Drinking and Driving: Learning What it Means to Look Out for Others and to Let Others Look Out for Us On a warm spring night in April, 2014, I was pulled over and arrested for drunk driving. I had been drinking with friends earlier that night at a bar, though none of us were of legal age to purchase alcohol. While I had not had many beers, I was terrified of what would happen if I failed the breathalyzer that the officer wanted me to take -- so I refused. My refusal led to my arrest and my arrest led to my record being marked by a DUI -- driving under the influence. In a day and age where driving is so necessary to everything we do, this left me devastated. I blamed myself for everything: how could I have been so stupid? Could I have killed someone on the road? Why did I let this happen? What if I had taken the breathalyzer? Would I have passed? What would I do for work now that my license was suspended? These questions, as I later came to find out, were normal (Winerip, 2013) -- and anyone who has been in my situation has had them. But understanding that situation and how it could come about in the first place was something that other sociological studies on this subject could reveal. In this paper, I will tell my own story and show how it both relates to and can be explained by the various journalistic and scholarly works that have been written on teenage drunk driving and the social pressures that drive them to do it.

I had been out with friends that night and as with a lot of teenagers, drinking can be a way to loosen up and be social. It is like a social lubricant -- a "rite of passage" as Du (2015) of Huffington Post notes. At our age, drinking was not something we avoided or something we were anxious about: it was just that, a rite of passage -- the inevitable course of events that had to come to pass. We weren't crazy about it: we didn't overdo it -- and it wasn't an obsession -- but we also were too young to really know the effects of what we were doing or how to handle situations that might arise as a result of our underage drinking. That is why, when my friends suggested we go get some late night fast food, I was hesitant. I didn't want to drive myself home, but I also didn't want to go to McDonald's and risk being in a car with someone else who had been drinking. I was sure I was fine, even though I wasn't so sure about my friends. Underage drinking was one thing -- but drinking and driving was another. If I was going to take that step, I wanted to be the one taking it -- not riding in the backseat of a car, putting myself in the hands of somebody else. Even though when it comes to peer pressure, it is tough to say no (Matter, 2014), I said no to my friends and assured them that I was okay to drive myself home. They seemed satisfied, and I was relieved to be in control of my own destiny.

The problem is -- I wasn't. In my desire to not be in the backseat of a car that somebody else was driving after drinking, I neglected to really assess my own condition. As far as I could tell, I was all right to drive. But when I got pulled over by a police officer who said I had crossed the center line, my heart just about cratered through the bottom of my stomach. My whole life flashed before my eyes as the lights of the cruiser flashed in my rear view mirror. All I could think about was how this cop was going to take me to jail over a few beers and how now my life was ruined: I'd have a DUI on my record. I was tainted goods. No one would ever want to hire me; I'd lose my job; I'd be kicked off the golf team; I'd not get in to a good college; I'd be forever in debt to lawyers for court costs; and my parents would be so disappointed in me I'd feel shame forever. It was a truly frightening moment for me. Despair can be a real thing for teens, especially after they feel like they've just made a major mistake from which they'll never recover...

I felt exactly that at that moment.
Later, I had different feelings. I began to view the choice I'd made as though I were someone else looking in. I imagined what would have happened had I actually caused a wreck. It was really late when I was pulled over: I could have crossed the line as much from drowsiness as from alcohol. I saw how lucky I was to have not killed anyone. But still -- there were repercussions to pay for drinking and driving and getting caught. I had to miss my golf outings because I lost my license. I wasn't able to get the job I had planned on taking that summer because it required driving. I had to deal with worry and anxiety for months on end as the case wore on. In the end, I wasn't charged with a DUI, but my record still showed that I was arrested for one. While it could have been worse, I figured I was fortunate to just get off with this.

My friends and I resolved, too, to never let one another drink and drive again. This was, I suppose, the one good thing to come out of it. We all kind of sensed that we'd been given a break: they were upset with themselves for not looking out and taking better care of me; they were also fearful of what might happen if we ever did something like this again. My family was pretty understanding, too. I thought they would be really disappointed, but they were more relieved that no tragic accident happened. They knew my friends and I weren't going to stop drinking: after all, we didn't drink to excess and it we never reveled in it the way others do when they are trying to act "older" than they are or attempting to imitate what they see on TV (Aitken, Eadie, Leathar, McNeill, Scott, 1988). My family just wanted me to promise that if we all went out drinking together that we would designate one person as a driver and that this person would not drink. This was something my friends and I all agreed would be a smart and safe thing to do.

Looking back, being a teenager does involve making some stupid decisions, and my decision to not get a car with someone else who had been drinking was a smart one -- but my decision to drive myself after I'd be drinking was not so smart. Why hadn't I called for someone to pick me up? I just didn't think anyone in my family would want to be bothered -- after all, it was already so late -- but looking back, that is what I should have done, and my family all agreed on this point. Let's just say the teenage mind is a strange place that doesn't always connect the dots the way it should. This could be that it's still in a highly developmental stage and sometimes the dots just go missing (Kolbert, 2015).

However, as it turned out, my getting pulled over might have been the best thing to happen to any of us: it brought the nurturing side out in my family, whereas before I thought they would simply just be annoyed if I was going out with my friends and getting too drunk to drive. Now I saw that they really just wanted me to be safe and responsible. As for my friends, my DUI really opened our eyes as to the possibilities of what could happen to any of us, so we promised never to let one another drive after drinking. This actually brought us all closer and we felt a shared sense of responsibility for each other. This, too, is what Bonnie and O'Connell (2004) describe in their book Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility: they show that together we all need to look out for one another. When it comes to taking care of each other, we should be quick to act -- and we should also be willing to let others take care of us instead of thinking that we can do it all on our own. The truth is, we usually can't. And, besides, it's good to know that we have family and friends in our lives who are willing to help out and sacrifice some time for us.

However, the view of Bonnie and O'Connell (2004) on society and…