Previous entries in the DUI series can be found here.
I grew up in a dry, Catholic family in a Midwestern state, and I was just barely beginning to secretly navigate the world of alcohol by the time I graduated high school. So I did what anyone in my position would do, and enrolled at a party school in the heart of the Bible Belt, whose beautiful campus and sweet local community made it such that if you squinted a little and kind of plugged your ears, you could pretend you were at a small, private liberal-arts college on the East Coast. On certain weekends, however, the campus became so saturated with bros in neon tank tops, that you had no choice but to join in or physically retreat into total isolation. One of these weekends was the weekend of the Little 500.
The Little 500 is a bike race, but more importantly, it is an entire week where students just do not attend class in order to drink more efficiently. Students sit on their porches blaring pop songs, playing cornhole, destroying property, and funneling alcohol into every available orifice.
I was eighteen years old and the only party I found was one that had been advertised via Facebook. It was being hosted in a large empty warehouse a couple of miles off campus, conveniently located next door to the state police headquarters. Armed with a mixture of Smirnoff and Diet Fuze, I rallied my rag-tag gang of (mostly sober) friends and we confidently strode into a warehouse rave in the middle of rural Indiana. There were a lot of glow sticks, and I had to use the bathroom a lot.
An hour or so in, the mood suddenly shifted. A friend of mine waved me down. “The cops are here, we’re leaving.” I watched the rest of my friends calmly stroll out and decided to follow suit, when I was immediately stopped by an officer. I like to think that I had been cruelly singled out in a crowd of drunk and disorderly minors, but it is also possible that I was yelling something like “Oh no, I can’t get caught, it is illegal for me to drink, because I am only eighteen.”
I was escorted out into the rain, where the arresting officer took down my information. My friend Andrew asked one of them if it was okay to drive me home, whereupon he was asked to leave. My friends looked back pitifully at me before piling into Andrew’s mom’s sedan. I later found out they all went to a nearby diner, perhaps to ease the pain of wondering if I was in jail or even alive over a Frisco melt and a round of milkshakes.
So there I was, standing alone, in the rain, crying silently for about half an hour. The police would not let me move from my spot, or talk to my remaining friends nearby, for reasons I can no longer remember. I do remember one officer saying to another, “There’s no use trying to explain it to her, she can’t even understand us right now.”
I was worried that I’d have to spend the night in jail, or be taken to the hospital, and the longer I was left alone the more panicked and irrational I became. I just wanted to call my friends. I just wanted to go home.
So I waited until the policemen turned their backs, and I took off running.
I was soaking wet, I had no phone, I was crying, my leg was bleeding, and I was walking slowly, alone, down a dark street, miles away from campus. I headed along this path, in the direction I thought I should be going, for a while until a car pulled up next to me. Inside was a college-aged guy. He rolled down his window.
“Let me give you a ride home,” he said.
“I can’t do that. I can’t just get in a car with someone.”
“Please, just let me take you wherever you need to go. Do you live on campus? I can just drop you off there.”
I briefly weighed my options, and considered that with him I would at least get out of the rain for a little while, so I got in.
I don’t remember much of the ride back, and I never got his name, but I do recall thanking him as we pulled up to my dorm and I bolted out of the car.
In the morning, I would go to court, where I would pay a large fine in order to get into a trial diversion program. I would repay my debt to society by spending one eight-hour day in a courthouse classroom learning about the alcohol and drug abuse. I would have to call my mom and tell her that, once again, I fucked up, having had a previous alcohol-related law violation earlier that year. But before I did any of that, I had to put on some pajamas so I could go brush my teeth.
I stumbled into my room and began to shed my wet, blood-stained clothes until I realized that the dress I was wearing had a very difficult, unrelenting cloth belt that was trapping the garment onto my body. I grabbed a pair of my roommate’s scissors, and cut my dress off with a few snips. I tossed it in the trashcan and promptly went to sleep.
The next morning I awoke feeling strangely calm, like everything that had just happened was actually just a dream. It was possible I had made it all up, but my dreams are never actually very interesting, and my cut-up dress was still draped over the trashcan. I put the pieces together and woke my sleeping roommate.
