Alcohol, every first year drinks it, and probably quite regularly too, but does this mean we are all raging alcoholics? According to Alcoholics Anonymous if you ask yes to any of their twenty questions then you have a problem. Questions like “do you drink to build up your self confidence?” and “have you ever had complete memory loss due to drinking?” may sound quite familiar to most of us.
But surely this doesn’t mean that we are all alcoholics. We don’t all need alcohol do we? We don’t reach for more in the morning, right? I was not satisfied with being classed as an alcoholic just because I answered yes to two of the twenty questions above so I took another test. This test gave me immediate feedback according to my answers and I, thank goodness, was not classed as an alcoholic anymore, however, it did mention that due to the number of drinks I have a week, or on one occasion, it is a serious risk to my health.
What does alcohol actually do to our health? We’ve all heard that it kills brain cells but apparently we’ve got so many that just a slight knock to head causes a loss of millions, so if we’ve got that many to spare who cares? So apparently being more self confident, not being able to walk straight and passing out is a bad thing; but why? These effects are caused by the alcohol getting to the main centers of our brain (now that doesn’t sound good). Did you know that women get drunk faster than men? This is because men have more muscle tissue than fat, whereas women have more fat than muscle. Alcohol cannot dissolve in fat but can in the water found in muscle and therefore it is diluted more. This means that women end up with a higher concentration of alcohol in their blood and therefore they get a lot drunker, faster. Let’s not forget the not-so-fun part of being drunk; the vomiting, due to the alcohol irritating the stomach lining and the sweating, due to increased blood flow to the skin.
This may all be true, but no first year really cares about their body when it comes to having fun (not to mention we wouldn’t be able to cope with the claustrophobic Friars without a couple of drinks). So what about the long-term effects, will they be enough to convince us? They include hardening of the liver, stomach ulcers and the one that might sway the men, decreased sex-hormone production. Oh dear, watch out boys!
Finally, we come to the penultimate of a great night out… a hangover. So how do we get rid of it because we’ve got essays to do and tests to write, which we are not willing to sacrifice a night-out for. There are many myths about the remedies for a hangover. Carrying on drinking is one of them and this definitely does not work, it just delays the inevitable. Another myth is that burnt toast is the cure. Stop putting yourself through the pain of eating that disgusting black stuff because it doesn’t work. What about the Wimpy breakfast that we all insist on having the next day? That doesn’t work either; fatty food is a prevention and not a cure so, if anything, go to Wimpy before you go out. The stuff that does actually help is fruit juice, water, eggs and bananas.
So, have we reached a decision as to whether we are all alcoholics? According to the facts we are extremely close. Students are unaware of what their binge drinking is doing to their bodies and if they do they choose to ignore it because no-one wants to be a social outcast and that is what non-drinkers are perceived to be by most students. Alcohol has become such a social norm that students don’t even know when they are abusing it. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we are only avoiding being labeled as an alcoholic because it is seen as normal to drink and to drink often at university. I don’t think, however, that the majority of students are alcoholics despite what the facts say. Students are just having fun while they can, before life gets a little more serious.
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I actually liked reading your opinion piece, as mine revolved around the same theme of alcohol at Rhodes. Before I began reading it (after looking at the title), I thought I was going to disagree with you, but I found myself being able to relate to what you said. However, you want us to reach a conclusion of whether or not Rhodes students are alcoholics, yet you spent the majority of your piece giving facts about alcohol and hangovers, which are pretty much true, they don't relate directly to what the main argument is: whether we are alcoholics or not. I don't find myself disagreeing strongly with any of your points, but I do feel that a lot of people at Rhodes do drink to 'fit in', and in this regard, they do it excessively. On the other hand, many people also do it for their own reasons such as to have fun, but I just see this as people who can't have fun without it.
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