. I know I'll miss that. The next time I see a baby throw up on his mother on the subway, I'm gonna laugh and laugh. And I'll get a lot of dirty looks, and realize that laughing when somebody gets booted on isn't OK in the real world. Which is a bummer.
But just take a second and add up all the things that you've done that you regret as a direct result of alcohol consumption. You're lucky if you make it out of college with regrets as minor as wetting the bed or failing a test. You've probably done things much worse when you're drunk. You might have gotten in a drunken brawl and gotten Parkhursted. You might have broken up with your boy/girlfriend while you were blacked out. The list goes on and on.
I'm really split on the issue of alcohol. On the one hand, it often does terrible things to the people who consume it and those around them. Kind of like second-hand smoke, but second-hand douchebaggery. Life would have been so much better if the whole idea behind "sorry for partying" never existed. The irony of that phrase was lost long ago. On the other hand
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL is that college would straight-up not be what it is if it didn't entail the collective mass consumption of alcohol that we're all familiar with. Animal House, Asher Roth, heckling at a soccer game Alcohol makes those things real and adds to the campus culture. Without alcohol, college would just be that place where we go to study. That would suck.