Recovering student alcoholic speaks at U.

A recovering student alcoholic and a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving spoke to 20 students about their experiences with drug addiction and drunk driving in the keynote speech of Alcohol and other Drug Awareness Week last night in Houston Hall. Steve, a senior at a local college, and Karen, a speaker for the Philadelphia County MADD chapter, spoke on topics ranging from Kurt Cobain to the personal tragedies of drunk driving. Both speakers said they did not want their last name used, because of the personal ramifications of their stories. Steve said he was from a "blueblood Philadelphia" background and drank and smoked pot since seventh grade. "[I] partied my way here, to talk about drug and alcohol addiction," he said. Steve had a clear message for those attending the discussion. "It's not what or how much you've done, but what it did to you," he said. He recounted his high school cocaine addiction, the drug-related accidental death of a friend at 20, and how he finally "dumped everything onto the table" after his senior year in high school by telling his parents and entering a recovery program. Steve said he realized he "had been spiritually dead for a long time." "The bottle?was my best friend," he recalled. "[It was] the only one who understood me?The one I went to talk to." After conquering his addiction, Steve attended a local university and lived in a dormitory. He said he remembers watching freshmen, inexperienced with drugs and alcohol, disintegrate over the course of a year. He said he is part of a fraternity, which he said he enjoys because there is little pressure on him to drink. But he added that he sometimes feels like shaking up his brothers when they brag about their drinking binges. Steve also reflected on the suicide of Kurt Cobain. He said he felt sorry for the Nirvana singer because he was "an addict, he had a disease, and died in the way that a lot of addicts do." "Alcohol is a part of life," he concluded "And it's a matter of learning how to deal with it." Karen, the other speaker, helped start Philadelphia County MADD after a drunk driver killed her 13-year-old daughter in January of 1988. She said the numbers of drunk driving related deaths has been a major concern to her. "In the past decade, four times as many Americans died in drunk driving crashes than in the Vietnam War," she said. She estimated that drunk driving costs taxpayers over $148 billion annually, and argued that drunk driving "is a crime that has received totally inadequate treatment from the criminal justice system. "I won't ask you not to drink, because it's certainly your choice," she said "But don't be stupid, don't get behind the wheel of your car [after drinking at a party.]" She said that students driving drunk risked their own lives, and the lives of children like her daughter. Karen urged students to use a designated driver, or to walk home. Many victims of drunk driving spent the rest of their lives in wheelchairs, in jail or in diapers, she noted. Karen Pollack, a Drug and Alcohol Resource Team event coordinator, said the speech helped raise awareness of drug and alcohol related issues at Penn. Alcohol and Other Drug Awareness Week has two days of events remaining, today and tomorrow.