As college students we all live under the influence for the majority of our weekends, Saturday we may come face to face with the bushes outside of a frat house, then Sunday is a Netflix and chill day with the comforters that hugged our drunken lethargic bodies throughout the night. When it's time to get up the room begins to spin and is the energizer bunny living in my head?? You wish the headache away, swearing you won't drink again because there couldn't possibly be a worst feeling than this hangover...UNTIL the night of your 21st birthday. Of course I have only been a witness to these birthday nights. I'm apart of the field hockey team here at Rider University and our coach recruits us in bulk, therefore, there are typically 5 or more in one graduating class. In my class specifically, there are 5 of us, and recently 21st birthdays have been the main celebration. A friend of mine, since our freshman year, have gone out to a party maybe once every few weeks, and even half of those few times she's gone out to serve as mom to the those of us who couldn't hold our liquor. However, a day before our return to a very rainy second semester, the roles were reversed as she had to be carried over a pair of shoulders and put to bed, only to wake up the next morning to endure the pain she would regret, of course until round two.
Round two, You're already hungover from the previous night, you don't really feel like going out, but hey, you're 21 now, bar hopping is what you've been waiting for, right?
When you drink excessively, like those newly of age do, it's difficult to make smart decisions or think clearly. Therefore, although it all fun and games, we don't think about the danger that we are putting ourselves in. We forget that vomiting is a sign of alcohol poisoning, and when thee is slurred speech that is also a sign. Because it happens so often at parties, we begin to think that it's a normal response to alcohol, and we don't take a second to think that maybe we shouldn't let our friends sleep alone, and that is when problems present itself.
Me and my friends were sitting around the other day, talking about the events that occurred Friday night at a party, and I couldn't stop thinking what is in alcohol that it makes us so sick? like what's really in it, what does it consist of? So, I presented the question to the rest of them, and we couldn't answer the question. Yes, we know Vodka come from potatoes, but what is the process it undertakes to make it into such a toxin.
We sat there coming up with our own theories, but we didn't have an accurate answer or a clear understanding, yet we are more than willing to put it in our bodies.
With my 21st coming up, I was so excited to go to to Atlantic city and experience the night life, and be able to present my legal id to the security guard, with a smug look on my face that says I know I look 12, but I'm actually 21. I planned on drinking...A LOT, but, sitting down thinking about the effects alcohol has on the human body, and looking back on the many bad decision I made while being under the influence, and the mistakes my peers made, instantly regretting it the next day, forced me to think twice about what consists of 20-Fun for me.
When the day arrives, alcohol will probably not be apart of the night.
