What would go through your mind if you found yourself in this situation?

“Around 1 am a girl knocked on my dorm room door.  She asked if she could hide her friend there because they locked themselves out and she was worried her friend was going to get in trouble. We saw what the girl looked like – she was being carried by two upperclassmen and had a trash bag to throw up in around her neck.”

Many students don’t call 911 when they should.  They are scared, they don’t know what to do, and they don’t want to get in trouble.  In this situation, this student did call 911.  The paramedics said she saved the girl’s life – a stranger’s life – all because she picked up the phone and did the right thing.

During my visits to colleges across the country, I have found more and more schools in the process of adopting Good Samaritan Policies (also known as Medical Amnesty Policies).  These policies protect students from getting in trouble when seeking help for a fellow student suffering an alcohol or drug overdose.  Think about it…wouldn’t you be more likely to make that call for a friend or stranger knowing that you won’t get in trouble?  I firmly believe that students should not be punished for doing the right thing – they should be encouraged to do the right thing.  Here are a few links that can help kick-start a policy at your school:

Students for Sensible Drug Policy website

List of schools with Good Samaritan Policies

Higher Education Center website

I just finished an amazing book, and I highly recommend it.  “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood” is a compelling and creatively told tale of destructive drinking.  This is Koren Zailckas’s first book, but man, can she weave a story together so brilliantly and true to form.  College feels like yesterday when I read her anecdotes.  Some even feel like my own, coming to life with more vivid detail than when I lived them myself.  Koren shows us how her own drunken, moronic choices consumed her so fully; how they made perfect sense at the time, no matter how dangerous or empty the results.  Hindsight is always 20/20, and we see how those “important” nights were really just a waste: of brain cells, genuine human interaction, and integrity.  Here are a few excerpts:

“Of course, Coors isn’t crank or coke or crack.  And Heineken isn’t heroin.  And vodka isn’t Valium.  And nothing that’s mixed with cranberry juice will score you respect with the folks who cop drugs in the public bathroom in Tompkins Square Park.  But don’t tell that to my brain because when I’m drunk, it purrs with the ecstasy of being thoroughly high…Amstel Light is my upper and my downer, it is my euphoric bump, my sweet nod into vagueness, the hallucinogenic that contorts my world into one that’s worth living in.  After two beers, there is no question as to whether I should have two more.  After four, my world is the first forty minutes of a movie so moving I can’t bear for it to end, or a cake so sweet I can’t help but cut another, and then another, sliver.  My reality is a climax so close I can’t bear to pull away.”   (page 158)

“Alcohol is a manipulative bitch.  If she was a person, I think she’d be a telemarketer or a used-car saleswoman, the type of woman who could persuade you to do just about anything.  I think this because when my mind is stewing in alcohol, it prompts me to do things that I’d normally oppose, like take my bra off under my coat in the corner convenience store because I’ve suddenly decided it pinches.  Drunk, I can seduce myself into any course of action.  I can always come up with motivation to draw that proverbial line in the sand back one more inconsequential inch.  That’s how I convince myself on the night of the date party that I want to lose my virginity to Chris.”   (page 188-189)

“When Robert Frost said, “College is a refuge from hasty judgement,” he was undoubtedly referring to the infinite hours of class time spent debating one top or another, but the quote can easily be used to describe the way college insulates students in regard to alcohol abuse.  Before and after college, drinking oneself into a state of blissful oblivion requires a degree of secrecy.  In high school, it needs to be hidden from parents.  In the working world, it must be downplayed to bosses, or concerned friends, or lovers.  But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.”   (page 110-111)

A little late for Halloween, but close enough.  These celebrity mug shots I gathered from The Smoking Gun will scare you straight (they are all alcohol or drug related.)  Mike Tyson, Yasmine Bleeth, Andy Dick, Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey Jr., Mischa Barton, Nick Nolte, George Clinton, Macaulay Culkin, Mel Gibson, Wynonna Judd, and the scariest of all….Amy Winehouse.