Drink_The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol

by Ann Dowsett Johnston

  And with that, she speaks for her gender—and a generation.

  6.

  Binge

  THE CAMPUS DRINKING CULTURE

  How do you denormalize getting “shitfaced”?

  —UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT

  Let me introduce you to Maggie: a tall, extraordinarily attractive woman with a funky sense of style, a winning grin—and an equally winning way of speaking. Ask her about her drinking, and she shoots straight from the hip. “I was fourteen when I started, and I loved it. I had found something magical that could release the feelings of anxiety and stress I carried around. I liked getting to the point where I could be funny, escape myself. I knew I had fallen in love.”

  Now thirty-three and in recovery, Maggie is uncomfortable using her real name: she would prefer not to hurt her parents, or teachers who were good to her. Still, she minces no words about her high school habits, confessing that she took vodka to her girls’ private school in Toronto. Once in a while, she’d down a screwdriver before heading off in the morning, or sneak one into her lunchbox. She skied, played tennis, acted, and was second violinist in the school orchestra. “But I knew I was an alcoholic at nineteen,” says Maggie, who is editor in chief of a popular Toronto fashion blog. “I certainly drank more than any girl I knew.” Her parents had been through a separation and a divorce that “lasted forever,” one that started when she was eight. “There was a lot of sadness and confusion. I tried to take on the burden of the pain, trying to shield my little sister. By the time I had my first drink in high school, it was a relief.”

  By tenth grade, Maggie had already found diners that would serve her, located bootleg operations in doughnut shops. She had elaborate schemes of how to shoulder-tap at the beer store, ones that involved stuffing her bra, and flirting with any man who pulled up. Her friends also enjoyed drinking. But while they nursed Mike’s Hard Lemonade in the park, she downed vodka and passed out on the grass. “I’m practically an expert on puking, hangovers,” she says, looking absurdly elegant as she makes this pronouncement. She’s sitting at a hip Toronto bistro, eating a chicken salad, drinking water. “I often drank until I puked, and then I would drink again. I learned how to live like that: throw up, brush my teeth, drink.”

  By the time she hit university—Concordia in Montreal—she says she was easily consuming forty drinks a week. “There were four or five nights every week when I was knocking back seven drinks or so. There was a bar that attracted students, one that was full of degenerate drunks. I was running a tab there. I was very depressed, and lonely. I was very unsure of who I was. I was nervous with daily things: social interaction, building a life in Montreal. If I was ever depressed in my life, it was then. But at the time, I just figured I had a drinking problem. I knew that my drinking didn’t look like my friends’. Most days were spent smoking cigarettes, and most nights were spent ordering multiple double rum and Cokes.”

  Maggie went to the university health clinic, and the nurse directed her to Alcoholics Anonymous. “I went to AA a few times, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t hear anything that related to me: drunk driving, doctors drinking before operating. It didn’t resonate.”

  Today, Maggie can take the long view on those years, having been sober for more than a year. Last summer, on an extended trip to Montreal, she returned to her college haunts: it was a “cathartic and emotionally draining” process. Looking back, what advice would she give her younger self? “Get more involved on campus,” she says. “My schedule wasn’t busy enough. Had I got more involved in clubs, dance classes, I would have been better off.” At the time, she volunteered at a cancer ward. “It helped a bit, but I was with dying patients.”

  On and off, Maggie would experiment with sobriety. “There were some blocks in my mid-twenties, but I’d still binge drink every weekend to oblivion, puking on fire hydrants. I worked in the film industry. We worked hard, and played hard. I blended in.”

  The night before her wedding shower, Maggie—then twenty-seven—fell on the sidewalk outside a bar, cracking a tooth and ending up with a black eye and a scraped mouth. She tried to wiggle out of the shower, but there wasn’t a chance: “My friends have been making party sandwiches all week,” said her mother. The women who had nurtured her in childhood, all neatly arranged on slipcovered sofas, heard that she had caught her high heel in a grate and tripped. She confesses: “I looked like I’d Frenched a thorny rosebush.”

