NYT,pg1: Drinking Game Can Be a Deadly Rite of Passage

[DeepModem Mom]

Drinking Game Can Be a Deadly Rite of Passage
By KATE ZERNIKE

Published: March 12, 2005


FARGO, N.D. - The homemade video captures the first hour after the stroke of midnight when the birthday boy turned 21 and could legally drink.

His friends thrust shots at him in a booth at the Bison Turf bar and taunt him to drink, shouting obscenities and chanting his name as he tosses back one after the other with beer chasers. After 30 minutes and the 13th shot - a Prairie Fire, or tequila with Tabasco - he vomits into a metal bucket, provided by the bar, the birthday souvenir taken home by so many 21-year-olds before him. Then he resumes his drinking....

***

The tradition is "power hour," or "21 for 21," as it is known in some other places across the country: 21-year-olds go to a bar at midnight on their birthdays, flash newly legal identification and then try to down 21 shots in the hour or so before the bar closes, or as fast as possible.

It can be a deadly rite of passage. Officials in California, Michigan, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Texas have reported deaths from such drinking binges over the last five years.

Colleges and cities have tried various tactics to stop the ritual, and now, hoping to deprive power hour of its frenzy, Texas and North Dakota are considering legislation that would declare that 21-year-olds reach the legal drinking age not at the stroke of midnight on their birthdays but seven or eight hours later in the morning....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/education/12power.html?oref=login

[Mairead]

1. Darwin Award material, for sure

It thins the herd, and the survivors can be sent to Iraq without any worries that they'll suddenly start thinking about what they're doing.

[Gman]

2. Having been an irresponsible 19 year old

when the drinking age first changed to 18 and made me legal, I think this is a damn good idea.

Of course, not that being underaged before ever stopped us.

[Zeke]

3. Whatever !!!

There's a fake war going on based upon lies
and people drinking is front page news?

Gannon, Enron, a fake war and this gets page one?!

[ausiedownunderground]

4. WOW - Is the legal drinking age in America 21???

In Oz its 18. And we have a huge number of road deaths involving drivers between 18 and 21!!! I think America has it right on this issue. In Oz, 18 year olds are allowed to get their license for driving and their also allowed to start getting seriously drunk as well. Probably not the greatest combination! May well answer why our road deaths involve these people more than most?

[LiberalVoice]

5. How is it right to say kids can kill in war...

but they're not responsible enough for a drink?

I started drinking when I was 18...Which is pretty late for most of my friends and I have never driven drunk or hurt anyone while doing it. Its because i'm responsible enough to think ahead. Those accidents aren't caused by alcohol...they're caused by irresponsible drinkers.

[AngryAmish]

8. Australian roads are very dangerous

I saw "Mad Max" like everybody else, so I know.

[LiberalVoice]

12. lmao nt

[MAlibdem]

10. doesn't stop underage drinking

need education about drinking and driving, not creating artificial barriers that get kids in trouble for doing nothing wrong.

[LiberalVoice]

6. I drank 22 shots on my 21st bday.

And i had 7 beers/drinks too. And I didn't even vomit which was the amazing part.

I will say that it is pretty fucking stupid to try and drink 21 shots over the span of an hour...or two...or three. Especially if your body isn't used to that much alcohol. I spread my bday over about 6 hours and I was fine.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

7. I got effin bored in the bar

I had to leave my neighborhood because I'd been drinking in all the bars for months and if they found out I was turning 21 they'd be pissed. So I was at some college-y bar in SF with a stupid band and I got bored and went out to celebrate in the streets.

I opened two cases of Budweiser on Haight St. and partied with half a dozen homeless people and random passersby until oblivion. I remember taking various weird-tasting drugs as well (dirt weed out of a bum's pipe and some funky blotter acid.) GF said she had the best sex of her life with me that night, which I didn't remember (kind of pissed her off).

Of course, that was the good old days. People must be REALLY REALLY bored these days to be playing those games. I guess when music, sex, and conversation are all fake, you have to come up with some way to amuse yourselves. It's always in the course of a desperate search for entertainment that young people kill themselves off.

The only thing I ever counted like that was 19 bongloads on my 19th birthday, which didn't make me feel much different from say, five bongloads. It might have been twenty, since I seem to recall something about "a pinch to grow an inch."

[lowreed]

9. maby they should think about keeping the bars open later ;)

[MAlibdem]

11. dumbasses

your supposed to spread it out over the day.

like, start at 2pm on your birthday and do like 2 shots an hour until 10 pm, then you're most the way there (16 down, 5 to go).