I was completely alone the first time I ever got drunk. I had rushed a fraternity toward the end of my sophomore year, and, much to my surprise, received a bid.
Coming out of high school, I was the youth group kid who moshed at Christian concerts by night and wore matching WWJD bracelets by day. Not exactly premium frat guy material at the University of South Carolina. But here I was, a stadium cup half-full of Captain Morgan’s rum, my bedroom spinning as I slipped into a state so familiar to many of my brothers, yet totally new to me. I was experiencing the “spins,” the alcohol-fueled experience when you are completely still while everything around you spins out of control.
College is a season of change. Almost everything will be different: your location, friends, routines, interests. Few have described the college experience better than University of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith:
To an extent matched by no other time in the life course, [college students] enjoy and endure multiple, layered, big, and often unanticipated life transitions. They move out, they move back, they plan to move out again.…They meet new friends, their old friends change, their friends don’t get along, they meet more new people. They get new roommates, their roommates don’t work out, they find a new apartment…They find their soulmate, they get involved, their soulmate dumps them, they are crushed. They believe in saving sex for meaningful relationships, they hook up, they get angry with themselves, they look for a meaningful relationship. In these and other ways, for [college students] not a lot in life is stable or enduring.
