I am the Shot Queen. I am the quickest beer-chugger in a skirt.

I am the Portable-Party-President. I am "the one who passed out on his couch." And her couch. And yours.

My career as a professional party girl has brought me many titles: some celebratory, some embarrassing, others outright slanderous.

I've been known to go shot for shot with men twice my size, and my most famed split-second beer-guzzling demonstrations have been met with awe and thunderous applause on both sides of the Atlantic.

But my new title is an unprecedented one for me, and, for the first time, one I found myself rather than it finding me.

"The Lone Teetotaler."

I think it was a few weeks before winter break ended that I made the decision to start abstaining from "the spirits." It was listening to my friend Kelly, drunk and giggling in the back seat of my friend's Honda, as she described my drinking habits that really opened the door to sobriety for me.

"I can't drink like Camille. I'm careful, I get scared of getting too drunk. Camille's just crazy -- she'll drink anything!" Now, had I also been drunk and jovial, I most likely would have let Kelly's words float in one intoxicated ear and out the other.

Either that or I would have proudly agreed with her, shouted, "I'm craaaaazy!" out the window to the sleeping woods, and settled back into my seat with a dumb drunken grin stretching across my face. But as fortune would have it, I was the sober one for once.

I was taking a night off after a string of hazy nights littered with cheesy bars, sweaty bodies, cigarette smoke, short skirts and tall shoes, which I woke up in on more than one occasion (the clothes, not the bars!).

I was the designated driver, lucid and considerate of what I'd just heard. Kelly had picked up on what I myself had never realized -- I really just didn't care what happened to me when I was drinking.

My body had to shut itself off before I would ever step in and decide I'd poisoned it enough for one night. It finally struck me that I'd never met another girl who would chug Jack Daniel's out of the bottle or play drinking games with straight vodka.

Definition of crazy: Departing from proportion or moderation.

Yep, that was me.

Being a person of extremes, my resolution was to refrain from drinking for one full semester. Not "just one shot," not "a couple drinks here and there," because that only lasts so long, especially in a binge drinker's paradise named State College.

It was either all or nothing, so I chose nothing.

Most people react first with disbelief; thereafter, doubt. Others with confusion, followed by a form of anger. When I say, "It's a phase I'm going through," they'll say, "Well, honey, you'd better get over it by next Saturday because you and I are going out and getting ourselves retarded!"

With the disappearance of alcohol in my life has come the disappearance of packed weekend agendas, and, sadly, it seems, possibly even a few friendships.

When you form relationships largely based on the weekly tradition of going out and acting like total fools together, removing the "social lubricant" can be like ripping the rug out from underneath the once happily unstable footing of that rapport.

I don't want it to sound like this abstinence has been a catalyst for some sort of religious experience or an infusion of spirituality, but sustained sobriety has, well, sobered me.

I've taken a step back to observe and evaluate my place in life, the place I want to be and the elements of my lifestyle that propel me toward that goal. I've found that alcohol is not one of those elements.

Although, I'll admit, it sure can be a hell of a lot of fun.