I love to party. I love good food, good alcohol and good company; singing, dancing, joking and laughing until the wee hours of the morn is one of my favorite past-times. And living in NYC, I get to do that a lot, and more importantly, working in a bar and going to acting school for 3 years, I see it a lot. There is a delightful and fleeting camaraderie that happens sometimes; it lasts only a few hours in the middle of the night amongst the party-goers and vanishes with dawn. It often reveals people’s true faces; their desires, emotions and opinions. Sadly, all those colorful expressions are usually chocked up the next day to the night’s festivities. “I was just drunk.” Were you?
I by no means discount or demean the serious and devastating effects alcohol and drugs can have on someone, and in some cases cause a person to act out of character. It happens. That is not the issue. I fear that for many, an alcohol induced haze is used as an excuse to engage in whatever behavior they want, and that because it was booze-fueled, no one holds themselves accountable for said behavior. “The sky is blue!” you cry. Of course people use booze to get stupid. But in many cases, I think it is premeditated tom-foolery — you get drunk because you want to do X and not have your friends question or judge your judgment or desires. Or even worse, deep down you have some desire but are for some reason neglecting to address it, and so you drink/get high/etc in order to act on that desire without ever acknowledging that part of yourself. By saying all of our party behavior is justified because we “were (fill in the blank),” we are doing ourselves a huge disservice.
The two issues in my mind are the unwillingness to own our behavior publicly (“Yeah, I wanted to fool around with Nick, so I DID. WHAT?”) and fear of self-examination (“Do I genuinely like casual sex drunk or is there something else going on?”) and how those two mind-sets can drive us to hide under the blanket of inebriation. The behavior in question is not necessarily ever “bad” or “inappropriate.” One man’s drunk is another man’s sober. The moral/societal acceptability of the activity is irrelevant; it is how the participant treats the activity when sober that is interesting. When we talk about booze relieving “inhibitions” it does not mean it makes us act crazy. It means we don’t think twice about acting on impulse; in other words, we do the things we do because we want to, regardless of logic, boundaries or societal/social pressures to fit in. So when you take back your confession of love because you were drunk? I don’t necessarily buy it.
I worry too that because of the prevalence of getting shitty to have fun, we are missing opportunities to learn more about ourselves. Even if you are not purposefully using “being drunk” as an excuse to act as you please, you might sweep all of your drunk behavior under that carpet anyway, rather than asking yourself why you would hook up with two different people in the same night, dance naked on a table, tell a total stranger about how your parents never paid attention to you, or angrily rage at your best friend. Because we have allowed ourselves to dismiss any and all drunk behavior, we never look past it to the underlying causes (be they internal or external influences).
On a side note, alcohol plays a huge role in the hook-up culture as well. That says more about a sex-shaming Puritanical society than it does about the risks of alcohol. Maybe if we (women in particular) weren’t taught from day one that sex is bad and if you love it you’re a desperate slut-puppy who no one will ever love, we wouldn’t drink ourselves silly before having it. By saying we were under the influence we can still be “good girls,” for some reason, because we didn’t “really” want to have it, we were “just drunk.” I of course do not mean that as a validation of taking advantage of anyone drunk.
People just to need to own up. To themselves, or to their peers, or whoever. But stop hiding in the club shadows and denying what and who you are. Are you a freak? Be freaky and don’t feel the need to slam four shots of vodka down beforehand. Do you love singing in public? Don’t wait until karaoke night where you can pass it off as drunk shenanigans, SING, dammit! What is everyone so afraid of? You need to face your inner demon/Liza Minnelli sooner or later, so you might as well stop procrastinating with Jack and Tequila and get over it so you can start leading a somewhat healthy functional life, in charge of yourself.
-BB
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