My roommate was bent over into the toilet, imitating a government OSHA inspector. His communion with the Tidy Bowl man was punctuated by the wretching sounds that customarily accompany overindulgence in spirits. It was the first time this naive boy from the Philadelphia beltline had been drunk.

Loyal buddy that I was. I sat there with him. My purpose was not to comfort him – the woman who was his first sexual experience was in the men’s bathroom for that purpose.

My task was far more noble – I was there to ridicule. While roomie was depositing the dorm dinner into the local sewage system I was seated 10 feet away, similarly inebriated and laughing until my stomach muscles tightened.

Those were the good old days…

That was several years ago. My drinking pattern changed from one of creative intoxication for special events (selected weekends) to the more mundane social drinker.

A few beers taste great on a hot summer day or with a pizza or with a 16-ounce steak so rare the blood oozes onto the fries. A few glasses of wine with spaghetti or some champagne at your brother-in-law’s wedding are all part of what we generally define as civilized life as we know it in the late 20th Century.

After several years working as a journalist of sorts. I returned to school to suffer an early and well-deserved mid-life crisis. I noticed that not much had changed concerning drinking.

Drinking is still the number one participatory sport. We fill up part of this paper with stories of use and abuse, and everyday conversation is studded with knowing remarks about how much beer was drunk the night before or how hammered someone was. Alcohol is the great social lubricant that frees us up from our upbringing and our inhibitions.

Several months ago in another life of mine, I was awakened at 6 a.m. by the Ogle County Sheriff’s Office. They asked me to roll out of bed and take my camera to a fatal accident a few miles from my home. They needed me to document the tragedy.

I got to the scene several minutes later. At about midnight a man had missed a curve slammed into a tree. He was dead for about six hours before he was found.

As I walked up the scene was etched into my mind. The man was in the front seat, with his bearded head thrown back. Thank God the door frame hid his eyes from my view. His left arm dangled listlessly out the window.

I quickly took the pictures from every conceivable angle while a knot of firefighters and police waited for me to finish my ghoulish task so they could do the decent thing and extract him from the twisted wreckage.

Finished, I walked away. I was near my car when a deputy called back to me.

“We need another picture,” he said.

I asked why, and the only reply I got was that the firemen had discovered something when they tried to take him out.

I walked to the driver’s side door and looked in, careful not to look into the man’s eyes. Inside was the answer to the unspoken question of “why”. A half-full can of beer had been found wedged between his legs.

That was one for the road that was never finished.

A few weeks later I decided never to drink again. Yes, I know there is not a direct logical connection between drunk driving and abstention. There is a difference between use and abuse.

But I’ve dropped out. Just as a Quaker does not make a personal distinction between just and unjust wars, I find that I cannot make the distinction in my life between enjoying a few drinks and the carnage that results on our highways and in our personal lives when alcohol is abused.

I hope this stand hasn’t made me boring, or worse, preachy. I’m not a crusader and can say that I honestly don’t know what is moral and what isn’t.

My days of communion with the toilet bowl gods are behind me. Were those really the good old days?