“Did I get arrested last night?”
“Yeah, you did. I think so.”
“I think I need to be at the courthouse. I think I have to be there right now.”
One hazy detail that I managed to pull out was an officer telling me about my 9am courthouse call time. On average, Indiana excise police rake in at least 200 citations, which in my case came out to $408. These days the fine is at least $500, with a record-breaking 285 citations issued in one weekend this last April, mostly cases similar to mine, with minor alcohol and drug violations. It was about 10:30am when I woke up.
When I finally got to the courthouse, I saw a few familiar faces, looking miserably hungover in solidarity. But as I was walking in, everyone else was shuffling out in bright orange uniform vests.
I approached the nearest clerk and asked her what was going on. She was surprisingly sweet.
“Well, things are kind of wrapping up here, and they’re all leaving to do community service. I tell you what, just go home, take a breather, and come back tomorrow. We’ll take care of everything then.”
Although it was my second offense within my probationary year, because they had so many citations to process that weekend, they let me take the minimal charge, and again go through the Pre-Trial Diversion Program that I had taken a few months prior. I didn’t end up having to perform additional community service or buy the orange uniform, but it did eat up the rest of my high school graduation money. Sorry again, mom.
This post is a part of Step Out Of The Car, Please, a recurring and unglamorous series about DUIs and drinking problems. If you are interested in submitting a story either anonymously or under your own name for consideration, contact [email protected].
[Image via Flickr]
Tags: allison stone, dui series, hey it’s a slightly more lighthearted story this time that’s nice, oh my god what is cornhole, step out of the car please
(Of course she was sweet. You were a young white woman and not a young brown or black male.)
We always knew when a brown or black person was pulled over in Indiana because there were 3-7 police cruisers summoned every single time. My hate for that state knows no bounds.
I dunno – does this really fall under the umbrella of stories about “drinking problems”? Maybe I’m defining problem differently. I feel like there must be some better stories out there, digging deeper into how alcohol negatively impacts lives.
I think it does fall under that umbrella, precisely BECAUSE this is the kind of behavior that (white, middle-class) Americans not only condone but actually smile on. It’s considered normal and fun — even a rite of passage — to act this way in college. But there are consequences (like being arrested and getting sick and not remembering details) when you drink too much.
Additionally, this particular piece reads more like a slice-of-life snippet than a full appraisal of the author’s experiences with alcohol. We don’t have much information on her relationship to drinking after this happened, so it could have become a bigger problem for her down the line.
Yeah, thinking more about it I agree. It *is* a fairly normal college experience, but: (1) for many people who go on to have problems with alcohol, that’s where it begins; and (2) college binge-drinking probably shouldn’t be the norm.
I guess getting arrested for under age drinking and getting sick and not remembering details seems pretty minor in the realm of consequences from alcohol. Believe me, I’ve seen the spectrum. I think there are lots of people who have experienced this, and although it’s (possibly?) an important topic to address, I think it didn’t really show the insidiousness and destructive nature of alcoholism. It might have, if it HAD gone into her current experiences with alcohol – and if there are problems there. But it didn’t.
I guess I just expect a bit more meat in my Toast.
I don’t know. I appreciate more of a spectrum. Not everyone’s epiphany about their problems with alcohol is a result of a car accident or consecutive days of blackouts.
Meat on toast? You’re an animal.
No, *in* toast. Like a pig in a blanket.
pig in a blanket is good. but i was really thinking of toasted meat. like… pork roll?
I feel like there’s a lot of the author’s story we’re not hearing — what was the first arrest? Being arrested twice in a year sounds pretty significant. I mean, my friends and I drank a ton in college, and none of us were ever arrested….
Yeah, this sounds like a fairly normal college experience. At least at my college.
And in college, I was already conscious that some of us were drinking too much situationally, and some would actually have A Drinking Problem.
