GUEST COLUMNIST: When one drink is one too many

When I was the same age as the local students who binge drink at parties, I was becoming accustomed to sleeping in a car. I associate the two activities since I slept in a car to escape the violent outbursts of siblings who were abusing alcohol in our home. With nowhere else to go, I berthed down in the car when the unrest started up. Once I was locked in the car, I had to keep my head down. Sleeping in a car was illegal in my township, and if the police had seen me, they would have arrested me for vagrancy. Today, when I read about students hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, I feel affected once more by alcohol abuse, even though I no longer have to resort to vagrancy to escape the wrath of a ranting, raging drunk. Thankfully, my siblings are in recovery and my family's nightmare is over. But before the recoveries began, my family went through years of alcoholism's hellish ravages: stolen belongings, broken furniture, physical assaults, car crashes and phone calls from the police. My family's alcoholism led to one successful suicide and the attempted suicide of a sibling that I witnessed and had to stop. I would not want to see any other family suffer such trauma, but when I hear about students getting knee-walking, falling-down, throwing-up, passing-out drunk, I see my siblings' early alcoholism. It scares me to think of where these students might be going. And desperately, I wish I knew of something I could say to them to make them stop. My rational and emotional sides collide, and I struggle for answers. Alcohol abuse alarms me. But I tell myself -- or I try, unsuccessfully, to convince myself -- that these binges are a passing thing. They're expressions of youthful exuberance and feelings of invincibility. All of the students who binge drink are not budding alcoholics. Once they finish college, I tell myself, most of them will form healthy relationships with alcohol. Though I've given thought to the live-and-let-live approach to binge drinking, I have a visceral reaction every time I read about another incidence of alcohol poisoning. I know I have a bias in this matter. But might that give me insight to contribute? I'm not wagging my finger at anyone, and I'm not a prohibitionist. But I know of alcohol's destructive power when it is abused. I've learned to respect it. And I'm not so sure that having a youthful fling with problem drinking is really so harmless. In fact, I think it can be dangerous. Alcoholism cut a swath through my family as defined as a tornado's path. Four of my seven siblings are alcoholics. The remaining four of us can have the occasional brew or glass of wine without so much as slurring a word. In fact, none of us who are non-alcoholics ever binge drank, passed out drunk or made drunken idiots of ourselves. Only my alcoholic siblings did that. So did the alcoholics become alcoholics because they binged, or did they binge because they carry a predisposition to alcoholism? I'm sure there are people who binged in college but stopped and never had a lasting problem. And I guess the students who binge drink would tell me that they don't have a drinking problem because they don't need to drink every day, it doesn't affect their relationships or they don't drink in secret. Come on. The people who were rushed to the hospital nearly drank themselves to death at one sitting, and killing yourself with drink is a major symptom of a drinking problem. I know that everyone who binge drinks in college isn't a budding alcoholic -- but consider the risks and the consequences for those who are. I remember the intense peer pressure to abuse alcohol when I was of college age. I faced a lot of scorn for resisting the pressure, which I did not out of character, but out of fear of becoming the latest in a long line of Quinns to drink themselves to death. I guess the binge drinkers on campus don't have that incentive to take it easy. But I wish they did.