Drugs & Alcohol
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You can learn how to defend yourself, but all the self-defense training in the world does you no good if you are passed out at a party. I can tell you not to drink or use drugs and that doing that is illegal, and you should listen to me, but someday, some of you will drink or do drugs legally or illegally no matter what I say. So, we’re going to talk about drugs and alcohol.
Drugs
What do all these people have in common? These people look normal, don’t they?
Here’s what they have in common: all of them got hurt and went to the doctor.
Health care organizations are rated on how fast they can manage pain, so these people were immediately given prescription opioids.
For some people, the opioids made them feel sick. But for others, the feeling was so good that they could not stop. There is no way to tell which kind of person you are until you take an opioid.
All of these people could not stop. They would lie to get the opioids. Some would purposefully hurt themselves by breaking their bones, like their fingers, so they could go to the hospital and get more opioids. One man had each of his teeth pulled, one by one, so he could get a new opioid prescription after each extraction.
The opioids made them steal from family and friends, beg on the street, and put themselves in dangerous situations. And terrible things happened to them on the street, all so they could get these opioids.
Some of them couldn’t get opioids anymore, so they started taking heroin, injecting it right into their veins. 4 out of 5 heroin addicts began their addiction with a doctor prescribing them opioids.
These people don’t look like drug addicts. And here is what they have in common: All these people died in 2015 from overdosing on heroin or opioids. Thousands of others also died in 2015, and the year after that, and so on. Thousands more will die this year.
You can learn all the self-defense in the world, but none of it will help you if you are addicted to opioids. Opioids will block all your instincts for keeping yourself safe and for taking care of others.
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Alcohol
If you can stomach it, watch the confession of a rapist from Yale who preyed on an intoxicated victim.
Like many crimes, Bill’s crime was a crime of opportunity. After Bill minimizes his criminal act by saying he knows “it’s not PC and all”, he confesses that he dragged a “passed out” girl into his room and had sex with her.
Predators like Bill use alcohol to incapacitate their victims or find victims that are already incapacitated, making rape very easy for them and complicating the victim’s attempt to seek justice after the rape occurs.
“Pointing out how much someone had to drink is the defense’s attempt to damage a victim’s credibility,” National Sexual Violence Resource Center Communications Director Tracy Cox said. “Sadly, it is commonly used as a way to direct the focus away from the person who sexually assaults by shifting the onus onto victims. It implies that a victim is responsible for an assault.”
Will anyone protect me?
Sometimes, the answer to that question is, sadly, “no”. If you saw the video of the “Alabama Teabagger”, you saw a large group of people witness, cheer on, and actually attempt to participate in a sexual assault of a passed out young man at a restaurant.
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Aside from the other two who tried to participate in the assault, every single fan in the video seems to think it is perfectly fine — even desirable — to sexually assault a young man. I even saw some people defend this on line as some kind of harmless prank or joke.
Let’s see what kind of joke it is. 33-year-old Brian Downing, a/k/a “The Alabama Teabagger”, faced ten years in prison for sexual assault, but entered a plea deal for obscenity charges and received a two-year prison sentence. He was also fired from his job. He was married and had a young child at the time he committed the assault.
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The absence of people willing to protect someone being attacked is not limited to the Vanderbilt University football team or University of Alabama football fans. Here’s the Bay County Sheriff describing a gang rape taking place in broad daylight during Spring Break in front of hundreds of people from many different schools:
Within 10 feet from where this is happening there are hundreds, hundreds of people standing there watching, looking, seeing, hearing what is going on, and yet our culture and our society and our young people have got to the point where obviously this is acceptable somewhere…
Unfortunately, we now live in a world where, if you are being raped while incapacitated, it is very possible that people in a position to stop it will simply look the other way. It is not fair, and it is not right, but that is the state of the world right now. If you see someone being violated while incapacitated, please intervene. Chapter nine will teach you how.
Quiz: What do you know about alcohol?
Answers are from a training for a chapter of the National Charity League using a great instant survey program called Mentimeter.
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The other reason not to drink from open containers is that virtually anything gross someone puts in beer sinks right to the bottom of the cup and won’t be seen by you until the cup is nearly empty. Chewing tobacco, a loogie, you name it, will go right to the bottom of the cup.
Rough alcohol equivalencies
Here are the basics: One beer contains about 5% alcohol by volume, sometimes more, sometimes less. The container will generally post alcohol by volume and you should figure that out before you ever drink anything, no matter how old you are.
Wine contains 14-20% alcohol by volume, or roughly 3 times more than beer. That means that if one person is consuming beer and the other person consumes the same amount of wine, the person drinking wine will consume three times more alcohol than the person drinking beer. Wine bottles also list alcohol by volume. Again, anytime you are consuming anything, you want to know how much alcohol is in there no matter your age.
