Going Back to the Booze

Colleges are turning to an old "drug abuse "

"You feel that you can never get caught up, that you always have something hanging over you. So you use alcohol to numb your brain so you don't think about it."

That tale, told by a University of Wisconsin undergraduate, could be repeated on almost any U.S. college campus today. Says Thomas Adams, dean of students at Chicago's Loyola University: "The single greatest drug abuse on this or any campus is undoubtedly alcohol."

At four Florida universities, 30% of the students polled told researchers they have missed classes because of hangovers.

Increases in liquor consumption, compared with levels of a generation ago, have been reported in a number of surveys.

Henry Wechsler, research director of Boston's Medical Foundation, reported last month on a study of 7,000 students at 34 New England four-year colleges. Some sample results:

> More than 95% of the undergraduates report at least occasional drinking, compared with 59% who smoke marijuana, 11% who snort cocaine and 10% who pop tranquilizers.

> Twenty percent of the men and 10% of the women say getting drunk ''was important'' to them.

> The category of ''heavy drinkers''--those who regularly consume more than a six-pack of beer or five shots of liquor at a sitting--now includes 29% of undergraduate men and 11% of the women.

> More freshmen than upperclassmen say they drink heavily.

Time was when campus boozing was regarded as good clean fun. But no more.

The current response to all the chug-a-lugging on campus has been a flurry of pamphlets on how to fight alcohol abuse and a parade of new college information and counseling centers. Such centers are becoming almost as familiar on campus as homecoming games and fraternity parties--the occasions that have always called forth prodigious assaults on the bottle. The dedicated drinkers, though, generally quaff quietly off campus, making the rounds of such traditional hangouts as The Pub on State Street in Madison, Wis., or the Goose's Nest on Notre Dame Avenue in South Bend, Ind., or Quantrill's Saloon on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kans. After learning from a survey of 500 schools that 80% believed their students needed more help in handling drink, the U.S. Brewers Association obligingly announced it would publish a quarterly On-Campus Review to help concerned administrators keep up to date on consumption. To cut down on drunken driving, the University of Massachusetts encourages students to use a free Saturday night bus service, dubbed "the drunk run," which shuttles back and forth between local gin mills and the UMASS campus in Amherst. Dartmouth is considering a similar shuttle.

The University of New Hampshire has banned beer kegs in the dorms (a move that triggered a midnight march of students chanting "We want kegs!"). The University of Kansas now requires that soft beverages be available whenever alcohol is served at on-campus social functions. Promotion of alternative beverages has even won a few converts at the Uni versity of Virginia, where demand for booze by undergraduates has long been legendary. The sales volume of the local liquor store in Charlottesville is third highest in the state. One Charlottesville wholesaler even offers a ''Dial-a-keg" service, complete with a fleet of truck drivers equipped with radio-telephone beepers, to keep up with scholarly thirst. But at a recent University of Virginia fraternity rush, guests actually drained the Pepsi kegs before the beer ran out. ''That had never happened before," says Associate Dean of Students Annette Gibbs, adding, "Boy, were they embarrassed."

Students and counselors give traditional reasons for the drinking, including escape from parental supervision, a phenomenon that has always been a part of the freshman year. But there are signs that economic anxiety and tougher competition are more significant factors. "Students are very concerned about job opportunities and the economy,'' says James Corbridge, vice chancellor at the University of Colorado. "They say, 'What's going to happen to me?' '' Adds an undergraduate woman at the University of Kansas:

"People drink because they have trouble dealing with the changes in life today. No one knows what's coming down. But drinking makes you quit asking."

The danger, of course, is that such youthful deep dependence on drink may lead to chronic alcoholism, a condition that remains fairly rare on campus. But early habits have a way of hanging on.

Many of today's heavy collegiate drinkers say that they developed their taste for the stuff back in high school.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.