Ducks of Faith

On his way to a dead-end career as a pump jockey, Bitter shares his most important decision.

Hi, my name is Bit Bitter. I came here three years ago to study computer science and architecture. Three years later, I've flunked out of school, given up on my future, and I'm having more fun than ever. Up until my freshman year, all I ever wanted to do was study hard and do well in school. During my first term, I made the Dean's List, got involved with the chess club, and found excellent success at the school in general. I enjoyed the satisfaction of a job well done, but I found myself working not for my own promising career, but to appeal to my parents and family. I quickly learned that no matter how high my grades were, there would always come a down period where I would feel hollow and ask myself: Is this all there is? During my second term, I began to search for turmoil and a lack of stability in my life. Surely my life wasn't determined by my own sense of self worth. There were some cool kids in my hall, and I started spending time with them instead of doing my homework. For awhile, I felt accepted, but I knew that there had to be something more. During that time, there was one night while watching "The Simpsons" that a friend asked me point blank: "Bit, have you ever had a beer?" At first, I couldn't begin to entertain the idea, but then I remembered all those people in TV beer commercials. On the beach, in the mountains, or just hanging out downtown, they were surrounded by beautiful women, fast-paced music and most of all, they were having fun! While beer tasted like piss water, and hard liquor was much worse, I soon found that liquor was so much faster. I don't remember a lot of what happened that night, or how my pants ended up on the roof of the bike rack, but I knew one thing. I was a changed man. I knew that if I was going to feel good about myself, and if my friends were going to like me, I had to drink as much as possible and as often as possible. I realized that my life had been missing something. Suddenly, the void, which I hadn't even known was there, was filled by hangovers, pounding beers in a single gulp, and vomiting up vodka screwdrivers for hours on end. Sure, academics were fun for awhile, but as I began to drink heavily and avoid my classes, I knew I had made the right decision. Those guys in the chess club were total dorks. My relationship with alcohol has weathered several run-ins with the law, my discharge from the university, estrangement from my family, and the loss of my apartment to a renegade biker gang-but I can proudly say that I'm drunk right now.

An intoxicated freshman tells of her changed life.

I had always counted myself as one of the lucky ones. I was tall enough to get into my parent's liquor cabinet by the time I was eleven, and after that I never watched the Disney Afternoon straight again. While most of my friends had to wait until high school to find out how truly rewarding alcohol could be, I was always way on the cutting edge. I was part of the "in crowd" in high school, but then I put out a lot, so that was good too. But there was a time where I was not certain if booze was really the answer. In between reruns of "Full House" and "Step by Step" were a lot of commercials about how drinking wasn't cool. At first I thought like, whatever. Everybody knows drinking is cool. Then I was at a party one night, and I only had a couple of shots of gin because we ran out, and the scariest thing happened to me. I was only a little tipsy, but I realized that I was still having a good time. Did that mean I was able to have fun without booze? Had alcohol abandoned me? I didn't know what to do, so I made my friend Lisa drive me home, and she was a lot drunker than me, and she drove into a tree! Her dad took her car away from her for a week or something. Is that unfair or what? I realized that I was using alcohol socially, and getting shitfaced night after night was less important to me. By the end of my senior year, I was going to movies with my little brother and playing board games with my parents. I snuck the occasional gallon of spiced rum, but other than that I was totally sober. Except at school. One night I was very frustrated and confused about what to believe, and I told alcohol: "If you really are the right thing, then let me know," or I was going to move on to something else, like airplane glue. Sure enough, half an hour later Lisa called up and said her dad was gone for the night so we could take her car out and do shots of Everclear and find some older guys. I had reaffirmed my relationship with booze. Once I moved away to college, I started drinking, like, 24-7-365. I found a group of people who were like me. I never knew about all these people who thought like me and enjoyed doing the things I did, mostly involving drinking. They were called college students. Drinking alcohol has given me a sense of peace that whenever things go wrong, alcohol will be there for me. I realized that I didn't have to be perfect, and if I puked on myself in a car or had sex with some totally random guy, then that was okay. Alcohol really showed me that I didn't need to be insecure about the person I was, and that it was okay to be my incoherent, sexually promiscuous self as long as I had alcohol to guide me.

Jessica Davis' Keys to Knowing Alcohol Personally

1. Understand that you are sober, and only through alcohol can you be saved.

2. The OLCC is an obstacle that must be maneuvered. 21-year-old friends are critical in establishing a healthy relationship with alcohol.

3.It is not enough to just know the facts about alcohol. It must consume your life, or rather, you must consume it. Constantly.

Advertisement paid for by Campus Crusade for Booze.