Alcohol-fueled sexual assault

One of my favorite writers is Ben Stein. Last week he chose to weigh in on alcohol and sexual assault on our college campuses:

But excessive drinking is not required to be young or to enjoy life. It is possible to have a great life without any alcohol at all in one’s veins.

I have been in the recovery community for almost 30 years now. I am far from being a young person but I see and talk to a great number of young people in recovery. I hear them talk about how miserable their lives were when they were ruled by alcohol and how happy they are that their lives are free from booze.

I see genuine miracles in the lives of college kids who substitute meditation, exercise, travel, and a carefully, patiently cultivated romance for drunken hookups.

It occurs to me that it would be enormously useful for schools to encourage students to leave alcohol out of their lives if they cannot act responsibly while under the influence. It would be a great day when the cool kids on campus were more interested in sobriety than in losing their minds and souls under the influence of beer and liquor. Sometimes, this will be accomplished by turning to a superhuman power, which is how by far the best program for sobriety, AA, does it. Perhaps sometimes it can happen in other ways. Obviously, public schools should not force any special religion on anyone. Just as obviously if inmates are encouraged to pray in federal and state prisons, it is insane to keep young people in school from prayer. Prayer works and prayer works wonders. We have strayed far too much away from it in the postwar era. Perhaps getting back to it through the recovery world will work miracles in the nation as a whole.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Alcohol changes people, especially young people, in ways that can be devastating. If the country is going to respond intelligently to sexual assault on campus, intelligent and restrained approaches to the use of alcohol, the absolute condemnation of binge drinking and idealizing blackouts is essential.

And let’s be specific: The beer companies that make drinking look so glamorous are creating a massive cost in the wreckage of lives. They make money from it and they do not pay for it. It would be a good idea if the de-romanticizing of alcohol on campus started with them. They won’t like it.

But it’s got to start somewhere.

And if we refuse to admit prayer and a higher power into our lives in the struggle against alcohol fueled sexual assault, we are shutting the door on safety, decency towards women, and health.

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