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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSA
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2008
WWW.KANSAN.COM
VOLUME 120 ISSUE 72
ONE MORE DRINK
A SOBERING STRUGGLE
College students with alcoholism fight to overcome their addiction in an alcohol-infused atmosphere
BY MEGAN HIRT mhirt@kansan.com
The gray glow of the TV screen is the only light in a room on the second floor of Lawrence's Holiday Inn Holidome. Katharine, Colorado junior, awakens with the hotel bed hard against her back, her body soaked in sweat beneath a single sheet.
She cannot focus her eyes. She cannot will her legs to stand. Her throat is raw from vomiting, the sting of two weeks' worth of vodka forcing its way back up. But all she wants is a drink.
One more drink.
Just one more shot of vodka chased with Gatorade, like she had so many times before, alone in her room at her sorority. Surrounded by photos of her family and friends, Katharine always
made sure to turn the lights off before she drank. She hated seeing those photos. And herself.
Now, in the semi-darkness of the hotel room, Katharine's father perches at her bedside. He soaks the hotel's scratchy white washcloths in cold water and lays them across her forehead. He feeds her ice chips because she can't keep down solid food.
They do not speak, but the same fear hangs in their thoughts: Katharine could die from alcohol detoxification. Her body, grown so dependent on the substance, will simply forget how to be without it.
Katharine's drinking had increased throughout her time in college. Toward the end of her sophomore year, she began drinking to relax, drinking alone and planning her days around trips to the liquor store. Her grades tumbled and her relationship with her boyfriend fell apart. Still, even after the parties had ended, the bars had closed and all her friends were nursing hangovers, Katharine
didn't want to stop drinking.
In January 2008, she called an ambulance to her sorority house when, after drinking every day for two weeks, her heart began to feel as though it were beating out of her chest. Shortly thereafter, she checked herself in for alcohol treatment at Johnson County Mental Health Center's Adult Detoxification Unit in Kansas City, Kan., where she shared a room with a 25-year-old woman addicted to OxyContin. There, for the first time, Katharine witnessed the awful, seedy underbelly of alcohol addiction. For so long a close companion to soothe her in social situations, a magic means to escape her loneliness, alcohol was now a hardened foe, its vile, irrevocable effects visible to her in the broken lives of the center's other residents.
She remembered one resident in particular, a woman whose excessive drinking had left her in need of a liver transplant.
Katharine swore to herself she would never be like that.
Two days after arriving at the center, Katharine pulled together a shaky sobriety and left of her own choosing.
But then came a Mardi Gras trip to St. Louis with friends and a hotel room full of alcohol, and she couldn't resist the urge to drink again.
It wasn't a big deal, she told herself. She'd stop tomorrow.
It was never supposed to be like this: going to work drunk, taking a test drunk, lying to her family and friends, being constantly trailed by a perfume of hard liquor — the aching stench of something unsaid.
By the end of February, the cracks showed once again when, wasted, alone and afraid, Katharine called Cirque Lodge in Sundance, Utah, the rehab destination of addiction-addled celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Kirsten Dunst. After receiving Katharine's desperate phone call, Cirque Lodge staff tracked down her father in Colorado, and he immediately caught a plane to Kansas.
SEE ALCOHOL ON PAGE 6A
Photo Illustration by Jon Goering/KANSAN
HEALTH
Caffeine offers finals-week energy boost, reflects national trend of increased intake
many students' diet. Caffeine gives students the extra kick they need to navigate
With finals week fast approaching,
extra caffeine will be working its way into
the end of the semester, but it could have some negative side effects.
Classifieds...4B Opinion...5A
Crossword...4A Sports...1B
Horoscopes...4A Sudoku...4A
FULL STORY PAGE 3A
INTERNATIONAL
KU students from India were shocked by terrorist attacks in Mumbai last week.
Students from India left reeling by recent attacks in their home country
index
At least 172 people were killed across the city and hundreds more are injured.
FULL STORY PAGE 8A
All contents, unless stated otherwise, © 2008 The University Daily Kansan
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