I was really sheltered, so my college experience didn’t involve random bleeding and literally running away from cops. Stories like this are really interesting to me precisely because they are an insight into, you know, a different experience I could have had. The ones that are super intense are incredibly interesting, but I feel almost voyeuristic reading them with such fascination because I can’t fathom being in those situations. I didn’t even start drinking until my late 20s so it’s appealing for me to see what a “normal” college experience might have been instead of one spent drinking tepid Pepsi at every party.
Two infractions within a probationary year? I think maybe that’s a problem. I’m not sure that “problem” is defined solely as a case where the person writing gets locked up, or loses the spouse, or wrecks the car. I think that the slow slide of a drinking problem is perhaps less compelling, but it’s just as much of an issue for the person affected. The author knew the beat for the next morning – the large fine, the 8 hour class – from memory. She’d done it before already, within a year. It’s not dramatic, per se, but I think it fits.
Her problem is that she got caught. *boomtish* no but seriously I get where noodgie is coming from – to me this story seems like something that could happen to any number of college kids. It’s pretty well written but there’s just not a great deal of drama or conflict in this story, and not any reflection or indication of learning something at all. It’s just a thing that happened.
“I was eighteen years old and the only party I found was one that had been advertised via Facebook.”
Damn kids. Get off my lawn.
we cant ur lawn was advertised on facebook
youre the one that’s advertised on facebook
ur butt fbook dvrtst
u r fb
fbbbbbbbb
hi i’m a professional website editor welcome to my website
I think that what’s interesting about this are the lack of consequences and the universality of this experience for college kids today. The slap on the wrist, money for the state’s coffers, and half-hearted attempt at alcohol education are par for the course at so many schools. I went to one of those small liberal arts colleges on the East coast but we still had weekends like this (Halloween, for one) when the local hospital was full of kids who drank too much.
ETA: I was kind of waiting for more of a criticism of the system, but maybe that’s on me.
“system’s real messed up”
Cool, I’m good now.
Consequences for what? She, a legal adult, drank alcohol to the point of inebriation. Oh my! *clutches pearls*. Who shall pay for this horrible devastating crime!!!!
Well, the writer was under 21 when this happened. BUT, I think supernintendo is criticizing the culture of binge-drinking at universities, not the consequences (or lack thereof) for any one person.
Few viable efforts are made to discourage this culture, and whether a college freshman is a legal adult or not, it’s easy to feel pressured into making poor choices when it comes to alcohol. Universities try to take responsibility for their students’ well-being in so many ways — student-life departments, campus police, etc — so it seems strange that many of them can’t (or don’t want to) really tackle something that can leave their students in the hospital (or worse).
Well, she got arrested twice in a year and ran away from a cop while being processed. I have to think privilege plays a role in how that played out.
I’m seriously fixating on the fact she ran away from the cops, and they just let her go? (Making assumptions based on the outcome) I just can’t even fathom trying to flee the cops without experiencing some severe consequences, no matter how panicked, scared, inebriated I might be. I was raised to never get in a cop’s path or risk their wrath. It reminds me of going to the courthouse for a speeding ticket, and there were so many fellow students looking bored out of their minds as they sat waiting with their parents and lawyer to get their DUI charges dropped. I’ve incurred some drunken shenanigan tokens during my college years, but I don’t think I ever felt free enough to let loose like most of those around me, to really embrace that don’t give a fuck culture or attitude. At the same time, this account was probably the most personally relatable out of the entire series, mostly because I can definitely see a lot of my friends in this.
I'm seriously fixating on the fact she ran away from the cops, and they just let her go? (Making assumptions based on the outcome) I just can't even fathom trying to flee the cops without experiencing some severe consequences, no matter how panicked, scared, inebriated I might be. I was raised to never get in a cop's path or risk their wrath. It reminds me of going to the courthouse for a speeding ticket, and there were so many fellow students looking bored out of their minds as they sat waiting with their parents and lawyer to get their DUI charges dropped. I've incurred some drunken shenanigan tokens during my college years, but I don't think I ever felt free enough to let loose like most of those around me, to really embrace that don't give a fuck culture or attitude. At the same time, this account was probably the most personally relatable out of the entire series, mostly because I can definitely see a lot of my friends in this.