Article January 1, 1999 ISSUE

Fun without drinking

Anjuli Graunke

A common thought at my school is that, in order to have fun, you should take part in weekly drinking parties. This thought has always perplexed me. I look at all the fun activities my friends and I do without using alcohol, and wonder why people feel that they have to drink in order to have fun.

Are people who don't drink missing out on something good? It doesn't look that way to me. I see it this way: Drinking at parties is a way of trying to find happiness in a purely material way. But happiness really comes from God. So it's not imperative to drink alcohol at parties to be happy.

Actually, instead of providing joy, alcohol takes it away. It removes your clarity. It hampers your judgment. Realizing this helped me feel differently about the people who feel they have to drink at these parties. I could see that really they are good people — and that we're all God's children.

At one party I went to, some of the people started playing drinking games. But no one pressured me to drink. Soon I felt strongly that I needed to leave. So I left. And I felt calm. I knew God was guiding me. And I didn't feel sorry for myself, or dumb because of leaving.

A couple of days later, a friend who had been at the party told me she respected my decision to leave. She said she had been drinking because she felt she had to. I'm so glad God looks out for our every action and protects us from feeling insecure or self-conscious if we don't follow the crowd.

Anjuli Graunke
Brookfield, WI, USA

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