People do stupid things. To be more accurate, college aged kids do stupid things. To be even more accurate, drunken, college aged kids do stupid things. I wouldn’t know, I was torn from the thigh of Zeus, fully formed, wizened beyond reason and sent here to entertain the masses with my razor sharp wit and imaginative usages of the word “cunt”. But today, two stories involving predominantly drunken, college age participants caught my eye.
A poll published in the online edition of the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors showed that “Drinky, yay!”
CHUG CHUG CHUG RESPONSIBLY!
This survey of ”nearly 500 college students” revealed to the shock of absolutely no one, that the “positive” effects of binge drinking out weighed the “negative” effects, in their drunken eyes. Asking college students if they think partying like lunatics and fucking their brains out is worth potentially having a headache in the morning and maybe missing class and expecting them to not respond with “Woo!” is like asking anyone being punched in the face if they have ever enjoyed anything less in their entire lives and expecting them to reply with “Well, I was miserable until this face punching started.”
I personally never had a problem with binge drinking, I simply had a short period in my life where I would drink large quantities of alcohol and throw up on things. But between point A and point Blurgh, I had an excellent time, and that’s what alcohol is.
One of the authors of the report, University of Washington Professor of Psychology Kevin King said, between what had to have been a couple drinks:
“There is some kind of bias that’s happening when people experience these things. You could compare it to touching a hot stove. What we are seeing is that only when people get really burnt by their drinking are they deterred.”
And while that statement is, on one hand insane, on the other there is an element of truth to it. It’s absolutely true that drinking in excess does carry with it many potential negative effects when combined with other activities, such as improperly operating a motor vehicle or a penis. My problem with this analogy is the comparison between drinking and touching a hot stove. Drinking alcohol has many enjoyable effects along with several less desirable potential outcomes. Touching a hot stove carries with it little to no positive outcomes. If touching a hot stove responsibly and in moderation made me and those around me more entertaining and attractive, while touching it irresponsibly burned the flesh from my bones, this would be a fair comparison, but as it stands, only the latter of those two outcomes is true.
College is a place where teens go with little to no adult supervision and scant responsibility to live in close quarters with other hormonally charged young adults enjoying their new found freedoms, many of them for the first time in their lives. They are going to put things in their bodies and then put their bodies in other bodies until they’ve had their fill of that and are ready to move on to what ever’s next. Telling them that their fun might murder them will make them think twice at the first drink and giggle like a freshman who was just told she was the prettiest girl in the world by the Basketball team’s third string center after keg three.
"Why are we running?!" "BULLS!" "Ah, gotcha!"
Meanwhile, in Pamplona Spain, drunks are running in front of bulls when they absolutely don’t have to be… again. But good news! Day 1: No gorings!
That was news. That was in the headline, the excitement of no one being gored by animals that don’t belong on paved roads, running after drunken tourists who have spent money to fly half a world away to do something incredibly stupid. Everyone who gets gored and or maimed at the annual “Trampling of the Dipshits” deserves every painful stitch, itchy cast or scornful shake of the head over their casket, that they get.
This event is only made possible by drinking to excess, and when it’s cause to celebrate that no one was murdered by wild animals during your national celebration, perhaps it’s time to rethink how you spend your leisure time. But despite the inherent stupidity of this festival, it continues, seemingly unabated while practically every year someone is mutilated by angry, confused beasts running wildly through these Spanish streets, and occasionally by the bulls as well.
But just as with the drunken activities of college kids wasting their parents’ money at home, the problem with these drunken college kids wasting their parents’ money abroad is not merely consumption of alcohol, but what follows said drinking. Give two people the same amount of alcohol, have them drink it in the same amount of time, set Drunk A loose in an open field filled with pillows and Drunk B loose in an open field filled with pistols and odds are the one thrown into an already stupid situation will probably be more likely to suffer stupid consequences.
What I’m saying is, alcohol doesn’t kill people, dangerous, stupid things combined with alcohol kill people. So I guess the message I’m trying to get across with all of this is this: friends don’t let friends be cunts.
Now take a shot.
