Fraternities, college and drinking games
 

Anyone else ever in a fraternity, or have a serious spike in drinking in college? I joined a fraternity my freshman year of uni, (20 years ago now), and the drinking rituals were downright frightening.

The initiation process was horrible. Twelve of us lined up in a row - and the the two guys on the end were given full bottles of Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort. On the word "go", we had to pass the bottles from one end to the other, down the line, and they had to be empty by the time they reached the other ends. The idea was "don't f*$ck your brother" and make sure you drank your share. This was done while other members cheered and jeered. We also participated in "slam-offfs" with beer versus other fraternity members, a contest of sorts to prove our loyalty. One kid got so drunk that he slipped and cracked his head outside - when he went to the hospital, everyone was concerned....not that he'd be okay, but that he'd "tell on us" and the fraternity would be in trouble. I was just 18 years old at the time and had barely touched a drink in high school - and this was the way I was introduced to drinking. Older guys who could drink the most were also considered the coolest guys in the house, and were given awesome nicknames and got all the laughs.

While I can't blame my alcoholism on these experiences, I definitely think the seed of addiction was planted on fertile ground here. I'd recommend young people to stay away from joining these types of clubs or organizations - sure I made some good buddies, but looking back it most certainly wasn't worth it. The way I viewed drinking became very skewed from these first social drinking experiments.

There was an freshman rites ritual for my swim team when i was in college. We went from house to house doing several drinking games. I drank about 40 units of alcohol in less than 2 hrs. One girl ended up in the hospital. Her parents sued and the whole swim team(including the freshman) had to do 250 community service hrs. Seems fair huh?

Not enough in my opinion. BE WELL

I first fell in love with booze as an 18 year old at my first college party at a frat. I am an alcoholic so of course I would have ended up with problems from drinking eventually so in a weird way I'm glad the ridiculous drinking sort of sped me along the road to alcoholic drinking lol. I drank a ton all through my 4 years of college and in 4 years I had gone from a kid who never really drank at all to a hard core daily drinker- just grateful to have spun out relatively quickly to be able to get help at a relatively young age.

Yes.

There seem to be a lot of people in the general population who, while they may not be alcoholics, always seem to have alcohol "around".

Ugh... College drinking culture. I can't imagine how many people have their 'alcoholism door' opened thanks to this behavior.

There's a reason it is frequently called 'Toxic U'.

Yes I did all that bigsombrero, almost exactly as you describe. I drank to puke all the time. Managed to excel academically, but I was hungover or drinking way too often.

Went to a College that didn't have Frats, but visited buddies who pledged and who had mixed experiences with the Greek System. One of my best buddies de-pledged himself after the Brothers rounded up a bunch of drunk pledges, made them lay naked in the basement and peed on them. Ewwww... Some other horror stories as well. Bunch of sick twisted spoiled rich kid entitlement issues going on in some corners of the Greek system. Also some really good experiences, probably 50/50 good/bad to guestimate...

The weird thing with me was that I knew on some level that I probably shouldn't drink when I went to College. I drank a lot during my last two years of high school, and had some consequences then that I should have known would repeat if I continued to drink. Soo... I ended up on the 6 year plan, but dried out enough to rock out the last two years and graduate with honors.

When underage in college, it was all about binge drinking. Drink as much as you could, as fast as you could. Avoid the cops if they showed up at a house party. I "remember" a few nights sleeping in a stall in the dorm men's room, sick, and promising God that I would never drink again if I made it through. Yeah, that lasted...

One particularly bad memory was of me and three friends finishing a 16 gallon keg of beer in a 24 hour period.

Makes me glad my University experience was along British lines, BigS.

D

I never went to a real university, so I avoided the party life. I did drink at 19 and 20 but I wasn't a problem drinker then. That stuff is scary.