Liquor is generally between 40-50% alcohol by volume. That means it can be 10 times more potent than beer. Some liquors are nearly 100% alcohol, particularly grain alcohol. When mixed into punches or mixed drinks, it is often hard to tell how much alcohol is in there. It is a huge mistake to drink something containing alcohol when you don’t know the amount of alcohol it contains for many reasons, including possibly getting arrested for public intoxication or driving under the influence.
For example, a popular drink is a Long Island Ice Tea. It is about 90% 80-100 proof alcohol. So, if you are having a 12 oz. Long Island Ice Tea and your companion is drinking a 12 oz. beer, you may be drinking the equivalent of up to 9 beers for each Long Island Ice Tea you consume! All of this can vary significantly, but generally:
12 oz beer = ~4 oz wine = ~1 oz liquor
Beer typically comes in 12 oz bottles or cans. Beer from a tap is typically served in a 16 oz glass. “Malt liquor” generally has more alcohol than beer. Some brewers are making beers that are fortified with higher alcohol content, some of which are called “ice” beers. Many (but not all) micro-brews are also higher in alcohol content. It is sometimes hard to tell from the look or name of the beer how much alcohol it contains.
For example, one might assume that the lighter, gluten free beer pictured on the left is lower in calories and alcohol than the dark, heavy looking beer pictured on the right. Yet the beer on the left has 206 calories and is 8.5% alcohol by volume (higher alcohol usually means higher calories). The beer on the right has 125 calories and is 4.2% alcohol by volume. So, the same amount of the beer on the left contains twice as much alcohol as the beer on the right. It is wise – even for adults – to check the alcohol by volume (“ABV”) of any drink before consuming it. The ABV is generally posted on the can or bottle, and any decent bartender will know the ABV of what is on tap.
Glass sizes for wine vary dramatically, but many hold over 18 oz, so a “glass” of wine is very rarely even half full. Some types of wine have higher alcohol content than others. Desert wines, “ice” wines, and “fortified” wines tend to be higher in alcohol content and also higher in calories.
It is worthwhile to calculate what your BAC would be if you consumed certain amounts of alcohol. You can do so at http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/interactive/alcohol_calculator.asp.
A BAC of .08 is typically the legal limit to drive. A BAC of .14 results in blurred vision and a loss of balance. A BAC of .17 is what you might call “sloppy drunk” and enough to make you nauseous. A BAC of .2 is the “feeling no pain” category where you might need assistance to stand. A blackout at this stage is likely.
Of course, different people react differently, so there is no telling what your limit is based on a chart. But ten ounces of a drink that is 50% Alcohol By Volume will typically cause a 170 pound male to reach a .20 BAC.
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An old story
Alcohol is the rapist’s weapon of choice, and, like Snow White’s apple, is offered in an enticing manner that proves irresistible to many young people. I am sure it is unthinkable to you that a classmate would violate your body while unconscious. Unfortunately, that very thing has happened to a lot of people.
This behavior is nothing new, sadly. One of the first stories in the Bible recounts the use of wine to force incestuous rapes:
30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and settled in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar; so he lived in a cave with his two daughters. 31 And the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world. 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.’ 33 So they made their father drink wine that night; and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. 34 On the next day, the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Look, I lay last night with my father; let us make him drink wine tonight also; then you go in and lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.’ 35 So they made their father drink wine that night also; and the younger rose, and lay with him; and he did not know when she lay down or when she rose. 36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
Genesis 19:30-36 (NRSVACE).
In 330 B.C., Alexander the Great was partying with his friends in the palace of the Great King of Persia they had just defeated. Everyone was completely wasted, and so when the Athenian woman Thais suggested the palace be torched in retribution for Persia’s burning of Athens, it seemed like a great idea. They set fire to the palace, only to sober up and realize too late that they now owned the palace and were stupidly burning it to the ground. Little remains of one of the greatest achievements in antiquity, most prominently represented by forty sixty-foot high columns standing forlornly in the sand and holding up nothing but the sky.
This is an old problem! Know exactly what you are putting into your body and the extreme risk of experimentation in certain environments.
Hypocrisy
At this point, you may be asking whether I used drugs or alcohol at a young age, and if so, doesn’t that make me a hypocrite? The answer is that I did, and I am therefore a hypocrite in the same sense that Ken Baldwin, who attempted suicide and survived, is a hypocrite in telling you that attempting suicide is something you will probably regret as you do it.
It is not my job to tell you to drink or not to drink. That is up to you and your parents. It is my job to tell you that drinking and drug use is often illegal and that drinking and drug use can pose certain risks to your safety as detailed above.
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