Does drinking guarantee a good time?

It never did a thing for me. So I chose friends who didn’t drink much.

No, it definitely does not “guarantee” a good time, but it sure provides for a good time the vast majority of the time I drink. I’m in a fraternity and I do a fair amount of drinking, but I also don’t understand people who need to get completely trashed to the point of blacking out, vomiting, and forgetting everything that happened. No appeal in that for me.

^Yea, I understand that it loosens up people up and makes them more sociable. But some people really need to learn and stick to there limit.

Are you my son?

My son is a freshman in college and he doesn’t drink. You aren’t the only one, even though it may seem so. Have you looked into clubs that interest you that could keep you busy? Drinking can often lead to hurt feelings, hangovers and bad mistakes. It’s not worth it.

Stick to your guns. =)

Hey, I love a good gin and tonic as much as the next lush. But I don’t see the point in getting trashed to the point of making a fool of yourself, possibly hurting yourself or someone else, and not remembering what happened either. Just the thought of a hangover turns my stomach and makes my head hurt.

I know of a kid that was a senior in college that drank so much he passed out. His roommate came home to find him and knew to call an ambulance. He drank so much he had alcohol poisoning. He went into a coma and has not come out of it. His friends have all graduated, moved on with their lives and he is in a coma, being taken care of by his mother. She won’t leave him for even a day out. His brothers resent this, the husband is lonely. No one is having a good time in this household.

Drinking doesn’t guarantee anything.

The problem with the U.S. drinking culture is that they don’t let you do it until you’re almost done with college – but then, they put you in college where lots of people are doing it. So, what you have is two years of being able to if you want to, but not wanting to get caught so doing it probably much more than you would if you felt comfortable.

I’ll say this – there’s nothing wrong with drinking in moderation. The problem is figuring out what “moderation” is. Most teens go about it the wrong way, unfortunately.

Drinking can loosen you up so that you relax more easily – but it shouldn’t be a solution, and it shouldn’t be necessary.

So don’t feel like they know something you don’t know. They don’t get it – they’re just getting drunk. ;-)

Never had a drink in my life, never regretted it, and always have a good time when I’m out (even with people who are drinking). My observations of others, however, suggest quite strongly that drinking does not guarantee a good time.

Here is what alcohol in moderate doses is good for in college: it helps you loosen up around a bunch of people who you don’t know very well. It might give you a little artificial confidence to talk to someone you’re interested in. After a hard week of doing bucketloads of schoolwork, it helps you to unwind. When I say moderate, I mean 2 or 3 beers (21½ to 2 liquor drinks or shots) if your tolerance is low, and 5–6 beers (4 liquor drinks or shots) if your tolerance is high.

Most students in college drink together as a sort of social bonding, a way to break free now that they’re not in high school and under the parents’ rule. It’s a time to experience what it’s like to be an adult somewhat, so a lot of students will recruit other students, and form cliques and social circles. It’s really a social phenomenon, and that is ALL it is.

I love that tipsy feeling when I’m funny, witty, and conversation just flows. It quits with another couple of drinks! You don’t have to drink at all, or just nurse one for awhile.

@faye Oh, how fleeting that feeling is!

Hell no. When drinking, there is a 50/50 chance you’ll have a good time. It seems there is always drama along with the alcohol.

Pre-gaming, eh? No, drinking doesn’t guarantee a good time, but then there’s nothing that guarantees anything. If you don’t want to drink, then don’t feel obligated to just to be cool. There’s probably plenty of kids on your campus who don’t drink and manage to have fun.

No.
As others have mentioned, moderate alcohol consumption can be fun, but, there is nothing attractive about stupid, sloppy drunk.

And, god forbid, the girls that get all maudlin and weepy. Gah!

It’s all up to you but beer slides and Toga Parties are not nearly as much fun sober.

No, it doesn’t.

Admittedly, I really love beer games, but I never drink to get drunk as a lot of people do (and hell, King’s Cup is just as fun sober!)—especially in the uni environment. Drinking just really doesn’t guarantee anything (except for a hangover when you overdo it!).

If you’re not into drinking, that’s totally fine. You’ll find a good crowd that doesn’t bother you about it.

The biggest problem with alcohol on college campuses is that nobody teaches us how to do it in moderation. In high school the only message we heard was extreme, like “don’t drink ever, because you will die.” Young people have terrible judgment and most either buy into it or completely reject it. Nobody teaches us how to drink responsibly so the only way is trial and error.

Most of the answers in this thread are pretty negative about alcohol, and that’s fine. Nobody NEEDS to drink, but we all do plenty of things that we don’t need to do/ shouldn’t do. You don’t need to eat ice cream, drink coffee or surf the internet, but these things are enjoyable and we do them all the time.