  Maggie may consider her own drinking unusual. But speak to McGill grad Kate Simmie, and she doesn’t raise an eyebrow. “University is the acceleration of drinking,” says Simmie, “not the initiation. In high school, there was definitely some stealing from the parents, drinking in friends’ bedrooms. But university? People drink their faces off.” The beer-guzzling frat-boy stereotype now has a female equivalent: she drinks wine and spirits, and she’s likely no stranger to drinking games. Says Simmie: “There were times when I went drink for drink with guys. Guys think that’s cool.”

  Sydne Martin, now thirty and also a McGill grad, agrees: “The amount of vodka we drank was overwhelming. The shots of Jack Daniel’s and Jäger bombs—you ended up partying just as hard as the boys did. And there was no education around it.”

  On Martin’s first morning at McGill, someone said: “Here’s your wristband, go get a beer!” “It was ten a.m., and the event was sponsored by a beer company,” says Martin. “This was my first experience at university.” She also remembers going on “booze cruises” of the city, with girls flashing their breasts at strangers. “I thought it was outrageous.” But the incident that caused her the most alarm was one in her fourth year: a Muslim family was taking a tour of McGill, just beyond a group of frosh who had clearly been drinking and were stripping on campus, performing a series of simulated sexual acts, including fellatio. Says Martin, “I was genuinely ashamed.”

  Another McGill student, who prefers not to be named, said that it is not uncommon to meet young women who have woken up in the hospital, having had their stomachs pumped—both in high school and university. Recently, an acquaintance was sent home from a party in a cab. Too inebriated to pay, she was left in a snowbank by the driver. The next thing she remembers: waking up in the hospital, having had her stomach pumped. “Usually they’re not embarrassed,” says the McGill student. “In fact, it’s often a point of pride.”

  Pre-drinking is the order of the day—also known as preloading or pregaming: drinking before heading out. When Dana Meyer, now twenty-five, went to Elon University in North Carolina, she would get a “handle of vodka for pregaming. In college, we drank a lot of hard liquor—whatever got you drunk the fastest.” Pledging as a sorority sister, it was her job to pick up the older seniors who were “drunk and never remembered you had driven them.”

  Meyer knew girls in college who wouldn’t eat so the alcohol would affect them faster—a phenomenon that eminent alcohol researcher Sharon Wilsnack calls “drinking efficiently.” Ann Kerr, a Toronto eating disorder specialist, echoes this observation: “Their agenda is to get drunk fast. That’s their intention. They may not drink and drive, but they ‘pre-drink’—they get smashed before they go out. Usually, they don’t eat ahead of time because it’s a date. And girls tend to drink straight alcohol because they don’t want the extra calories.” What’s changed in recent years? “The intensity of the experience,” says Kerr.

  “Most girls drink to fit in,” says Martha, nineteen, who is heading off to college. “If you’re the girl who doesn’t drink, you’re the loser. There’s social pressure to play drinking games, guys drinking shots out of girls’ belly buttons, girls chugging.”

  Chugging, and in many cases, not eating on a regular basis. One troubling phenomenon is the rise in so-called drunkorexia: a mixture of eating disorders and getting drunk, also known as “drinking without dining.” In recent years, as the incidence of eating disorders has increased, so too has the correlation with binge drinking. According to Kerr, more than 40 percent of bulimics will have a history
of alcohol abuse or dependence at some point in their lives. A recent study from the University of Missouri reported that 16 percent of college students who were surveyed reported restricting calories to “save them” for drinking. Of the respondents, roughly three times as many women reported engaging in the behavior as men. The risks of so-called drunkorexia include short-and long-term cognitive problems including difficulty concentrating, studying, and making decisions, as well as liver and blood pressure problems. Meanwhile, Dr. Naomi Crafti—representing the Australian Eating Disorders Foundation—reported that drunkorexia is now widespread in Australia.

  “Each person with an eating disorder has their own rules about how they get their calories,” says Kerr. “The intention is to drink to relax or unwind—and the rationale is: ‘This is how I’ll get my calories today.’ But these are empty calories. And the likelihood of blackouts and seizures is very high in someone who’s starved.”

