HEART BEAT: None too Many

By Felicia Mitchell

Recently I’ve been reading about the Amethyst Initiative, which includes a group of college presidents lobbying to lower the drinking age.  That has brought an ongoing issue back into the limelight.

Should the drinking age be lowered?  I don’t know.  There are good arguments on both sides of the debate.  One argument proposes that changing the law will make what is already happening legal.  Another suggests that there will be more deaths caused by drunk drivers. 

An age-old claim is that anybody allowed to vote should be allowed to drink, although you rarely hear anybody arguing that the voting age should be raised to 21.  The problem is that some 18-year-olds will be responsible voters and/or drinkers.  Others won’t.  Eighteen isn’t a magic number.  Not all 40-year-olds are responsible drinkers, even if they have the right to vote.

It was legal to drink at 18 when I turned18.  When the clock struck midnight, I didn’t rush out and buy a beer or raid my parents’ liquor cabinet.  Growing up in the vicinity of a relative who was a notorious alcoholic was a pretty big deterrent for me.

I wasn’t typical, I know.  I was sort of naïve.  I thought that alcoholism was cumulative: one drink here, and one drink there, and then one day I’d wake up in the gutter or the ninth floor of the local hospital.

The first real drink I had was a glass of red wine at a student government function sponsored by my university and held in our student union.  At 5’7”, 100 lbs, I was not a very big teenager.  I was probably drunk by the fourth sip, but I didn’t realize it. I thought I was just in an especially good mood.  As I ate my meal, I emptied the goblet. 

That night, walking back to my dorm, I felt that the whole sky had opened up.  The stars had never been so bright.  When I vomited the next morning, before I could get to the bathroom, I realized that I was experiencing my first and last hangover.  After that, I drank miniscule amounts of alcohol, if any, years passing between amounts measured carefully.  I hate to throw up, perhaps as much as I’d hate to pass out in a gutter.

Saturday, I went to Blacksburg after a cross-country meet in Christiansburg.  I love to walk downtown and eat Middle Eastern food, look at school supplies, and enjoy the scenery.  Walking up and down the sidewalks always involves circumnavigating various patches of vomit in the vicinity of the bars.

My guess is that people who are of legal drinking age could use a few tips about healthful practices too.  Young adults drink, and octogenarians drink, but young people are just more likely to be irresponsible.  Changing the law may not make them more responsible.  Is it worth the risk? 

The Amethyst Initiative wants to reduce binge drinking.  I think teaching young people to drink responsibly, whatever the drinking age, will remain the challenge.