21 Shots

Gregory Robinson will turn 21 tonight, and he wants to make it memorable.

He plans to go to several Center City bars, where he will let his friends buy him a few drinks. He is not quite sure which bars he will go to or what he will drink, but he is sure of one thing: If all goes according to plan, he will get drunk.

"The tradition is to go out and use your ID," Robinson said.

If his plan works, the College junior will have a big hangover when he wakes up tomorrow.

But that might be the least of his problems.

Doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania say people who celebrate their 21st birthdays with excessive drinking regularly make trips to the emergency room.

HUP emergency room physician Francis DeRoos said he personally treats 10 to 12 college students each year who are hospitalized on their 21st birthdays.

Depending on the type of alcohol and the rate at which it is consumed, these types of birthday celebrations can cause vomiting, comas or even death.

The most common ailments, DeRoos said, are alcohol poisoning and asphyxiation.

Drinkers are "actually becoming poisoned from the ethanol," DeRoos said.

"It's the invincibility of youth, more than anything," DeRoos added. "They tend to do a lot of [shots] in a short period of time. ... You go over the toxic level."

This kind of binge drinking was spotlighted after College junior Matthew Paris celebrated his 21st birthday last September.

Paris remains in rehabilitation after falling from a banister at a registered Psi Upsilon party. He was critically injured after allegedly consuming 21 shots of alcohol.

Drinking 21 shots -- sometimes called a "power hour"-- is becoming a 21st-birthday tradition. While the specifics vary, it usually entails consuming 21 alcoholic beverages over a short period of time.

College senior Stephen Gavalas said that two years ago, he celebrated his birthday with similar heavy drinking.

"Birthdays are a time to go nuts," he said. "You're still kind of starry-eyed about getting drunk and wasted."

He said he began in a friend's house near campus, then went to a Center City bar where friends kept buying shots for him. This went on, he said, "until all hours of the morning."

He kept track of the number of shots -- 22 in all -- by marking his arm with a pen.

"Someone is usually the secretary," said Brian Pawliczek, the manager of Cavanaugh's Restaurant near campus, about the custom of keeping track of the drinks.

Some temper the risky tradition of downing 21 shots of hard alcohol by doing it over the course of an entire day.

"Spread it out over enough hours and it's not the end of the world," College junior Jeff Leider said.

But students looking to celebrate at bars on campus may have to look elsewhere.

Excessive drinking often happens outside of bars, said Wesley Barrow, a College senior and Smokey Joe's bartender. "I personally haven't seen it happen here, just because it would be so expensive" to purchase so many drinks.

Pawliczek said he generally refuses to sell a customer more than 10 drinks.

When a customer drinks excessively, "I have a bathroom full of puke I have to clean up," Pawliczek said. "This is a business, and I don't want to wreck our business."

To curb alcohol-related injuries, officials in Texas and North Dakota are considering legislation to combat this very custom. Proposed bills would declare that people reach the legal drinking age the morning of their 21st birthday, instead of at midnight.

Nevertheless, some students believe that the traditions will continue despite the health risks.

"I think people ... have people looking out for them who aren't trying to drink with you," Wharton junior Tim Gamache said. "They're trying to be there and take care of you."

"I personally don't feel that [Paris' injury] changed the tradition at all," he added.

DeRoos agreed that the tradition will not soon end.

"We make a big deal about this magic number 21," he said. "That gives you all sorts of rights."

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