It got so that he could finish a bottle of vodka on his own.
His addiction, though, seemed more like a mixed drink than a straight shot: multiple blackouts, messy breakups, angry bosses calling home.
No bars here, just basements, buddies and booze.
And, by the end, a totalled car.
"That summer [after my freshman year] I got a DUI coming home late. I wrapped the car around a telephone pole. I wasn't even hurt. I got lucky no one else was either."
His addiction began in high school.
Now Matt, a Penn undergraduate, is cold turkey.
*
According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, addiction is derived from the Latin verb "addictus" -- to devote or surrender oneself to something habitually or obsessively. For Matt and scores of other alcoholics and narcotics addicts across the country, that something is alcohol and drugs, prescription or recreational.
At Penn, among the thousands of students who spend their Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights drinking, there are a handful of students -- if not more -- who count themselves among those recovering from substance addictions. So every Thursday night at 7, while many are returning from early evening happy hours or planning for a long night of intoxication, some students are shuffling into the weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the Council Room at Newman Hall, the Catholic Student Center, home to a student-oriented 12-step recovery program.
Or out of a counselor's office.
Or the house of another sober friend.
Or, maybe, they are really feeling like having a drink.
*
Abuse: n., improper or excessive use or treatment.
Penn students drink. A lot.
The Office of Health Education blankets the campus and The Daily Pennsylvanian with the fact that students drink, albeit moderately, as was gathered in a random survey of undergraduates last February: "Most students drink moderately: 0-4 drinks when they party." But on any given night, reality seems to exceed 0-4. Bars are populated with inebriated upperclassmen, and some underclassmen are drinking in their rooms or at friends' houses. On a weekend, it's practically inescapable.
That isn't to imply that Penn is a campus full of drug or alcohol addicts in denial. It isn't, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is, however, hard to separate alcohol from Penn's social scene.
The OHE's own survey, conducted in February 2001, noted that 86 percent of respondents at Penn reported drinking alcohol during the last academic year, with respondents drinking an average of 6.7 alcoholic drinks per week. Forty-nine percent answered "yes" when the survey asked if they had been binge drinking at least once within the two weeks before the survey was conducted.
Definitions and distinctions, though, are blurred: What does abuse mean to students? And what exactly is alcoholism? At CAPS, alcohol counselor Kenneth Meehan sees students with many different relationships to the drug: those who acknowledge their abuse patterns and are trying to change, as well as those who have yet to realize that alcohol is the probable source of their physical, academic, relational or legal problems.
"Who has the problem and who doesn't has less to do with the alcohol consumed and more with the consequences that have occurred in your life as a result," Meehan explains. "There are those who drink loads of beer on the weekend and are not alcoholics, and those who drink less who will be alcoholics... people don't use it [alcohol] at all, use it, abuse it or are dependent on it.
"I don't know where those lines are," he continues. "I don't know when it happens for people. [Alcoholism] is highly individual."
Erik, a senior in a Penn fraternity, put it very simply: "belligerence is the best sign." Erik can easily single out those of his friends who he would label as alcoholics. "They get so belligerent they ruin their friendships. Then they don't remember it. They ruin relationships with girlfriends and even their friends. But that just makes them drink more."
But Erik is quick to defend Penn, claiming that the drinking scene isn't the cause of his friends' drinking problems.
"It's definitely something they brought in with them."
Matt's problem began in high school, but he didn't realize the severity of the situation until he went home the summer after his freshman year at Penn. His second semester grades were terrible. His girlfriend broke up with him after both were drunk, and he was pushy. He went drinking with his high school friends a lot -- they'd have fun, but Matt would black out.
For Matt, alcoholism didn't stem from a need to find a niche in Penn's sometimes hard-to-navigate social scene, but from depression over the breakup, grades, everything. So he drank more.
Meredith Chiaccio, a College senior and a Spruce College House Residential Advisor, watches freshmen try out partying and alcohol, sometimes for the first time, as they seek ways to fit into the culture on campus. She says alcoholism isn't quantifiable. "It's individual, everyone's different. But alcoholism is depending on it every night to drown your sorrows, forgetting that things might hurt."
Erik adds that, "If you can go to Mad 4 Mex happy hour, and then you go to the Legion, then you know you're hard core."
Kate Ward-Gaus is a trained alcohol educator at the Office of Alcohol policy initiative and the director of the student-run Drug and Alcohol Resource Team, a group of Penn undergraduates who work to educate students about alcohol and other drug use at Penn. When she talks about alcoholics, she makes little quotation signs with her hands, as if it is something that needs to be separated from the rest of her sentence. "Some students have problems with alcohol but don't qualify as an alcoholic," she explains.
Ward-Gaus says the actual number of students who have problems necessitating treatment in a recovery program is relatively small compared to the population of students who simply need to curb their drinking. "That is the whole other population we are trying to get to. The larger number of people is the group that drinks too much and needs to cut back."
The clinical definition of alcoholism, Meehan says, involves compulsive and self-destructive behavior. Translation: people repeat such behavior even though it is unhealthy and spend incredible amounts of time thinking about drinking long before they drink. "If you are an alcoholic, then pretty much everything in your life gets affected because alcohol is the center of your life.
