I Have A Confession To Make: I Hate Getting Drunk

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I hate getting drunk.

Maybe that means I’m lame, or I’m living my college years wrong. Maybe that means that I’m not fun, that I’m old and I won’t have stories to tell. And for while I really feared that the peer pressure tactics of calling me all these names was definitive of who I was becoming. That my reluctance to party was the person I am: a boring, lame, old, senseless grandmother at the ripe age of twenty-something. Maybe that made me unworthy of becoming friends with the party girls, with the rave-goers and the so on. Or maybe it just made me… me.

Maybe this makes me brave.

I’m proud of the fact that every Thirsty Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday Funday nights I have the choice, the freedom, the liberty to decide what I want to do, rather than it being a given that I’m going to get black out drunk and forget my night. Because that simply is not the definition of fun for me, and it might be for someone, but not me.

That doesn’t mean that once in awhile I don’t enjoy a good party, I do enjoy being drunk at a good party amongst friends, the type of party that inspires a late night binge eating and the inevitable terrible hangover. I do hate getting drunk, but being drunk is fun for short while. But after those nights I’m over it for a good month or so, and that, my friends, is okay.

Ultimately I’m allowed to be myself. To like what I like and to dislike what I dislike. Isn’t that what makes us all unique after all? If everyone is jumping off a bridge, as my parents so often said in their clichéd teaching moments, would I truly want to jump into the land of perpetual hangovers, stressful last minute assignment submissions and all too many awkward mornings after stories?

This took me so long to accept. And when I did accept it, I realized that I love that I’m academic and studious. I love that I know when to say no, and I love that a good time to me is dancing to Taylor Swift, lounging in pajamas and watching Netflix with my roommates.

I love that I’m capable of making this statement.

I love that college drinking culture hasn’t changed me into someone who is ashamed to admit that I hate getting drunk.