Most lectures about alcohol tell you how it’s bad for you, how you should never drink because it can cause bad situations, and basically it’s just bad all around. Of course those lectures are not wrong, and they have a good message, but the lecture on Monday, October 17 about drinking alcohol took a different approach. “How to Maximize Your Buzz” was not a lecture on how to avoid alcohol and “Just Say No” but on how to drink alcohol and still maintain the person that you are.
Jack Gottlieb, who comes to the university and speaks about leadership a couple of times a year, was the speaker on Monday, and as usual did a great job getting his message across. He opened his presentation with some funny clips and interesting facts and then introduced himself to break the awkwardness. Gottlieb is a fantastic speaker; he doesn’t just speak to the audience on the matter, but he also gets them involved and up and moving.
The presentation was not brought to campus to scare students from drinking, but rather to get students in the know about alcohol and to change their behaviors by changing their thoughts about what alcohol really does. The main point of the presentation was that alcohol is not just about drinking; it is about who you are. It tried to get students to understand the difference between buzzed and having fun and getting drunk and turning into a whole different person. Sometimes when people go past the limit, they do things or get in situations that they normally wouldn’t. They even sometimes turn into a different person. It wasn’t the fact that people may have fun when drinking, but it’s about the day after and if you can live with the decisions that you made. Accepting the person that you turn into after having too many was a great point Gottlieb was making, and of course dealing with the pictures.
Everyone that came to the presentation was amazed at everything they were learning, even though it may not have seemed that they were actually learning. Of course, what kind of alcohol presentation would it be if you didn’t learn how bad it is for your body, but the presenter took a different approach on how to get this information across. Instead of just telling the audience that alcohol is bad for you, the presentation compared alcohol to something else you eat and how toxic it is. For example, a six pack of beer is equal to the toxicity found in six pounds of bleu cheese. It was amazing what was learned during this presentation, and the audience was hanging on to every word.
It was a great presentation, and there was so much more learned than can fit in one article, but the lecture moved quickly and by getting the audience up and moving, they had to stay alert and participate, which just made the time better. This presentation was a great start to Alcohol Awareness week.
