adam constructs an elaborate rationalisation of his constant inebriation

There is a reason for the College Experience. For College Experience, read : excessive drinking, smoking, recreational drug use and free sex (or at any rate, frequent pre-marital copulation. It most certainly is not free). The reason has something to do with generations of stratified pre-conceptions aided and abetted by movies like American Pie and Eurotrip and Harold and Kumar. But really - the marketing basilisk bites its own tail. These movies wouldn't have been able to sell their brand of ridiculous college-hijinks schtick if there weren't an audience that was (if not actively participating in it) appreciative of such a lifestyle.

Part of it is the experience of being away from home. That's what happens in college, usually - in NYU, anyway, most small towns in America are less well represented than a tiny country like Singapore (kudos to Terence for pointing this out), and aside from the odd Brooklyn/Queens/Bronx and the even odder Manhattan native, almost everybody from NYU is hours if not days away from home. The concomitant relaxation of restrictions undoubtedly fuels the drugs-and-free-sex ethos that permeates the residential halls.

I would like to believe however that pointless rebellion only constitutes part of our lifestyle. Part of it is also the experience of becoming an adult in an increasingly bewildering world. Part of it is the slow realisation that the ideals of our childhood cannot apply to the Real World, or better yet, must be paid for in the things we hold most dear. Perhaps the drugs and the drink are our way of cushioning our way into the stupor of adulthood. Pete Townshend was right - I never want to grow up, if growing up means getting comfortable, if growing up means losing my rage (what use is your virtue otherwise, Nietzsche says - I agree), if growing up means settling down and becoming part of the Civil Society I loathe. It is more of a conflict than teenage hormones and piercings and leather jackets imply. It is the fundamental disease of youth without which progress is impossible. Ray Bradbury wrote that all 17 year olds are all fundamentally insane. I am 18. I wasted two and a half years in the army becoming angrier but not older, more efficient but not more mature, wiser but not more self-assured.

The drink and the drugs are cushioning against the horrors of adulthood. They are also a vindication of youth. Adults are afraid of alcohol and of marijuana and LSD because they have conditioned themselves against reality. But I want to be high not because it makes me passive and comfortable; I want to be high because it makes me more truthful. The adults are comfortable and any touch of the truth rankles. I say for this generation that we are not afraid of the truth. That is our war cry. We are not afraid of experiences and of conflict and of violence because they are the path to a better world, and we have dreamed of a better world. We are now bringing this dream to war with reality, with the aid of some drugs and some drinks but mostly with the aid of the untainted innocence that is our birthright.

I say : let us embrace the conflict. Let us embrace the violence. We are warring against corporations. We are warring against liars. We are warring against the appropriation of pleasure for reasons outside the self. We are warring against God. Let there be rage and let there be violence - change and goodness know no other name.