A Beginner's Guide To Drinking

I remember the first time I got drunk like it was yesterday, but owing to my persistent alcohol use since then, I remember yesterday like it was fifteen years ago. Our story begins, like Hamlet, with the watchmen outside of the castle, except that the castle was actually a 7-11, and the watchmen were actually former Crips members.

FORMER CRIP: Would you like to buy this pirated DVD?

MY FRIEND: Sure, if you buy us alcohol.

It was slightly unusual to conduct business with a Crip in such a quid pro quo fashion, but it was also slightly unusual to find a Crip in front of 7-11 at such an opportune time. In this way, a six-pack of Budweiser was snatched from the jaws of legality and transported in my friend's SUV to Seattle's Volunteer Park.

As we sat on the playground, I greedily drank the carbonated horse urine like a socialite might nurse Grand Marnier. My limbs began to pulsate with a limp energy, and going down the slides attained a newfound joy.

I had told my parents that I'd be home by a certain time. The two-mile walk home felt more like the triumphant victory march of my liberated id. Getting drunk wasn't the egregious transgression against my upbringing and society that my grandmother had said it was-it was clean, harmless fun.

Throughout the rest of high school, I played the role of the teetotaler. But, eventually, senior year melted languidly into summer, and my old friends returned from college. They brought with them an extensive knowledge of mixology-or, in one happy case, the Holy Grail of underage drinking, the fake ID. Buying alcohol no longer became a matter of finding a convenience store run by a sufficiently lax first-generation immigrant. We freely got wasted in parks, inner-city woodlands, and playgrounds, but never at houses or other legal venues, as required by our parents' tacit, collective moratorium.

In August, we converged upon our customary locale, this time armed with a bottle of whiskey. I resolved to become more drunk than I had ever before. Not too much later, I began to feel horrible. I lunged left, then right, then left again before capitulating to my inability to walk. I barfed on a carpet of woodchips, narrowly missing the play structure. The act of vomiting itself wasn't so terrifying-in fact, it was actually somewhat cathartic.

Soon enough it was time for me to head off to college. Columbia offered a much more conducive, sans souci environment to getting wasted. Gone was the constant nag of parental restrictions; liberated was the id; tender was not the night, which was instead subjected to the continuous abuse of frat parties. I have nothing against frat parties per se, but getting wasted as a means of meeting people worked out badly.

In time, things got much better, and I discovered the true joy of social drinking with my new friends. I returned to Seattle for winter break with both greater wisdom and greater tolerance to find that my dad had stocked the house with some high-quality beer and a bottle of Kahlua. Taken together with his puritanical stance on alcohol when I was in high school, the reversal of policy made no sense, but I wasn't complaining.

As I abandoned my home for yet another semester of unchecked id, I reflected on the history of my alcohol use. I can't help but think that a less prudish view of alcohol, manifested by early and incremental exposure to the drug, would have resulted in more moderate consumption and less ridiculousness in open areas. I do still think that drinking functions best as an enhancer, not an activity in itself, but I can derive pleasure from getting wasted in a park, downing several shots at a party, or just having a beer at the end of the day to unwind. Ultimately, outside a few specific situations, drinking is nothing but another fun and very reasonable activity-just like video games, gossip, or going to museums. It deserves neither stigma nor glorification.