What's the Drinking Culture Given Us?

Since moving back to Wisconsin four years ago, I have been shocked by the accepted behaviors around the consumption of alcohol.  Ever been to a Badger football game or even just walked around town before or after the game -- it paints an uncertain picture of students and alumni.  My first year working in Housing at UW I was given the opportunity to work in the police box at Camp Randall with the Dean of Students Office.  The level of intoxication students demonstrated in their actions and their breathalyzer test stunned me.  These students had put themselves in very precarious situations.  Some of them could barely sit in a chair.  Every word they spoke was formed with great effort.  A few worried about how this would affect their future political careers -- seriously. That was the entertaining portion of the experience.   

Halloween offers students another opportunity to publicly demonstrate their drinking prowess.   And then of course there is the typical Friday, Saturday, Thursday, Wednesday -- heck, why wait, Tuesday night to hit State Street or other lubricating establishments nearby.  I write about students because it is the population I know best.  Additionally, drinking habits are just that HABITS.  The choices students make in their late teens and early twenties are going to stick with them more than not.  (UW alumni -- need I say more?) 

 

And it's not just undergrads.  On Sunday while studying at the law school I overheard a conversation where another student was talking nonchalantly about his drug and alcohol use.  A friend sitting near me reacted to his remarks causing him to address us.  Somehow his status as a law student made it inevitable that he would be drinking a lot.  And he is far from the minority.  The Student Bar Association sponsors a drinking fest every Thursday night at one of the local establishments.  They call it the weekly "Bar Review" -- clever, eh.

 

I am thankful for the people I have met at the law school who find this behavior equally as puzzling.  What I have noticed, though, is the common thread among these people tends to be that they are either not from Wisconsin or are only now returning to Wisconsin after being gone for some time.  The "drinking culture" as it is commonly referred has blanket acceptance until people realize it's not the norm in other places.  

 

What does this mean for the state of Wisconsin?  Kathleen Falk, Dane County Executive, has recently launched something of a campaign to curb the drinking culture of Wisconsin.  It's not only a political interest for her, it's also personal.  Her father was an alcoholic.  How many people in Wisconsin are alcoholics?  In 2005, there were approximately 469,000 people (and growing) dependent on or abusing alcohol in the state.  A recent state-by-state comparison shows that Wisconsin holds the #1 spot when it comes to alcohol-related issues.  Hmm?  Not sure how this works in our favor.  Relationships, health, finances and jobs are all affected negatively by alcohol use.  The impacts of alcohol use on an individual trickle down to family members, co-workers, and the larger society in which they live.    

 

According to a recent study comparing states to one another, Wisconsin has the lowest alcohol costs in the nation and the highest levels of alcoholism and binge drinking (helped by the more than 17, 000 licenses to sell alcohol in the state.  More than 200,000 people in Wisconsin work in the alcohol industry.  In 2007, more than 300 people died in drunk driving accidents.  And if you know anything about these accidents, you know that the drunk person usually walks away fairly unharmed, while the sober one dies.  

 

In my criminal law class yesterday our professor shared that on any given Friday night in Madison there are about 2000 drunk drivers on the streets.  Of those drivers, only a handful will be stopped.  It's not that the police don't care, there just aren't enough of them.  In the state as a whole, there are approximately 26,000 drunk drivers on the road at any given time.  Did you get that?  26,000!  The percentage of fatalities related to drunk driving began to drop in the 1990's, but is on the rise again.  In 2006 49% of all traffic fatalities involved drunk driving. 

 

You can read "The Death of an Innocent" here:   http://www.sayno.com/innocent.html