You can have a lot of fun while you’re drinking. When I drink I pace myself and a nice buzz builds up on its own. It makes me feel happy and uninhibited, and like @faye says, funny, witty, tipsy, and conversation just flows. I love pairing wine with food. Nothing in the world tastes like a great bottle of wine. Have you ever stayed up way too late drinking something bad (like cheap beer or rail liquor) somewhere unusual? There’s this deliciously lowbrow feeling like you’re doing something bad while the rest of the world is asleep.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be easy to go overboard. You think, “this is awesome! If I drink more, it will be more awesome!” and drink more and more. Drinking too much is no fun. You feel dizzy, sick, uncoordinated, foolish, emotional, and aren’t in control of your actions.

So there’s my take. Drinking has plenty of bad (we heard all about it in DARE) as well as some good.

You’re reminding me of the night that I should have become a statistic.

All through high school I heard from acquaintances about their wild weekends going down to the reservoir with a few cases of beer and drinking themselves silly, puking it all up, and then doing it again. I never really understood the attraction, because my dad would let me have a sip of his beer from time to time, and I thought the stuff was awful. Who would want to ‘develop’ a taste for that? So the mysteries of “good times while drunk” eluded me.

In my freshman year of college we had a dorm floor party one Friday night. (Acquiring the half-keg of beer for teenagers was a lot easier and less risky then.) So I decided, “Fuck it. I’m going to ‘man up’ and drink the damn beer to get drunk, no matter how much I hate it.” And I did that. I drank from 20-oz. cups, and I drank it fast, because I hated the taste so much. So I drank about two quarts of beer in about 45 minutes. I was nursing the next cup, because the buzz was overtaking me fast, and I found someone making mixed drinks in another room on the floor.

So I thought, “I’ve never had vodka, either. How about topping this off?” No one ever told me that mixing beer with vodka was a bad idea. (Trust me, it’s an awful idea.)

I don’t know who put me to bed that night, but someone saved my life by making sure that I was on my side. I normally slept on my back in those days. I woke up the next morning in a small pond of puke in my bed and on the floor. I had no idea when I had done that. I was sick as a dog for three days afterward.

No, drinking does not “guarantee” a good time. But if you control it, then it doesn’t have to be so awful or near-fatal, either. I drink responsibly now not beer! and enjoy it. When I drink now I have a good time, but it’s not “because of” the drinking; that just adds to the enjoyment that I already have. I would have pretty much an equally good time without the drinking.

Fuck no. Remember, there are no guarantees in life.

seriously. i wish i was being cynical and hip but i’m too busy sobbing.

Occasional drinking like that will guarantee about two hours of awesome, followed by seemingly never ending nausea and sickness, and about a whole day of hangover. This doesn’t include drunk driving, contracting STD’s or injury. Which also sucks. Drink responsibly.

And if you’re an alcoholic like me, it’s all fucking bullshit lol.

Most assuredly yes!

I have never touched alcohol, and have never missed out on genuinely good times. The only difference is that I remember mine, and have never been ashamed of them.

Depends, if you’re a happy go lucky, positive, enjoys life to the full type then yeah sure. On the other hand, a boring tw@ will simply manifest into a boring drunk tw@. The grog ain’t going to fundamentally change who you are. That shits just the way it is.

Nope, not in the least. It’s even disturbing when high profile people will put their foot in their mouth butting in where they don’t belong and then think it’s good role-modeling to invite those he directly offended over to his place so they could booze it up outside by where thier kids play. A good time can’t be guaranteed to be found at the bottom of a bottle, of the solution to a problem never will.

Drinking can be fun sometimes, and a lot of people (college students and otherwise) enjoy the loss of control that goes along with drinking to excess. Alcohol lowers one’s inhibitions, and that can be a great feeling when you’re in a safe environment with people you care about (and who care about you).

On the other hand, drinking lowers one’s inhibitions, and that can lead to doing things that you might not ordinarily do (e.g. telling that girl from calculus class that she has a great rack, or telling the girl from calculus class’s boyfriend that she has a great rack). I can honestly say that the number of good nights I’ve had while drinking are probably about equaled by the number of bad night I’ve had while drinking. Luckily, I’ve never been involved in an accident or a hospital trip, but that’s a very likely possibility.

Keep in mind that the kids at school who are drinking all the time are also getting used to their newly-granted freedom. Mom and Dad aren’t looking over their shoulders all the time, and so they want to try new things and see what happens. Many of those kids will realize that a) they can’t afford to drink every night, b) it’s beginning to affect their schooling, or c) that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. It just takes a little longer for some people to figure that out.

If you’re curious about drinking, give it a try. Like someone else said, you can have a drink or two, enjoy the tipsy feeling, and don’t let it get to the point where you’re too drunk to handle yourself. (But NEVER, EVER drive after having a drink. EVER.)

Or you can do what a lot of my friends used to do, and still do: hang out, go to the parties, go to the clubs, but drink pop or water. Who cares? They didn’t feel the pressure to drink, and those of us who were their real friends didn’t bug them about it. It was awesome to have a dedicated designated driver, too.