I don’t drink. Well, I haven’t since coming to university.
But yesterday, I felt extremely out of place, because the one friend that doesn’t drink either was home over the weekend. That means that for the first time since being at university, everyone around me was drunk.
Some drunk people analyze everything and basically just seem to be a bit high. I like that sort of drunk! I think they’re usually lightweights, but I don’t know enough of them to be sure about that. I think if I ever get drunk, I’d start behaving like that too. Sometimes behave that way while sober!
Then there’s the people drinking within their limits. They are usually okay. They behave normally, but it’s just a bit off, which makes it very odd. I don’t really know how I feel about them.
There’s the party drunks, who get very loud and go a bit crazy. I find them hard to differentiate from the lout, violent-ish drunks though.
There are several stages of violent-ish variants of drunken people. There’s the cursing drunk: not particularly exciting, but any manners they might have had before left them and every other word is one I’d rather no hear. The cursing drunk is sometimes a stage: it’s like half drunk-capacity.
When they get more drunk, they may turn very loud, a bit violent and irresponsible, but are able to be rational should an emergency arise. I only know one of those, so I guess they’re rare.
The other way a cursy drunk can go is completely out of it. They are similar to the first option, but generally incapable of recognizing emergencies or the need to calm down. THey are the ones that worry me the most – what if something happens and no one can get them to notice it? I’m also scared of them. Which is odd, I think, because they are my friends. But at the same time, they’re completely out of control. And then the next day I’m scared that inside, they are actually just like the way they behave when they’re drunk, but they’re hiding it. And then I’m very awkward around them and try to avoid them.
Maybe that’s just me drawing conclusions from my own feelings, though. I have never gotten that drunk, so I don’t know if it changes what you feel inside.
At university, it is more accepted not to drink than to actually just have half a pint of cider. Please don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I have heard enough people say „I’m not drinking to get drunk.“ and later seen them stumbling around held up only by peer pressure. So I left all casual ciders and beers behind: I don’t want to risk people pressuring me into downing more and more alcohol.
Why I don’t want to get drunk? It’s a bit of a personal question, isn’t it? My standard answer is that I just don’t like the feeling of getting drunk. People accept that. It’s a half-truth, I guess. However, the point of this article is telling you the truth. It’s not the taste of it – kale smoothies taste a lot worse to me. It’s not religion. To be honest, every once in a while I wish it was because it seems like the easier answer. It’s an accepted reason not to drink.
The reason I actually don’t want to get drunk is that I’ve seen what people are like when they’ve lost control. When they’ve slipped off a chair and stayed on the floor because everything else seemed like too much effort. When they’ve pretended to be an animal. When they suddenly started hugging strangers. When they’ve thrown up. When they’ve thrown up and immediately forgot about it, even though there was still some on their face.
I don’t want to end up like that. It’s not just that, though, I could live with the embarrasment. The scariest thing about getting drunk for me is that I might let out any of my worries, or problems, or fears, or thoughts I don’t feel comfortable sharing. Because who knows how much self-control and brain-to-mouth control I have left when I get drunk?
It may sound ridiculous to you, but it scares me enough to completely abandon alcohol.
See you soon,
Mary