It's not the message. It's the messenger.

I'm hoping this is the case as I formally state my intention in writing this article: Let's put a stop to the obsession with drinking.

First off, I'm not calling for the complete abandonment of alcohol. That's a bit too ambitious. What I'm pushing is moderation. I'm also issuing a wake-up call to how absurd this obsession with drinking has gotten. At the very least, I hope this column leads to a self-reflective evaluation of why you drink.

For the purposes of the article, when I say drinking, I mean drinking frequently and, as my now incarcerated freshman roommate used to put it, "getting loaded."

It seems that we believe drinking is something we're supposed to do. After all, it's college. Everybody here has an unbridled, passionate dedication to alcohol and its fellowship. It's easy to assimilate into the beer culture.

With this attitude, we become mindless drinkers. We coast along through our academic years thinking that alcohol is the college way, the only way. Some of us even get bored with drinking and want to stop, but we end up continuing because we have no other hobbies. College would seem pretty lonely and depressing if we weren't always looking forward to the next time we can drink, right? Now, before you condemn me as Graham Spanier's preachy little sidekick, let me explain what I'm getting at. For many of us, drinking has become a lifestyle. This concerns me. How is it that we've developed a lifestyle born from something so self-abusive? If you think beer doesn't make you dumber, remind yourself how much we love barking to that song about canine liberation.

Let's look at where the drinking fascination comes from. When in a social setting, a college kid's only real craving is to interact with his academic brethren. Think about it. All we want is to go out to a Chuck E. Cheese-type atmosphere where we're free to hang out with, talk to, and meet people. That's all. However, no one wants to admit that because it doesn't sound college enough. That's where alcohol, our left-handed bozo of an assistant, comes in.

Drinking has become an excuse to hang out with our friends. If there's no beer involved, then we feel awkward about our real intentions. We're afraid to confess that we enjoy the company of others. Don't believe me? When was the last Friday or Saturday night that you went to a friend's place where beer was not the main course? Or, what happens when we want to get together with a friend that we haven't seen in a while? Right, we schedule a trip to the bar.

Here's an even better one: If you went to a friend's party where the kegs had become "kicked," how long would you stay? I've seen best friends leave a party instantly after the announcement of an empty trough.

If you still don't think our drinking could be called a lifestyle, hold on. I'm just warming up. Turn your heads to Exhibit A. The drinking obsession is perceived to be so glamorous that we surround ourselves with it. We create beer friendly environments.

Have you ever been in an apartment at Penn State? Almost every one of them is affectionately decorated like a bar. There are beer charms everywhere. It's boring. None of us are beer-like creatures.

Your apartment should be filled with items reflecting your self-expressive side. This does not mean 100 neatly displayed beer bottles cluttering up your shelf space. Trust me, real people care about bottle collections like State College motorists care about observing red lights.

It is now fashionable to evaluate how good someone's party was by how many kegs they had. You might argue that it seems reasonable to go to a party where all the beer has localized. After all, that's where all the people will be. This just proves my earlier theory. The primary social agenda of the college student is designed for seeking out a conversational hotbed. Unless you can drink a whole keg, you're really just going to fine-tune your interpersonal skills.

Still, it's so sad that we have to buy lots of kegs to get people to come over. Try hosting a weekend coffee party, and see how many of your friends show up. The ironic thing is, the drinking lifestyle really doesn't impress people anymore. These days, people really don't care if they're ridiculed because they drank two beers and couldn't name the 50 states. I laugh at guys who still think their manhood could be stripped from them if they lose their skillful ability to down 12-packs. Shouldn't it be more desirable to have a low tolerance if your goal is to get drunk?

This leads into the section where I make fun of the dumbest of the dumb. Or, all those people that think their dedication to drunken scholarship is impressive the masses.

The key players in our drinking culture seem to be those who are constantly discussing their favorite beers, passing out on the street and giving the rest of Penn State a bad name. They go out intent on drinking themselves charming so they can gracefully court all the girls. On Saturdays, they'll routinely hoist themselves out of bed at 9 a.m. to get an early start on filling pitchers for an all-day "beer pong" extravaganza. And, when a professor mistakenly mentions anything related to substance abuse, you can always hear these alcoholic eggheads cheering from the back row. These guys belong in the stands at a Nascar time trial, not in a college classroom. It's South Park-dumb to believe that promoting the drinking lifestyle will bring about popularity.

Of course, the key players believe their drinking accomplishments are interesting enough to share. Every time we see them they tell us the same poetic story about the case they sucked down and where they passed out afterwards. We shouldn't tolerate these guys. In fact, we should be making fun of them.

So, what's the take-home message for today? It's OK to drink. It's OK to drink a lot. Just please don't drink because you think you're supposed to. Figure out why you're drinking. If you truly enjoy it and can keep yourself under control, then carry on. Hey, maybe you know something I don't. With all the beer that gets drank everyday, I can't help but wonder if you guys are secretly putting the bottles under your pillow at night. Am I missing out on the beer fairy?

On the flip side, if you often find yourself with $60 bar tabs, no memory of last October, or puke where there was no puke before, then maybe it's time to re-evaluate why you're doing this. And maybe we should also try to downsize the obsession by taking some of those beer slogans off our walls.

Remember, it's also OK not to drink. You don't have to march in the drunken parade, and instead, try to make drinking something we do for fun every once in awhile and not our all-consuming lifestyle.

Find a hobby. As I mentioned earlier, part of the reason that we don't give up our precious beer is because we have no alternatives to pursue. It's quite easy to find one, though, if you just practice a little homemade self-inquiry and figure out what your most sincere interests are. Collegian columnist is taken, by the way.