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Hi, my
name is BigDan, and I'm an alcoholic. Wanna know how an average
nineteen-year-old college student sinks so quickly from a C-average,
well-liked, well-balanced kid into a psychotic, raging addict willing to do
anything for just one more drink? Well, too bad, because I'm going to tell
you anyway.
The date was August 19th, 2001. I had
moved into my new dorm earlier in the day along with my three roommates, who
I had known from high school. I was ready for college, for the new
experiences I was surely ready to have. My roommates were ready to get
drunk. Yeah, I learned very early on that I had chosen the wrong roommates.
Flash-forward a few hours to about
one o'clock that morning. After a long night of partying, two of my
roommates had gone to bed (read: passed out) and just me and one roommate
are left. After a few minutes, he gets the brilliant idea that we need to go
upstairs and meet the girls that live in the dorm above us. In hindsight, it
was a dumb idea, but after a twelve-pack of Natural Light, things start to
make a little bit more sense. So, we went up there and met the girls, or
more accurately he met them and I sat in the corner and said nothing. It was
pretty clear that these girls had been drinking, so my roommate decided that
he and I needed to go steal a couple beers from our other roommate and bring
them back up here (again with the brilliant ideas). Of course, I agreed, so
while he and a couple of the girls went out on the front porch to have a
cigarette, I went down and grabbed two beers from the fridge.
This next little bit of information
makes me look really bad: I came out of the apartment, saw a cop standing
there talking to the smokers above me, and rather than go back in and lock
the door and go to sleep, I walked back upstairs, went in the apartment, put
the beers in the fridge and came back out on the porch. I don't know why I
decided to do this, but I did, and this was a year ago, so there's no sense
trying to figure it out now. When I came back out, I noticed that one of the
girls seemed to be pretty friendly with the cop.
Sure, I thought to myself, this guy's
cool. What's he gonna do, bust us? This is college, man! I've seen Animal
House, you don't get busted in college!
Ten minutes later, the cop is
searching the girls' apartment, after one of the girls stumbled down the
stairs and tried to climb a nearby tree, yelling drunkenly the entire time.
After the cop finds the beer, he searches our apartment and finds the rest
of our roommate's beer. I wanted to tell him it was our roommate's, but my
other roommate gave me some crap about not wanting to drag him into it or
something, I'm not sure. All I could hear was the sound of my college career
going straight down the toilet.
After the cop called in his
lieutenant (yes, he called for backup), they decided they were going to give
us tickets for Minor in Possession of alcohol. Naturally, I was worried,
pissed, and every other emotion on the meter, and I guess I was showing it,
because the lieutenant offered the wonderful words of encouragement: "dude,
you really stressing that thing, huh?" This was odd for two reasons: first,
because it was the only time I have ever heard a black person use the word
'dude,' and, second, because he was the one giving me the ticket! This would
be like Hitler saying "homie, why are you making such a big deal out of this
whole Holocaust thing?"
Anyway, my worst fears were realized:
I truly am an F-up. I am a loser. I couldn't even get to my first class at
college and I'm already in trouble. I had been there less than twenty-four
hours and I already had a reputation as "that guy that got busted the first
night." I suppose it gave me a little bit of solace that my roommate and one
of the girls got busted as well. So, that was it, right? I decided to ride
the path of the straight-and-narrow from there on in, and I ultimately got a
4.0 my first year and was accepted into an Ivy League school, and am now
studying law, right? Not quite. No, my friends, this is only the beginning…
TO BE CONTINUED…
Next week…
Hard labor and psychotherapy: the punishment of a vicious criminal. |