  Eating disorders are one complicating factor. Mood disorders are another. “Most women who have problems with alcohol also have a problem with mood disorders—this is not necessarily true for men.” This is the experienced, compassionate voice of Kay Redfield Jamison, author of the bestselling An Unquiet Mind and Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide. Professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Redfield Jamison has agreed to meet me for coffee in the campus’s Daily Grind cafeteria. In a booth in the corner, away from the fray, she is prepping for her day, already wearing her white coat. “University is the age of risk for all psychiatric illnesses—depression, bipolar. People don’t know what they’ve got. This is the worst thing: unlike Alzheimer’s or heart disease or diabetes, these are illnesses of youth. In a universe of young, healthy people, you can find yourself sick, irritable, withdrawn. People get very agitated and drink more. It’s the worst thing you can do. It undermines medications, can induce mixed states, make a person more impulsive—and put them at a higher risk for suicide.”

  One in four individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 will experience a mental health problem, the most common being depression and anxiety. According to a recent Canada-U.S. study, one in four students who showed up at campus health clinics suffered from depression, and one in ten had recently thought about suicide. At Canada’s Queen’s University, students with diagnosed mental health illnesses are the fastest-growing group with disabilities. Of those young people suffering a mental health problem, only 10 percent will seek help. Alcohol, for many, is the most accessible drug.

  On many campuses, alcohol has proven to be fatal. In February 2012, Zara Malone—a twenty-two-year-old student at Britain’s Exeter University—was found dead in the flat that she shared, covered in her own vomit, two empty vodka bottles in her room. According to the coroner, the student of English and classical literature died “as a consequence of alcohol abuse.” She had battled anorexia and insomnia, had been treated for anxiety, and had taken antidepressants. Her death was played differently from that of another Exeter student six years earlier: freshman Gavin Britton died in November 2006 after a night of playing drinking games, part of an initiation to the university’s golf society that involved an extensive pub crawl. And both were presented quite differently than the death in January 2013 of Nicole Falkingham, the estranged wife of a millionaire property developer in Liverpool, who apparently died of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia in the back of a friend’s car after a long stint in a wine bar.

  Three different deaths, all with alcohol in common. Alcohol can kill. We often underplay this fact, beyond the issue of drunk driving. Speak to counselors in the youth group at Caron Treatment Centers in Pennsylvania and they will tell you that most young people coming in with multiple substance problems will be unconcerned about their drinking. “A lot of college students have normalized binge drinking, or drinking to black out,” says David Rotenberg, vice president of treatment. Says Janice Styer, a clinical family specialist, “We see young adult women who don’t even see alcohol as a problem—and parents who are grateful if their sons and daughters are only doing alcohol. Girls will bargain their recovery: they’ll give up cocaine, but alcohol? ‘What about my wedding? Graduation? My twenty-first birthday?’ It’s a societal thing.”

  Two young women, both recent graduates of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, tell me that they are alone among their several female roommates in not having been arrested and put in the local drunk tank overnight. “I have no idea how I graduated,” says one. “It was so accessible to get absolutely wasted in Halifax. Every night, there was a drink special at a different bar. And on Saturdays, you could buy fifty beers for thirty bucks at Split Crow. We called it ‘church’ because we went religiously, every week.”

  At Queen’s University, it is not uncommon for incoming students to be told to write the phone number of a roommate or friend on their arm before a big night out: that way, should they pass out, someone will know whom to call to get them home. Says one former professor: “It’s IV alcohol. The criterion is: drink to get blotto.” Recent grad Rachel Shindman agrees: “Vodka is very popular for girls—they’re playing beer pong or flip cup with vodka, rather than beer, drinking so much more alcohol than the guys. There are so many women who can’t remember the night before—and they consider it a badge of honor.”

