Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 12, 1993 TAG: 9304120260
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT A. KUHN, M.D.
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
RUPTURED LIFE-PATTERNS ON CAMPUS TODAY, THE BIGGEST THREAT IS ALCOHOL ABUSE
SO AS YOU, an anxious, jittery parent, wave goodbye to your Lisa or Frank, you can't help watching apprehensively while they tool away to that first year at college. Any college, U.S.A.What dangers await them there, you wonder. Exactly how bad are the risks - and which is to be feared the most?
Well, you say, I've heard plenty lately about STDs, sexually transmitted diseases. Correctly, in all probability. Genital herpes and chlamydia are controlled epidemics on practically every campus.
But STDs cannot compete with the most lethal freshman hazard. Nor can marijuana, speed, hallucinogens and the like, for nowadays drugs are much less cool at school.
So what is the truly threatening campus tradition that awaits your newly arriving son or daughter? A hazard known to be fully capable of ruining a career, laying waste a destiny, or ending a life?
Undisputed king, head and shoulders above them all, is what hospital emergency-rooms call ethyl hydrate - a euphemism for booze; beer by the keg and case; grain alcohol in potent and sometimes killing guise. And the hospital usually gets in the picture after student parties featuring binge-drinking.
The stage for all this is set in high school. Ninety percent of high-school seniors have begun an enduring drinking habit. Ten percent are headed for a lifetime of alcohol addiction. (Factual data in this article is from a paper by Thomas Goodale, vice president of student affairs at Virginia Tech, entitled "I thought I Could Handle It.") Alcohol leads the pack as the most commonly abused drug - yes, drug - of our times.
At high-school graduations, the career road splits, one leading into the job marketplace and the other toward further education. Most students who are intellectually inclined and motivated get into a college of their choice. Others find a job, settle down and get married.
Something extraordinary then occurs. By those favoring the work place over college, alcohol use slows to a tolerable level. The group you might surmise would be increasingly downing the shots and beer are instead drinking less.
But on every college and university campus across the land, freshman drink far more than in high school. Incomprehensible maybe, but well-documented by all surveys. What in the world is responsible for such contrarian behavior?
Your first thought might be that alcohol abuse simply goes on everywhere. Not true. In all groups except students on college campuses, liquor consumption nationwide is the lowest in 50 years. Sales of beer companies have been flat to poor for the past decade - excepting college campuses.
The general decline of alcohol use, along with abuse of other drugs, is good news. But the bad news is incredibly bad: College students are setting all-time highs in buying alcohol and getting drunk.
Why this mystifying behavior?
For the past decade, university administrators have unsuccessfully confronted the enigma. Student gullibility seems an unlikely culprit; only the brightest bother to qualify for college. They have labored for years to beat the competition, worried and sweated their way through entrance boards, and finally won admission. Suddenly, for no clear reason, scores of them embark on a deliberate strategy to soak their brain cells in alcohol - a purposeful covenant to induce drastic drop in IQ. It doesn't seem to make sense.
Since consequences of alcohol abuse are painfully obvious, there has been no lack of attention to the problem. Long lists of surmises have been collated by college administrators to settle the question of why alcohol is in such terrific demand. High on the muster of probable culprits are "peer pressure," "social demands" and "stress." Somehow, these buzz words fail to get at the root of the problem, nor do they describe conditions easy to alter.
Take stress, for example. Of course there is stress in the pressure for academic performance.
But consider alternatives. Like being married at the ripe age of 18, and in a low- pay, dead-end job, with kids on the way and an ever-present fear of being handed a pink slip? How does that compare for ulcer-type stress? The workplace gets top billing hands down. Why, then, so little drinking by young workers?
If stress is an unlikely suspect, what other factors might motivate intelligent, motivated campus students to self-destruct? Discipline - or lack of it - on the campus?
Imagine having a job - auto mechanic, driving a truck, what have you - and every few nights polishing off a couple of sixpacks at home in front of a late-night flick, then phoning in sick the next morning because there's no way to roll out of bed.
What happens? No job. Period. Try telling that to a pregnant wife!
Contrast this with campus partying. Same consequences? I'd say no.
Each freshman is on his own, free as the wind, and an "adult." College penalties for missing class aren't really all that bad. It doesn't take students long to discover that rules you couldn't break at home are fair game in college. Besides, what student has the inner strength to turn down a good time? Is it possible there's too much campus "freedom," too much permissiveness?
Peer pressure may also be a strong, pervasive contributor to alcoholism. It is most effectively countered by students with deep internal convictions of self-worth, buttressed by a solid mass of knowledge. Freshmen are prey for alcohol activists who invariably deride eggheads and want company. Most have no concept whatsoever of the manner in which alcohol demoralizes brain function and destroys destiny.
They don't want to hear about alcoholic parents; degraded IQs and ruined futures; about the enormous risks of unguarded sex; about death riding behind the wheel. Enlisting the aid of educated, disciplined peers can play a key role in negating pro-alcohol hype, especially if the peers are held in high esteem by most students.
Personally, I believe there's also another key to why college campuses are awash in alcohol. It lies hidden in the most frequent student reply to the simple question, "Why do you drink?" The invariable, universal answer: "Because there's nothing else to do."
Ridiculous, we instantly say; there are dozens of things to do. What we really need to determine is the answer to: "If you were living at home right now, what would you be doing?"
The response, I believe, would reveal a pervasive, poorly articulated feeling of irremedial loss. There has been an all-too-sudden rupture of a whole life-pattern of familiar sights and sounds - family, friends for years, special smells and sounds of home; the rooms, posters and pets; the warm cocoon of love; the myriad treasures of daily life - irretrievably gone.
What is readily at hand to fill this void for the student during the early campus months? How to satisfy this loss? Where else but in the company of others similarly bereaved? What is more natural than huddling together over socially blessed liquids that briefly stifle unpleasantness and replace it with exhilirating gaiety?
The defenses of freshmen can be built to cope with the trauma that routinely accompanies transition to independent life. Education is the linchpin, the only hope for success in this campaign.
For it is only education, in its broadest sense, that is able to alter and solidify beliefs that determine lifestyle and destiny. As the slow amassing of knowledge begins to crystallize beliefs within the crucible of education, and the months and years tilt the ladle, lifestyle pours forth as an amalgam, solidifying into an ingot called destiny.
We must mount our attack on alcohol abuse through education, building the case with what we know to be true. As the pool of knowledge deepens and spreads, beliefs will adjust. The mounting tide of alcoholism shall be dissipated when education not only targets parents but also every entering student and the entire university faculty. Only then can we rest assured that each of us has played his part in neutralizing the greatest hazard of life on campus.