Brown: Booze hiatus eye-opening

There’s a lot of boozing in college. That’s a fact.

Even my fellow Pitt News columnist… There’s a lot of boozing in college. That’s a fact.

Even my fellow Pitt News columnist Katie Azzara touched on the significance of drinking last week in her column when she discussed transitioning into the bar scene as a new 21-year-old. Speaking from experience, I can say that being of legal drinking age changes everything.

With the exception of a few holidays and smaller house parties, when most people turn 21, they don’t turn back. Even with the incurred costs that are well above those of the average weekend house-party scene, those of us who are able to barhop usually keep on blowing cash on a weekly basis.

Bars essentially become to college students what churches were to communities before the 18th century: hubs for congregation. The big difference is that churches didn’t quite lend themselves to being spots to pick up one-night stands.

For many legal drinkers in college, it would be difficult to imagine living in sobriety for an extended period of time  — it’d be equivalent to having a primary social activity eliminated. Or at least that’s what I thought before I had to do it.

Following recommendations from a few doctors, my family and my inflamed liver, I realized I had to take it easy for a month while I recovered from a rather unexpected bout with mononucleosis.

At first, I tried to compensate for my inability to drink. I went to a bar only to order a ginger ale, trying to feel comfortable. But that really wasn’t possible.

When your 21-or-older friend — under the influence of alcohol, of course — mentions to everyone you’re being a “pansy” for the night, feeling a sense of comfort  becomes difficult. It didn’t help that this friend also told the entire crowd I had mono.

I might as well have had the bubonic plague, or that’s at least how I felt by the time he was done. So after two hours of feeling like an outcast, I left that bar to meet up with some other friends.

There, I switched to root beer. But when I ordered my drink, it took a few moments for the bartender to process the idea that I wasn’t having alcohol.

Each instance had its own moments of awkwardness. Since then, I’ve opted out of going to bars for as long as anything alcoholic other than mouthwash has been verboten to me.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to figure out what a senior in college does when he can’t go to the weekend watering hole. To my surprise, Pitt Student Health Service’s most recent statistics report that more than half of the student body has experience with heavy drinking. According to the 2006 survey, 51 percent of Pitt students drank five or more drinks in one sitting within the last two weeks before the survey was conducted.

As part of the minority of Pitt students during my freshman year, I used to go to Friday Nite Improvs at the Cathedral. Everyone I went with has since graduated, however, so I didn’t have any friends to go with during my mono-induced drinking hiatus.

Instead, I went to the casino once and watched college football with some friends another time during my four-week break.

Otherwise, I spent my weekends watching movies and updating my resumé. I wouldn’t call it particularly exciting, but it was a good change of pace.

The whole experience will culminate this weekend, when I should be able to grab the handle of vodka I’ve had sitting in my fridge collecting dust for a month. But the results of what changed from a month of social isolation into an experiment in sobriety have me in awe.

On average, before mono, I would spend $20 to $30 on a single night’s bar crawl, not including the obligatory $5 pizza. With that money no longer tied up in testing the functionality of my liver, I had extra cash to budget on eating out and other goods I had put off getting — like my Halloween costume.

I could also get started on work earlier on Sundays without having to shake off any residual effects from the prior night’s activities. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller, if you have the means to try out a stint of sobriety, I highly recommend it.

But most of us legal drinkers don’t. A good time often consists of going out with friends, loosening up and having fun, with alcohol acting as the primary social lubricant. If you’re not drinking, you’re not having fun, or so we’re conditioned to think.

As a designated driver in the past, I’ve asked bartenders to put Sprite into a cocktail glass so it would look like a gin and tonic. It has certainly made life easier at times, especially when I’ve run into people I went to high school with who have asked me about my drink of choice.

If my dry experiment has taught me nothing else, though, it has taught me restraint. Whereas drinking used to be about getting “shwasted,” soon after my 21st birthday, it turned into a key for weekend enjoyment.

But now after not imbibing for my longest stretch since turning legal, the lack of alcohol has given me an appreciation for moderation. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing, considering excessive weekend forays in drinking will only be fashionable for graduating seniors like myself for another six months.

Write Jacob at jeb110@pitt.edu.