Throughout history alcohol has been widely accepted as a social behavior. Its roots are firmly planted in most cultures currently found around the world. This paper is a first person emic examination of one event in which there was social drinking. The first half will be a detailed documentation of the event. The latter half will discuss the social consumption of alcohol and how it leads to the perceived transformation of accepted cultural behavior by the intoxicated individual or collective.
On November 09, 2002 the University of Southern California played against Stanford in football. A group of friends decided, a few weeks in advance, to have a social gathering at an apartment in Los Angeles to watch this event in a social setting. I arrived at 11:30 with seven avocados and a bottle of mustard. Upon my arrival I turned on the television and proceeded to watch the UCLA vs. Washington State game that was on prior to the 3:00 USC game. The keg arrived a few minutes later and was placed on the porch.
The consumption of alcohol started at approximately 12:00pm shortly after the keg arrived, even though most of the invited guests had not shown up. As different people started to arrive, the majority of the participants gathered around the source of alcohol on the porch. The party quickly divided into two different groups: one of males the other of females. The males stayed centered around the keg while the females went inside to watch television. On the porch each male began to do keg stands in order to prove their ability to consume large quantities of beer in a short period of time while being suspended upside-down (see attached photos for clarification). These activities continued for approximately an hour and was followed by drunken conversation and incoherent sentences caused by the chemical effects of alcohol on the human organism.
The attention was then re-focused on the USC football game. Everyone gathered around the television to watch the game. Soon after the game started the attention shifted back to drinking. This time it was accompanied by a beer bong (attached photos). This device uses gravity to force liquid into an individuals stomach faster than would be possible under standard atmospheric pressure. The increase in pressure at the end of the beer bong is a result of pressure being only a function of the depth of the fluid and its density. This device was then used once again to achieve status among the males with some limited female participation.
After the game had ended everyone returned outside and drank beer while engaging with others in conversation. The climax of these conversations was when one of the intoxicated individuals tried to scale the side of the apartment via a vertical rain gutter. When he fell from the second floor into a hedge of bushes at the base of the wall he proceeded to start over and climb again. He paid little attention to the advice of the onlookers urging him not to try again. His second attempt resulted in the rain gutter becoming dislodged from the wall and falling down with him to the ground. After this event the guests went inside while some decided it was time to leave. The night ended with a movie and the last guest left at 11:00pm.
The first of these examples is the keg stand. There are few instances in which you see this form of drinking. Most instances of this behavior are associated with a large social gathering, where the involved groups are almost all male. This can tell us a few things about the practice of keg stands. It is a way of building status among the other males at the gathering. Typically a keg stand is accompanied by the surrounding individuals counting to see how long the person can hold the posture and drink the beer. This is used to measure who gains the most prestige from the beer drinking session. Despite the frequency of these stands in a collegiate environment, it is not a widely accepted social activity. When questioned about the activity at a later date, the individuals involved in the ritualistic drinking will often deny that it ever happened. This is in stark contrast to what they believed at the time they participated in the event. During the event they would have been ostracized by the group if they turned down the offer to perform a keg stand. Also, any individuals walking by such an event would view the keg stand as immature and form a negative image of the individuals involved. This image would be formed because of social customs that look down on activities such as these.
The next socially unacceptable ritual that is closely associated with beer drinking is the beer bong. This activity is also social in nature and only done in groups. Unlike the keg stand, this draws limited female involvement and attention. This activity is another example of beer drinking being used to gain prestige or status among peers. The measure of status is deduced by how many beers you can bong at once. For example, if two individuals attempt a beer bong and one fills the bong with two beers while the other fills it with three before they hit it ,the one with the three beer will achieve a higher status after the activity ceases. While involved in this activity, the participants accept it to be a normal activity accepted by those around them. More often than not they are looked down upon by people not involved in the activity. Since the experience of the beer bong is so traumatic to the human digestive system, intense public vomiting is often associated with this activity. For those involved in the bonging activity it is actually encouraged and not looked down upon to vomit immediately following a large beer bong. Even though it is perceived to be accepted by the group and other people at the gathering, it is not. The group of individuals are then separated from the others attending the gathering and find it hard to re-integrate themselves back into the party.
The last form of behavior that is exhibited during drinking rituals are the attempted acts of super human strength. The individual that attempts these acts is under the preconceived notion that they can achieve anything they want, despite the laws of physics. An example of this is when someone tried to climb the side of the building on the rain gutter. During the incident the person was under the impression that he was acting well within the accepted social norm. This is not an isolated incident when large groups of people consume alcohol together they tend to engage in behavior that they normally would not promote. Alcohol has earned the slang name of liquid courage indicating the effect it has on people who are intoxicated to act outside their normal sphere of social behavior.
Consumption of alcohol is a constant across society in the 21st century. The examples presented in this paper are unique and rather undocumented aspects of the college drinking culture and the rituals associated with it. More precisely, the rituals of beer bonging and keg stands and how individuals involved in social drinking often perceive a shift in societal norms which allows them to act in a irrational manner. With enough research, one might conclude that alcohol or other mind altering substances could be considered a cultural universal.
By: Eric Geller