One girl's struggle to overcome the bottle
Wyl Henderson
Illustrations by Brian Roebuck

Jane* slides into the booth at Harry's and nervously pulls a white napkin out of the dispenser on the table. She slowly rips it into strips, then smaller and smaller pieces, until finally she's left with a pile of shredded napkin. She picks up some of the pieces and cups them in her left palm, sifting the shreds through her slender fingers. Her nails are long and bright purple with spiders painted on the pointed tips. She looks at the pile and laughs a little without much amusement.

"This is exactly what I feel like every time I take a drink," Jane says. "I feel like I'm being ripped apart and sifted through something I have no control over." She brushes her hand across the table, sending the shredded napkin fluttering to the floor.

"But it's time to start over. I can't keep doing this to myself."

Jane's realization came at a high price -- two trips to the hospital, a painful confrontation with her parents and a psychiatric consultation. But before the realization that ended her binge drinking days, there was the beginning and the middle, the very scary middle that she sometimes dreams about at night -- the dreams where she is driving home and doesn't remember where she had been or what she had been doing -- the dreams where she wakes up and finds an empty bottle in her bed and the taste of rum on her lips -- the dreams that have been haunting her for more than a year.

When the waiter asks Jane what she would like to drink, she pauses, then asks for a Coke. She knows better than to ask for rum in it. She knows better than to reach into her purse and pull out her cleverly produced fake ID. She doesn't know why she still carries it -- probably for security, although she knows it's a false sense of security. But she does know that if she pulls out her fake ID and asks for the rum that she still tastes in her nightmares, she'd slip back into the self-destructive drinking pattern that began in the Fall of 1997 when she came to UF.

Descent

Just one drink. That's all it took.

"I was at a party, and someone handed me this fruity thing," Jane says. "And then I had another and another until finally I blacked out."

This is how Jane began her downward spiral into binge drinking, a dangerous descent into a numbing alcoholic oblivion. According to a 1997 Harvard study, 42 percent of college students reported at least one instance of binge drinking within two weeks of the survey.

At UF, the number of binge drinkers is higher than the national average. More than 50 percent of UF students reported binging within two weeks of the survey, according to J. Andrew Miller, a health educator at UF's Student Health Care Center.

And yet the actual number of students who binge drink remains elusive, partly because the definition of binge drinking is ambiguous. The "official" or medical definition of binge drinking is consuming five or more drinks in one sitting for a man or four or more drinks in one sitting for a woman. However, Miller doesn't think the title "binge drinker" accurately defines many students who drink.

"Calling it binge drinking doesn't explain why it's a bad thing," Miller said.

For instance, a binge is technically limited to one sitting, but there is no definition of how long one sitting actually lasts. If a male consumes four drinks in one hour, he will be much more intoxicated than if he drank the same amount over an eight-hour period. The amount of food a person eats, the person's emotional state and the amount of time he or she spends drinking all factor into the equation.

For this reason, Miller prefers to categorize drinkers as "low-risk" and "high-risk." Low-risk drinking means planning ahead before going to the bar or club and limiting your alcohol consumption to one or fewer drinks per hour. High-risk drinking means not thinking about a designated driver and drinking just for the thrill of getting drunk.

Meltdown

According to Miller, there's plenty at stake for high-risk drinkers. The most serious effect, although the least common, is literally drinking oneself to death, usually during a contest to see who can out-drink the others. There have been highly publicized instances in which people have drunk themselves to death.

One such tragedy involved Michigan college student Bradley McCue, who died on his 21st birthday, November 5, 1998, after downing 24 shots of alcohol. His friends painted his nose red and wrote "24 shots" across his forehead, thinking he would find it when he woke up in the morning. He never woke up to read the writing. His blood alcohol was .44 percent.

"Things like this happen daily on college campuses," Miller said. "Most of the time, the person passes out or someone stops them before it gets this far."

He estimated at least 50 alcohol-induced deaths occur annually on college campuses. Much more common, however, is an increase in alcohol-related injury, such as falling off a balcony or out of a window in a drunken stupor or driving into a tree or ditch while driving under the influence.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, car accidents, homicides, suicides and drowning are the four leading injury-related causes of death among youths younger than 20. Alcohol is involved in many of these deaths.

Another often-overlooked risk of excessive drinking is having sexual relations while under the influence. Although many people think alcohol and sex go hand-in-hand, the partnership can be dangerous.

One reason for the acceptance of pairing alcohol and sex in our culture is the way advertising, television and movies actively promote the partnership. For instance, a beer commercial's slogan is "If she still says no, offer her another drink." Unfortunately, the advertiser's suggestion often works.

What the ads, TV programs and movies fail to mention are the risks of mixing alcohol and sex. After a few drinks, your guard is down, your inhibitions forgotten and your self-control weakened past resistance. The next thing you know, you're having unprotected sex, running the risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. You won't know what kind of damage has been done until your next doctor's visit when you get your test results back.

