Monday October 10th saw the 22nd anniversary of Oasis (albeit possibly stolen from T.Rex) classic ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, an enormous and hugely enjoyable song which was claimed by the band’s discoverer to be the most important social statement made by anyone in twenty five years. Looking almost that amount of time on, I was driven to ponder whether the staying power of cigarettes and alcohol at universities was the same as this Britpop anthem.
Going back to the olden days—school—barely any people I knew smoked. It was constantly drilled into us by parents and teachers that “clever people never smoked” and that “binge drinking” was a kind of horrific act committed by “others”, and never their children. Admittedly Oxford seems to lack the intense initiations and pub crawls of some other universities and it’s not exactly like walking down Oxford streets is a stagger through smoke clouds; but one of the first shocks of arriving here was that people you knew well would often binge drink and smoke — it was perfectly normal.
The idea was that we were all semi-independent adults exercising the freedom of being away from the influences who, typically, would encourage against or ban these pastimes. Thus, as the cigarette is a symbol of a teenager who wants to seem an adult, for many students, the cigarette is the symbol of a teenager who has become one. There is a staying power to the allure of engaging in a pleasurable activity that is self-knowingly self-destructive. It is this that fuels the continued perception of it is a rebellious activity to this day.
Meanwhile, even the idea of being a recovering alcoholic (a mature student, say) joining the buzzing social scenes of universities seems a tortuous experience, as alcohol flows in abundance through many facets of university life. There is a struggle in constantly straddling the line between being a perceived ‘killjoy’ with no social life and knowing when a night out is one too many for you to feel rested, healthy and able to work. The amount of times I’ve heard someone say they’re too hungover to do work they have to do is considerable. Yet by any “adult” standard, this sort of thinking would be cause for concern.
This isn’t to say that one should worry overmuch about the going out culture of university. Instead, it is merely a point to note that so much of university social life is dominated by drink. “Going to Bridge/Cellar/Wahoo/Bullingdon tonight?” is, in my experience, an extremely common conversation starter if you bump into a friend in the evening; while ‘we should grab a pint tomorrow!’ an equally common comment amongst old friends who need to have a catch up. Meanwhile, so much of the overt social life is predicated on drinking as to make you think there’s something odd here —societies start the year with “Welcome drinks”, the political societies have meetings based around an alcoholic beverage of choice and the sports teams are famous for their occasional stomach-turning benders. Even business societies and so on have welcome drinks; while Cherwell must confess its own guilt in having crew dates as part of their social routine.
The key is to manage a healthy balance—some people (lucky bastards) can go out four times a week while maintaining a healthy routine of sleep, work and fitness; while others will recoil at the prospect of going out three times. It simply boils down to a rational ability to know when the enjoyment of the night out will be more than the relative pain of the morning after. A key way I have noticed is that sportspeople tend to manage their social life better. Whether this is because of that self-conscious awareness of their body and fitness, or whether it’s the very fact that they are necessitated by early morning starts to not vegetate in bed all day the morning after a night out, is hard to tell, but it does seem to be a principle that holds generally. Personally speaking, trying to maintain this stricter routine over the summer turned out to be difficult, but definitely a rewarding exercise.
Meanwhile, smoking is a harder nut to crack. Most smokers at university aren’t even attempting to quit—postponing to a time after university—and so if someone were trying to quit, it would be difficult to in a such a laidback atmosphere. However, it doesn’t seem so prevalent as to be a temptation for non-smokers, unless as part of a desperate sense of boredom in the Bridge smoking area. Smoking seems something left for certain groups of people, not as pervasive an issue as alcohol.
To return to the start point of this article, Oasis promoted this lifestyle as the rock and roll antithesis to Blur’s southern, educated art pop. Even the music showed this divide—the brutish power chords of Oasis to Blur’s sophisticated and unusual musicality. Yet no matter how well Oasis glamorised this outlook, it might be worth noting that they’ve all calmed down a bit over the years. Why? Because moderation is generally a pretty good thing—and it just might make you happier.