  Walking up the well-worn blue stairs of the Queen’s University Health Centre, I arrive at the office of Dr. Mike Condra. Outside his office is a poster of a young woman in a black dress, lying facedown on a couch, legs splayed. A bottle of vodka is beside her, a glass tipped over. “Just because you helped her home doesn’t mean you get to help yourself.”

  Condra, director of health, counseling, and disability services at Queen’s, has been watching student behavior for years—and he notices several distinct shifts. Says the Irish-born Condra: “First of all, style. People pre-drink because it’s cheaper to drink at home than at the bar. It leads people to have more alcohol in their homes. Secondly, there is the issue of quantity: it is more common to drink to serious intoxication. Students get plastered: this is part of the heart and soul here. It’s that deep-rooted. I know because I have observed people who have drunk to the point of vomiting, and then gone back for more. Thirdly, there is the peer cultural influence to drink: it is considered unusual not to drink. That influence is very strong. We have an enormous amount of alcohol marketing in society, and alcohol is associated with a young, happy, positive lifestyle. And the intensity of university brings about a strong need for relatively easy ways to unwind.

  “Delicately, I say it’s a very difficult thing to do anything about. We can all mouth platitudes, but we need to do something serious with those who drink and do serious stuff. People forget: alcohol is a depressant. This is the prime age for the onset of most mental health problems. Drinking will delay the diagnosis. It delays help-seeking. Binge drinkers are seven times as likely as others to get sexually transmitted infections. I’ve seen a lot of young people make quite destructive choices. They get into fights, become sexual when they wouldn’t otherwise. I’ve seen head injuries from falling down stairs, broken teeth, seriously broken arms. Is it a harmless rite of passage? No.”

  When I went to Queen’s in the 1970s, it was considered uncool to abstain. Blackout drunk? This was uncool, too. Extreme drinking—getting “hammered,” “loaded,” “obliterated”—was for men, and only for a certain subpopulation at that: engineers and football players. Their escapades were legendary—or at least, the stuff of urban legend.

  As frosh, engineers were expected to shimmy up the “grease pole”: a goalpost stolen in 1955 from the University of Toronto, rumored to be coated in excrement, with a Queen’s tam at the top. According to one grad, roadkill was often added to the mix, which led to infections. A Queen’s yellow engineering jacket was synonymous with hard-partying macho living.

  And then there were football players. One all-male house, populated by team members, was renowned for its annual end-of-year dinner party: each evening close
d with the residents tossing their dirty dishes down the basement stairs. Rumor was they “washed” each other’s hair with peanut butter, and urinated in empty beer bottles, bottles that unsuspecting housemates later consumed. This was pure Animal House: good for parties, risky for overnights.

  One of my closest friends married one of those football players, a smart, charismatic young man. He eventually became the respected leader of one of the country’s finest private schools. This too was part of the script: people matured, calmed down in their twenties, married, and had babies. Repeat cycle.

  If this was the script, the reality was a bit different. Girls got pregnant when they didn’t expect to; there was date rape; accidents happened; nice kids ended up in jail or in the emergency room. Once, in first year, I held a birthday party for my boyfriend. Someone brought margaritas, and the party took off. I ended up exiting my own party with the “bad boy.” Four other couples broke up that night. That party wasn’t my finest moment.

  I remember only two other occasions when I drank that much in my four years at university: my then-boyfriend chewed me out, and I deserved it. But for the most part, my drinking was secondary to my primary interest, which was romance.

  When Condra says that drinking has become more extreme, he is saying a lot. Queen’s is renowned for three primary reasons: the exceptional quality of its students, its unquenchable school spirit, and its over-the-top partying.

  Of course, there was a time in the late 1980s when the picturesque campus was also known as a hub of misogyny. In 1989, Queen’s made national news when males in one residence hung signs from their windows announcing “No Means Harder,” “No Means Down on Your Knees, Bitch,” and “No Means More Beer.” Although this spoke more to sexual harassment than to a drinking culture, there was a strong alcohol component to the story. Female students responded by staging a sit-in at the principal’s office, demanding action. The university initiated a review of both Orientation and Homecoming, and its board of trustees donated ten thousand dollars to the local sexual assault center.