Alcohol & Drugs
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We can teach you 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. We can tell you not to drink or use drugs and that doing that is illegal, and you should listen to us, but someday, some of you will drink legally or illegally no matter what we 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.
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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.
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And here is what else they have in common: All these people died in 2015 from overdosing on heroin or opioids. Thousands of others also died last year, and the year before last year, and so on. Thousands more will die this year.
Millions of people just like you and me are addicted to opioids right now. Some are mothers and fathers. Opioids overcome your strongest instincts, like the maternal instinct to protect your children. In some areas, 1 in 10 babies born today are born addicted to opioids, because the mother is addicted and cannot stop taking the opioids while pregnant.
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Alcohol
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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 adult fans of University of Alabama football. 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.
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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
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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. Sadly, that very thing has happened to a lot of people.
This behavior is nothing new, unfortunately. 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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