Seeing What You Expect to See

Stephen King once said in an interview, "Belief is the wellspring of myth and imagination." When I came to this quote while reading a book on brief therapy, in particular the sections on constructivism and narrative therapy, I could not help but think of the way contemporary collegians look at alcohol as a substance and drinking it as a behavior.

Alcohol and its consumption have become significant icons of collegiate life and a mythology surrounding drinking has evolved that is so entrenched in the minds of students entering college--not to mention their parents who recall its role from their college days--as to resist even the latest efforts to address the misperceptions many hold regarding it.

Alcohol and drinking have meaning because we ascribe that meaning to these icons of contemporary collegiate life. Michael Hoyt in (Some Stories are Better than Others: Doing what Works in Brief Therapy and Managed Care (2000) suggests that the essence of being human is that we are "meaning makers" and by our very nature cannot not participate in explaining, by whatever means, that which we experience. This is an apt explanation of how meaning is ascribed to alcohol and drinking...those who are aware of these aspects of college life maintain that awareness in the context of the meaning they have attributed to them. Unfortunately, the meaning we ascribe to an event in order to explain and understand it is does not guarantee its accuracy, hence the role of myth in explaining all manner of natural events and phenomenon.

For example, when I understand that alcohol is a prerequisite of "having a good time," it quickly becomes synonymous with having that good time. In fact, the mention of alcohol is no longer required because the party itself has become imbued with the meaning that alcohol will be present and those attending will be consuming it. Interestingly, the noun becomes a verb, which itself is a euphemism for drinking, that is to say, "to party" mean to drink.

Although this meaning is not isolated to collegiate life--many in high school have already become familiar with alcohol and understand its importance in a successful social life--it changes as students progress through successive terms in their collegiate experience. The meaning attributed to alcohol as a substance and drinking as a behavior "change." Where first-year students expect and then seek out the collegiate "keg party" with its obligatory "drinking games" and related "drunken comportment," the lure of this type of past time lessens.

In research that I have conducted the meaning ascribed to alcohol and drinking changed significantly as students progressed from their first-year to their later years in college--see my second monograph on collegiate drinking for an in depth look at this phenomenon - http://www.community.rowancas.org/Monographs/Monograph_510.pdf. It would appear that the meaning students ascribe to these collegiate icons changes as the result of experiences they have with them, either personally or vicariously--or more likely both. Whether this is a result of developmental movement from adolescence to young adult with the accompanying development of one's ability to reason with the further physiological development of the prefrontal cortex of the brain or whether it is learned through progressive experiences where drunken comportment becomes less attractive, the point remains, the behavior of many (most?) collegians who choose to drink in a high-risk fashion changes.

What is of interest to me, as a professional interested in issues of prevention and intervention, is how this naturally occurring process can be better understood and then incorporated into contemporary approaches to preventing untoward consequences associated with drinking. It stands to reason that if collegiate drinkers "mature out" of their high-risk approaches and this happens because the meaning hey ascribe to alcohol as a substance and drinking as a behavior have changed, then if we can understand this process we can likely hasten this process.

I suspect this is the next chapter that will need to be written in the handbook on preventing high-risk and dangerous drinking.