"Chemical dependency, addiction and alcoholism," Meehan continues, "these are all interchangeable."
*
Angela's addiction began far before she arrived at Penn. It was during high school that she slowly became reliant on prescription drugs as a way to get a high or relax or simply escape. First it was just once and then twice, and then, before she knew it, she had a habit.
Being raped by another Penn student made everything worse. She does not remember much: only that she was at a party, drinking and taking pills. In the midst of all that, she believes she was dosed with liquid acid. And afterwards, to cope with the anger, sadness and shame that comes with an incident like rape, the drug abuse escalated.
Then, she thought, there might be a problem.
*
At Newman Hall, which is located down the street from the Blarney Stone and a few blocks from New Deck, numbers at the Thursday Alcoholics Anonymous meeting fluctuate. Some meetings are engaging and lively, a helpful outlet for the discussion necessary in a recovery program. But some weeks nobody comes -- and for those hoping for, perhaps even needing, the interaction, the evening holds little more than intense disappointment.
As a professional staff, neither Student Health nor Counseling and Psychological Services can establish an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter on campus. Ward-Gaus, however, has often offered herself as a resource to students wishing to start a student-oriented recovery group, for which a demand does exist. Student AA groups have come and gone over the years -- an inherent problem, Ward-Gaus says, with a transient population that, on average, spends just four years at the University. The current Thursday night AA meeting schedule was organized last November by two graduate students then in recovery, both of whom declined to comment for this story.
There are two other options for recovering students close to campus -- neither of which younger addicts, from among Penn's largely upper-middle class student body, cite as very appealing.
The first is an Alcoholics Anonymous Clubhouse, located 4021 Walnut Street. To put it tactfully, the place is intimidating for students even if they realize what it is and the purpose that it serves for the community. Though the location provides nearly round-the-clock meetings seven days a week, "the people it attracts," as explained by one recovering student who wished to remain anonymous, "are not the kind of people you can feel comfortable even sitting in a room alone with, much less opening up and sharing the story of your addiction."
Even Ward-Gaus admitted that most students would not feel comfortable there.
Option two is a series of four meetings each week at the University Lutheran Church on Chestnut Street. This group is composed mainly of Penn faculty and staff members, creating a bizarre array of trust and security issues for any recovering students.
For those willing to go downtown late on a Friday night, the Graduate Hospital at 18th and Pine streets hosts a young people's meeting on Friday nights at 10 p.m. Ward-Gaus says that some describe the meeting as "a blast" or a "great alternative to the party scene." However, she added, others say it is just too far, and going downtown on a Friday night is less than ideal.
Matt goes to neither. "Recovering at Penn hasn't been easy. I tried going to a Thursday night AA meeting, but the night I went there, there weren't many people there. My parents found me a counselor here and that was working. I don't do the group thing well.
"Some people who don't drink really go for it," he adds. "I don't."
At CAPS, Meehan might see 10 to 12 students each week with alcohol-related issues. "The goal of treatment depends on where they are. They might have no idea there's a problem with alcohol. If, through the course of conversation, there seems a link, I would want to offer the idea that alcohol is the cause. Is it possible that the fact that you drank last night is connected with your lateness, and not just the alarm clock? In these cases I simply try to help them make the connection so they consider that change can occur. It's planting seeds with the students."
For those students who already acknowledge their abuse, the counselor helps them clarify the picture. Possible questions: What is the function of alcohol in your life? Do you use it to alter your mood? Do you have other ways to have fun?
"I want to help them make decisions about how important alcohol is for them in their life," says Meehan. "Recovery is a process of thinking. To get them to stop, they are going to have to think about what they do. Actually, it's not that complicated. It's just really hard."
*
For Angela, to recover meant leaving campus altogether. Confronted by the drinking and partying culture that seems inevitably to dominate any college campus, she moved outside of Philadelphia and away from Penn's campus to continue her recovery.
"Penn is not a very supportive community for someone in recovery," Angela said, citing campus culture as the main culprit. "Everyone here parties. And it's hard to go on a date without your date drinking." Angela has had a difficult time even finding people who are interested in doing things that don't revolve around alcohol.
Now, she worries people will judge her and her recovery. "Addiction is a really ugly thing," she says. "Usually people who aren't addicts themselves have a very difficult time understanding it -- and they judge."
The irony here, though, is that those same people she feels judge her could very well be alcoholics themselves, though they may not know it yet. Amidst Penn's partying culture, these distinctions become blurred.
"You want to find your group of people," Chiaccio says. "I see that a lot. It's natural. You've got a clean slate, and you want to make friends. And what do people do in college? Party."
Adds Meehan: "College is a difficult context for people who are struggling to change. But I honestly don't know if it's harder for an 18-to-25-year-old outside of college. I think it's hard for a young person anywhere, who also has alcohol to deal with. I respect those students who want to do something about it."
Matt, for one, no longer touches vodka.
"Now I don't drink. I don't want to drink anymore. I was a bad drunk. I was an asshole when I was drunk. I know that now. I would yell at people and not remember it in the morning."
For Matt, there's no more yelling, no more forgotten nights, no more blacking out. Matt could be any one of the hundreds of students you walk past on Locust Walk, but unlike most of the others, he's a sober, recovering alcoholic. You just don't know it.
