Word: alcoholism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years ago, I might well have predicted that today would be the first day I would drink. When I came to Harvard I had never had an alcoholic drink outside of family celebrations. There was plenty of drinking at my high school, I'm sure, but somehow I was naive enough to ignore that fact until prom night, when, on a letter-strewn beach, I found my classmates eagerly guzzling beverages I had never heard of. When I arrived at Harvard that September, getting smashed was not on my list of goals. I don't think I even thought about...
...sizable degree of prudishness to refrain. I was proud to refuse to give in to what everyone else was doing, to what I considered wrong or at least unhealthy. Yet at the same time, my abstention was isolating, especially as I began putting myself in situations in which alcohol was readily available. This year I finally gave in. I stopped castigating others for having fake IDs, though I never did come close to getting one. I started wondering how I could have wasted so much mental energy condemning my peers for drinking underage. I began to develop favorite beers...
What happened? In part, I began to get over my trepidation and to realize that alcohol is not a demon in a bottle. Drinking in moderation, I finally conceded, won't change your life or make you an addict or a bad person...
...undergrads are perhaps most to blame for pushing alcohol on their fellow students, underage or not. Put aside the extreme cases of hazing, which we all know take place here at Harvard and should be more of a concern. It is our social scene itself that every weekend, and on many a weeknight, too, damages the psyche of the non-drinker. I guarantee you that every time you plan a party around scorpion bowls or keg stands, someone feels pressured to drink. I have been that person. I guarantee you that every time you go around the room and have...
Richard goes on to describe how his girl-friend Karen lapsed into a coma in the middle of senior year, after experiencing eerie premonitions of the future and then ODing on alcohol and diet pills, only one day after the pair "deflowered each other atop Grouse Mountain, among the cedars beside a ski slope." Nine months later, their child Megan is born, but Karen remains comatose for the next seventeen years...