Jane, however, was lucky. On her first night of binge drinking, one of her friends took action when she realized that Jane's behavior was spiraling out of control.

"I woke up in my friend's bed," Jane says. "She had locked me in sometime during the party. She probably kept me from being raped."

Delirium

But Jane wasn't always so lucky. Within months of taking her first drink, she succumbed to the bottle's temptation.

"I was drinking heavily five or six nights a week," Jane says. "I couldn't stop. I would drink until I couldn't walk anymore. My friends told me every day I was scaring them, but it wasn't until they took me to Shands the first time that I began realizing my problem."

The night Jane realized she had a problem, she couldn't even drive herself to the hospital. She went to different friends' apartments until she found someone who could drive her there and wait with her. On that visit to the hospital, the doctors just let her sleep until she felt better. The second time, they gave her medication.

Regardless of how supportive her friends were, Jane still felt guilty because she kept giving in to her addiction. She felt like a failure. Each time they took her to the hospital, she promised them it wouldn't happen again. Each time, she broke her promise.

Broken promises accompany an addictive lifestyle. Perhaps Jane's guilt contributed to her shattered resolutions. The worse she felt, the more she wanted to escape into an alcohol-induced oblivion.

"Alcohol can have a strong effect on people, depending on their mood. If they want to get drunk, they will," Miller said.

Miller said 59 percent of UF students say they drink to reduce stress, while 51 percent say they drink to get wasted. This is no surprise. It's easy for underage and heavy drinking to occur in college because students aren't living under their parent's authority, often for the first time. Once again, the media contributes to excessive drinking through ad campaigns that target college students. Happy hours and drink specials for bars and clubs are listed in school newspapers and posted around campus.

According to the Harvard study, other factors also influence a person's predisposition to binge drinking. One of the most important factors was high school drinking patterns. Students who binged in high school were likely to continue doing so in college. White students were more than twice as likely to be binge drinkers as other ethnic groups. Athletes were nearly one and a half times more likely than other students to be binge drinkers, and members of fraternities or sororities were four times as likely to be binge drinkers.

Solace

As she walks across the UF campus on a sunny day in early Fall, Jane nervously twists a lock of purple-dyed hair around her finger. The color has faded along with her drinking pattern. Brown roots are beginning to show again, but she doesn't mind. In a way, it's a symbol that her life is returning to normal. It's a step toward recovery in a journey that began with one crucial moment of decision.

"I woke up one night in the Plaza, which is about three miles from my apartment, and I couldn't remember how I got there," Jane says. "I started walking home and ended up getting a ride from a stranger. I remember walking into my apartment thinking that I couldn't live like this anymore. It was either the alcohol or my life. I decided to live."

Jane stops by Library West to check out the latest book sale. Picking up a book, she regards it thoughtfully.

"I didn't really know where I could go on campus for help," she says. "It wasn't like I felt comfortable coming here to check out a book on alcoholism or anything, and I don't think I would feel comfortable in student support groups. But I thought about it. I knew there are some programs available to students."

Jane doesn't buy anything at the book sale. She reaches into her bag for one last cigarette before her class in five minutes. She lights it, inhales once, blows smoke out and smiles as the clock chimes in the Century Tower. Each hour she lives addiction-free means more to her than another drink. She might not have regained her life without her parents' intervention -- however painful it was.

"My parents weren't the most supportive of me when I told them I had a problem," Jane says. "My mother cried a lot, and my father told me I should consider moving back home. I told them I needed to see someone who could help me deal with my problems and maybe offer me some other type of solution. And I did. I talked to a counselor they found for me. I don't think I would have had the courage to make an appointment without them stepping in and making one for me.

"It was hard telling my shrink everything about me, but she said that maybe my problem stemmed from something other than my desire to get fucked up. She told me maybe I was trying to do too much, and I didn't want to fail at anything, so I purposely shot myself in the foot, so to speak. Maybe she was right. I don't know. We talked about a lot of shit I hadn't really thought about in a while, like old boyfriends and why those relationships failed. And yeah, there have been times I've wanted a drink, but I try to come up with something else like reading -- or actually, gosh, studying.

"I stopped going to school for a while. I was here, but I wasn't. You know? I failed calculus twice. I'm taking it a third time, and I have a B. I told myself that if I could bring up my GPA this term, I would definitely go out to celebrate."

Jane stabs her cigarette out on the ledge in front of the library. She stands up and looks across campus, perhaps seeing brick buildings on a fall afternoon, perhaps seeing an addiction-free future.

"I think I'll go get a smoothie at the Juice Stop."

*The girl interviewed in this story wishes to remain anonymous. She just wants to let you know that she could be anyone, even your friend, and you might not know it.