Life After the Party

In the reading room, i attended the panel discussion called "Life After the Party".  Its purpose was to inform us of the consequences of drinking and drugs by the words of four young loyola alumni. These four alumni, three males and one female, told us of their stories and how they have had to deal with their addictions. 

The youngest one, who is still a student here at loyola, tells of the hardship of hiding his true feelings. He goes on to explain how he would pretend to be happy and like everyone, when really it was the complete opposite. He resorted to drinking extreme amounts and not being able to tell when he had enough. He gives us many examples with him either ending up in jail or a hospital and how he had gone thru every punishment loyola has for under-age drinking write ups. Than he had a "vision of clarity" witch made him realize that he wanted more for himself than just getting drunk and high. He was able to make it a year a half sober with the help/ participation in  Alcohol Anonymous. To bring it even closer he told us that he is now only a week sober because of thinking he didn't need A.A. anymore and fell right back into a week of his same routine.

The three others, had very similar stories. Two of them started at such an early age that they began being sober before even coming to Loyola. The other was just sick of hurting himself and being so dependent on his addictions.  All agreeing that they all had that "vision of clarity" and one of whom describing his two face-ness as being a chameleon. These three people have no gone on for over 10 years sober and living functional lives. 

These stories relate back to life on loyola in many different ways. Of course, it's college and many kids go out partying. With that, there is a lot of peer-pressure to drink and do other things. These are good examples to help show the reasons not to fall into these traps and overcome. They are also great stories to help us realize other problems that we need to overcome, one being the laziness to not going to class or to do homework. We all want to make something of ourselves but it's our responsibility to do so and we need to do it on our own. Even though there is a lot of help there for us, we need to go out seeking it.

This lecture made me think back to the reading we had for Wednesday. In the short story, "Hills Like White Elephants", the man is trying to pressure the girl into doing something that he wants. From what i grasped of the testimonies, we need to stay strong and not give into peer-pressure. In "Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant-" this relates to how we need to be honest but in doing so we need to know the right moment.  These four people needed to be honest with them-selves and realize that they were addicted. The fly in "I Heard a Fly Buzz-- When I Died" could be used as a metaphor for their "visions of clarity".