The hum of everyday life penetrates the halls of Wren and South Halls alike; feverish video-gaming cries, muffled keyboard punches and the familiar screams of Red Sox fans bring comfort to a typical college environment.
A signal of the most dangerous of activities, however, may come from silence - a partner-in-crime all too familiar to John*, a Tufts senior and recovering alcoholic who asked to be interviewed anonymously to protect his privacy.
In the midst of the omnipresent illegal drinking scene that accompanies the onset of college, John rapidly spiraled toward alcoholism soon as he arrived at Tufts in 2004.
"I started binge drinking as soon as I got onto campus. A lot of things weren't working out right," John said. "I wasn't making any friends, I wasn't joining social organizations and I wasn't doing well in class."
Unaware that his drinking could be classified as alcoholism until the fall of his sophomore year, John sought counseling to address his overall discontent.
"I went to Tufts' counselors spilling my beans, saying things like, 'My mother doesn't love me,' 'I feel so alone,' 'I don't know how to make friends,'" John said. "I didn't think that drinking was part of the problem. I had never even considered it."
His journey to rock bottom progressed until the fall semester of 2005, when then-sophomore John unintentionally brought his addiction to the attention of the school's administrative faculty.
According to John, an act of violence committed at an on-campus party compelled the hosts of the party to report him to the administration.
"Fortunately, no one got hurt. Nothing was destroyed, but people were angry about the incident, and they had the right to report it," he said. "This was the first time that people were thankfully starting to get into my life, and they really brought home the point that something was wrong here."
Still, his addiction had become voracious, eating up any trace of normality that his life had once possessed.
"Drinking had become my natural reaction, and was the only way I could even feel remotely good about life or myself," John said.
A temporary suspension and mandatory medical leave forced John to move back into his mother's home in Cambridge. Nearly one month after the incident at the party, a build-up of high stress and anxiety led him to attempt suicide.
"I basically had a nervous breakdown," he said. "I called one of the Tufts 24/7 counseling system and I took a bunch of Tylenol. I was on the phone the whole time. [The counselor] called an ambulance, and the next day I went to detox."
After detox, John was pressed to enter Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), but made little progress.
"I didn't stay sober my first entry into AA. After a few months of being around AA, I started drinking again," he said.
Though John returned to Tufts, his addiction continued to affect his life at school.
"I came back to Tufts, but my drinking had just gotten so much worse until, in 2006, at Fall Ball, I left a party, blacked out and woke up latched to a hospital bed."
"At the worst point in my drinking, I had no friends," John added. "I was a real isolationist ... It was definitely not healthy."
In a second round of disciplinary actions, John was confronted by deans, counselors and his parents, who unanimously beseeched him to take time away from school and get help.
"A paper was put in front of me for medical leave," John said. "They just said, 'Take a year off, get help, go home and rest,' and that is what I did for two semesters. I went back to AA and took it much more seriously this time."
Currently living off-campus in Cambridge, John is majoring in mechanical engineering. He is now focused on his extracurricular life, his part-time technical support internship in Wellesley and his studies. He says that his once-tarnished relationship with Tufts has healed over time.
John's path to recovery has been aided by his off-campus residency.
"It would have been very hard to spend my first year of sobriety on campus, around Tufts," he said. "Things are going much, much better than they ever did in years past."
At his request, Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter provided John with a chance to apologize to those affected by his actions at the party in 2005.
"Veronica Carter set up a situation where I could make amends to someone I had wronged," he said. "It was generally a very beautiful experience."
Continually addressing the factors that provoked his alcoholism, John proposes that the campus become more involved in actively confronting issues attached to drinking.
"I haven't seen it, but it would be good to see Tufts get more forums available to talk about it," he said. "A place to talk about drinking at Tufts, where no one is judged or held accountable. I think to get the issue out in the open would be a start to addressing at least the culture of it."
*Name has been changed.
