COLUMN: None for me, thanks

From Sonja Stumacher's "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96 From Sonja Stumacher's "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96It's all too easy to go overboard if alcohol is your method to stress relief. From Sonja Stumacher's "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96It's all too easy to go overboard if alcohol is your method to stress relief.Something about breaking the rules fills human beings with a sort of wild glee, a fierce, crazy, dare-devilish joy that proclaims to the frowning universe: I am free! The world tells us to behave, to be gracious and solemn, wise, patient and humble. To be mature. And we are, most of the time. Except for brilliant moments when, for no apparent reason whatsoever, we scream and laugh and refuse to obey, all for the simple, perverse pleasure of blatant contradiction, for the pure senseless bliss of yodeling at the blue moon in the dead of night when anyone in her right mind would be fast asleep, preparing for the onslaught of another day. However, there might be a more grim aspect to this youthful mutiny, a darker edge that the surface does not at first illuminate. Turn upside down our infinite attraction to rule-breaking, and its underbelly seems to shine a slightly less flamboyant hue. Look a little closer, and you might discern a vague shadow tainting the bright rapture of transgression, because only the finest line separates a consciously experimental breach of behavior from an unthinking journey into utter oblivion. I fear I have lately baffled a dear friend of mine. He fails to understand my tendency to decline invitations to revel the night away at popular bars overflowing with music and boisterous crowds, to stay awake till the wee hours of the morning drinking myself silly. In truth, I have nothing against reveling, nothing against crowded bars bursting with music and people and booze, nothing against staying up late. I decline his invitation for the very simple reason that this scene does not attract me as strongly as it once might have. In fact, certain elements of this atmosphere have instead stopped me in my tracks, have spurred me to question these widely-established habits of unwinding, of letting off steam, of cutting loose from another long week. The first semesters of college are commonly the months when experimental behavior reaches its climax, when you strive to transgress otherwise accepted codes of conduct, when you yearn to test all boundaries, ache to push every limit, dare to break any rule. You drink like a fish, party all night, sleep all day, study when you must, run in herds through the streets, frolicking and dancing just for the pleasure of knowing you can, of knowing nobody can forbid you. You're free, happy, untamed -- the world is your playground. In short, you're a bad-ass and proud of it. And then, slowly, you reach a point when the glory begins to fade a little. Somehow you grow weary of fraternity parties, of basement floors flooded with cheap beer, of drunk people pretending to know your name, of crowded, impersonal bars bursting at the seams with sweaty bodies. You become exhausted from too many sleepless nights. You start to covet occasional moments of peace and quiet. And gradually you realize that all of this -- the frat house, the bar, the music, the people, the conversation -- revolves around one very simple, basic ingredient: alcohol. This bitter liquid alone is the heart of the activity. It attracts the masses, enters their bloodstreams, liberates their constrained bodies, draws smiles on their flushed faces, inspires their animated conversation, guides them to the pulse of the music. Indeed, without alcohol there would be no people, no jokes, no smiles, no conversation, no music. There would be no bar, and there would be no party. I would pause and ask you to consider one fairly uncomplicated question: Why? Why must the consumption of alcohol be the only means of expressing and celebrating the vigour of youth? Why do we need this concoction to alter our minds and bodies in order to become unleashed, uninhibited human beings? Or does alcohol simply dull the pain of being conscious, giving our minds a moment's rest from wakeful anxiety? Either way, we must surely concede that excessive consumption of this fermented liquid, for either of these reasons, might easily lead not only to casual reliance but also to full-blown alcoholism. Somehow, while you aren't looking, alcohol might easily transform itself from a mere social tool into a heavy physical dependence, a substance without which you can survive neither day nor night. What begins as a means of transgressing the rules can end in a crippling and life-threatening addiction. In reality, a broken rule is just that: simply another clumsy, faltering step in the endlessly twisting journey of self-discovery and -awareness. Yet certainly the logic of obedience must first be shattered if we are ever to swallow and ingest its purpose. How can we wholly understand the importance of sobriety until we have sliced it in half, until we have unleashed ourselves from its confinement? We cannot. For truly the only logic we'll ever know is the logic we build with our own hands, carefully, consciously, through the sweat of our own strenuous efforts. And so we shall break the rules, and we shall transgress the boundaries. Certainly, we must experiment in order to learn and grow, in order to expand our minds and formulate our own decisions. But while we're awake all night, howling at the stars, cavorting along the sidewalks, cartwheeling in the streets, let's not forget that we do eventually need to sleep, to study, to think, read and write. Sure, let's have a beer, but let's give alcohol the power to be only what it is and nothing more: just another drink.