I have found that there is a difference between being welcome and being wanted. As a sober college student in Montana, this is something I have become increasingly aware of. This has been extremely prevalent over the last school year. I don’t drink, but that doesn’t mean I don’t participate in college culture. I still have fun going out and being with my friends. I am just so aware that I have noticed how much of that culture revolves around alcohol. Wine Wednesday, Blackout Thursday Franzia. Drinking has practically become a part of the college calendar. There is always an occasion, always a reason, and almost always alcohol involved. In Montana especially, I’ve found that drinking is so intertwined with socializing that the two can almost seem inseparable.
Last school year, I began noticing something that I hadn’t necessarily paid attention to before. I was always welcome to join my friends when they went out, but I was rarely invited. If I happened to hear about a plan, I could ask to come along, and nobody would have a problem with it. But that was the thing. I had to hear about it first. The invitation was there, technically, but only if I knew to look for it. I don’t think anyone was intentionally leaving me out. In some ways, that made the experience more difficult to understand. There wasn’t anyone to confront or any particular incident to point toward. It was simply a pattern I began to recognize. My sobriety seemed to create an assumption about what I would or wouldn’t want to do, and that assumption was often made without me. People are generally very supportive when they learn that I’m sober. I hear how impressive it is, how much they respect it, and how they could never do it themselves. But that praise is often followed by something along the lines of, “Oh my God, being around drunk people all the time must be so hard.” I find that reaction interesting because it reveals how differently we understand the same environment. To them, my sobriety seems to make participating in college social life an extraordinary challenge. To me, it’s simply the way I live and, in turn, the way I experience college.
