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“Just take half of it,” says an impatient voice behind the camera. The teenager paces side to side holding a half-filled shot glass while his friend on the other side whips out his camera phone. He takes a deep breath, leans forward matching the rim of the glass around his right eye as he tilts back and covers the other eye with his free hand. Excess liquor rushes down the side of his face that didn’t quite make it into his eyeball. The camera phone next to him flashes, and all you hear is music in the background until the teenager finally slams the glass back on the table. He immediately rubs his eyes, twitching in pain and still pacing side to side. The camera man pans to the other side of the table and says, “Go on Baker! Go on!” Now he is egging on another teen about to do the same thing as the last brave soul. “Tilt your head up! Tilt your head up!” he says.
“Adz and Baker Eyeball this time,” is the title of this YouTube video, and immediately after it’s done “Snorting Vodka” pops up on the screen. On the sidebar to the very right, YouTube’s list of related videos starts with “Baker Eyeballs his First Shot,” to “Steve and Pegs Eyeballing Beer.” A new trend has embedded its way into the culture of teen drinking, and the internet only fuels it.
Eyeballing vodka isn’t the only cool thing to do these days, the choking game is up there too. Mike Schroeder, now a college student attending The University of Toledo in Northwest Ohio, proudly admits he used to play the choking game with his friends when they were in high school.
Mike would stand with his back against the wall and bend over at the waist. After taking several deep breaths he would stand again while one of his friends would push on his chest, cutting off the oxygen to his brain. They did this often, not thinking anything of it. “It was as close to doing drugs as you could get without really doing drugs,” says Mike. He recalls the adrenaline, saying it would only last about 20 seconds but would feel like an eternity.
Mike, 22, doesn’t play the choking game anymore, but he said they once did it because they never really considered it dangerous. Laughing, Mike recalled one time in particular when his friends choked him out at a party and as he fainted he hit his head on a ping pong table. “It was hilarious, I guess I started convulsing like a seizure.”
Devan Blacklock is a senior at Ohio University who spends a lot of time working with teens in the Athens area. She is one of seven Wydlelife leaders who teach a group of teens about God and morals. It’s an international organization that serves both middle school and high school students, offering teens a place to come together and learn about their faith. While Devan hasn’t seen any of the teens around here eyeballing vodka or passing out from the choking game, she has dealt with another dangerous fad known as cutting.
Within the past three years Devan has dealt with several suicidal girls, one of which was also a cutter. While the reasons vary between cutters about why they inflict pain on themselves, Devan believes most of the girls that she deals with are cutting for attention and not because they are suicidal. “In most cases, they don’t really cut themselves for any deeper reason other than attention. They wear short sleeves to school that clearly show off their cuts. They’re flaunting that they do it,” says Devan.
Parents, who once worried only about teaching their kids to never ride in the car with strangers no matter how friendly they seem, now must teach them why pouring vodka into their eyes is a bad thing. On their child’s 10th birthday, instead of reminding their kids to wear a helmet on their bikes they now must remind them to stay away from people who choke or cut themselves for fun. Apparently, we are evolving into a nation in which the innocence kids once had is now merely an old-fashioned trend.
This one makes me cry…………..