Some students realize not to drink and dial

Pitt student Sean Lennox no longer takes his cell phone with him when he goes out for the… Pitt student Sean Lennox no longer takes his cell phone with him when he goes out for the night. Instead, he leaves it in his room where he can’t see it, so, when he returns home, he doesn’t act on the familiar urge to “drunk dial.”

“I always make sure I *67 so people can’t tell it’s me,” he said.

James Cox, director of Pitt’s Counseling Center, said alcohol works on the part of the brain that controls a person’s judgment. He said that although specific motives for drunk-dialing vary among individuals, a drunken phone call results from the inhibition loss caused by alcohol.

“Alcohol is a social lubricant,” he said. “When it’s abused, people may do or say things [like] make phone calls at inappropriate times.”

If someone’s judgment is uninhibited, they will not think about the reasons they shouldn’t drunk-dial someone, Cox said. Those reasons could include the inappropriate time for making a phone call or an unusual recipient of the phone call, like a parent, family member or boss.

Tara Sell, a Pitt junior, said she often wakes up her mother with drunk phone calls, seeking advice on how to get rid of her hiccups. She said her mom does not get mad about the drunken calls because she knows her daughter is being safe and responsible.

Adrian Rooney, a sophomore student at Pitt, recently drunk-dialed his co-workers from his job at a mall shoe store near his hometown, Philadelphia. He said they “had a nice talk about shoes” at 3 in the afternoon.

Rooney said that because he considers his co-workers his friends, calling his workplace drunk did not get him in trouble. The next day, the co-workers returned Rooney’s drunk-dial with a sober phone call.

“[They asked me] the standard ‘you’re an idiot’ questions,” he said.

Rooney said sometimes he feels motivated to drunk-dial people he hasn’t talked to in a while, and other times, drunk-dialing “just kinda happens.

“In the beginning, it’s a sport, and toward the end of the night, it’s desperation,” he said, with a circle of friends agreeing with him on the topic.

Mike Kerelja, a sophomore Pitt student, sat with Rooney outside Towers. He said he thinks he doesn’t drunk-dial enough.

“I don’t like the phone, so when I’m drunk and having a good time, I don’t think about the phone,” he said.

Kerelja does not frequently make drunk phone calls; he receives them. But not from people he wants to talk to, he said.

Although the issue of drunk-dialing is not the “number one” problem on campus, Cox said it can become a concern when people are being contacted by someone they do not want to speak with. He said drunk-dialing happened before the popularity of cell phones, but cell phones have made it more accessible to people.

“Cell phones can be an electronic leash in a way,” he said.

Pitt student Abraham Walter said he believes the “advent” of the cell phone is to blame for students drunk-dialing. Giving a scenario, he demonstrated how a home phone would not be good to use for such phone calls.

“You can’t just roll into a party and use someone else’s home phone to drunk-dial someone,” he said.

Cell phones also make another form of drunk communication possible: drunk text messaging.

Amanda Hart and McKenna Bintrim, Pitt freshmen, said they are both guilty of sending or receiving drunk text messages. Bintrim said the appeal of drunk text messaging is like the appeal of instant messaging: “People don’t know if you’re joking or being serious.”

Hart and Bintrim said they do not let each other drunk-dial people when they go out for the night. Bintrim said their motto is “friends don’t let friends drunk-dial.”

“I think sometimes you say some things when you’re drunk and you actually feel that,” Hart said. “Drunk words are sober thoughts.”

Cox said people often attribute their drunk words or actions to alcohol and explain that a drunk phone call was an action of another self. But he believes that whether or not the alcohol influences the behavior, it’s all the same person.

“Often times, we try to say that it was the alcohol speaking,” he said. “[But] we might be thinking it just the same.”

Cox said another possible motive behind drunk-dialing may be an individual’s loneliness. Especially late at night, people may feel lonely and just want someone to talk to, he said.

Whatever motives lie behind drunk-dialing, Lennox believes it is a normal occurrence. He said he thinks a possible motive to his drunk-dialing is boredom.

“If you just get a little bored, you can always pull out your phone and have some fun.”