5 Reasons You Should Do DM

It’s pretty damn hard to walk around campus anymore without being attacked by an army of bright eyed students yelling at me telling me to do DM.

Oh, if only they knew.

Of course I’ll do DM.  DM is an important part of student life.  I might even dare to say it’s one of the best things that we do here at Northwestern.  But when I say DM, I’m not referring to the DM with dancing.  Real DM.  Drunk Marathon.  Ten glorious three hour blocks of being drunk, one right after the other, each themed with a different type of alcohol or aspect of drunkenness.  30 hours out of normal everyday life turned into a vivacious, glorious, shitshow.  So why should you do DM?  Well, even though it’s kind of dangerous,[i] there are still plenty of reasons to do it.  Here are a few of them.

1. Now is the only time you can (reasonably) do it

Drunk marathon is a unique opportunity that college offers you. At any other stage of your life, being drunk for 30 hours straight would be entirely unacceptable[ii].  Some might even call it “alcoholism,” a word used to describe drinking heavily while not in college.  College is the time where you could theoretically get away with doing such a thing.  Try it while you’re younger, and your parents would notice the fact that you’re screaming for no apparent reason and peeing every 30 minutes.  Any older, and your boss will notice the fact that you’re screaming for no apparent reason and peeing every 30 minutes.  Plus, as cool as it seems now to be shitfaced for your kids’ soccer games, it’s a lot less awesome in practice.  Soccer moms are really, really judgmental.  So it really is now or never.

“Congratulations! Today is your day. You're off to Great Places!You're off and away!” ― Dr. Seuss in “Oh, the Places You'll Go!” , a book which I assume was about being drunk for long periods of time.

2. Class becomes more fun

Imagine if you actually gave a shit about that special type of integral you’re learning about in math class.  During DM, literally EVERYTHING is exciting.  Suddenly, during history class, you realize that Ben Franklin was a dope dude who spent years of his life running around boning French girls.[iii]  Linear algebra has lots of pretty numbers and stuff, and they’ve got you singing and dancing with glee[iv].  Lab classes go from being 3 hour wastes of your life to an opportunity to mess around with a bunch of expensive science-y shit.  Those same classes that were bringing you down and making you drink out of sadness when you fail them- they suddenly aren’t so terrible anymore.  Also, you fix one of the worst things about big lecture classes – your teachers sometimes don’t even recognize you.  Once you puke all over your desk mid-class (the Franzia-themed block six has a tendency to make this happen), your teachers will DEFINITELY know who you are.

3. You’ll get closer to your friends

Kevin Federline once said: “it takes a village to raise a child.”[v]  DM is not a solo effort.  Much like Diana Nyad’s heroic swim from Cuba to Florida, you’ll need a team to help out, and you’ll bond with your friends as they keep you alive.  Of course, in order to be properly organized, your friends will need to divide into a few committees.  Food committee will supply endless Cheesie’s.  Also water, because you’ll die without water, but it’s probably less important than the Cheesie’s.  Productions committee will make sure that DM keeps going by supplying flasks/bottles of beer/bottles of wine/bags of Franzia/full handles along the way for you to nurse that drunken feeling.  Dancer Relations will keep you alive during naps and the block designated for drunk sleep (block 4). Community Relations committee will make sure that your relations with the people around you don’t get too bad[vi].  Between the efforts of these committees, you’ll stay alive, and you’ll create memories with your friends that will last forever.  (Well, at least the memories will last/exist for them).

4. You’ll have the courage to make wonderful bad decisions

Alcohol is called liquid courage for a reason.  It’s certainly the only reason you even bothered hitting on the girl at that party that you swore (at the time) was ‘like a hotter version of Natalie Portman or something.[vii]’  Well imagine if you had that bravery all the time.  The balls to tell that girl in your genetics class she’d look better with her ‘genes’ on your bedroom floor.  The courage to tell your Latin teachers that it’s a dead language and that they need to move on with their lives.  During DM, you’ll finally do these things and more.  In particular, the drunk-texting-themed block (block 2) always leads to some long anticipated and surely regrettable conversations. Plus, you’ll be capable of just doing things without thinking about those annoying repercussions that they might have later.

5. It’s a powerful emotional experience

People say that Dance Marathon is a moving experience.  Well, Drunk Marathon is too.  There’s nothing more empowering than getting lifted back up after drunkenly falling over on Sheridan as you stumble from one class to another during block seven.  There’s that beautiful moment in block nine where your vomit actually makes it into a trash can, and you feel like you just scored a winning goal in the Stanley Cup Finals.  Who could forget the moment in block five when you realize that you’ve already forgotten the entirety of block two?  And there may be nothing more powerful than block ten – which, for some awful reason, is tequila themed.  Your whole body is just telling you to stop[viii], but you keep going, regardless of the fact that you’ve given up taking your pants off and are just straight-up peeing yourself.  Showing dedication like that is enough to make for a strong showing of emotions.  But then again, so is being drunk for such a long period of time.

At the end of the day, what is college really for?  Learning?  Hookups?  Drinking?  Learning about drunken hookups?  We may never know.  But I think that DM offers us an opportunity to really experience college.  Nothing says “prestigious educational institution” like the moment in block three (rum) where you ride around a bike, pretending it’s a pirate ship, and then crash into a tree.  You’re not in college just to learn in class.  Get some life education.  Fondle life by the balls.  Do DM.  You won’t regret it.


[i] DISCLAIMER: Do not actually try Drunk Marathon.  You could actually die.

[ii] It might be unacceptable now, but whatever.  HATERS GON HATE.

[iii] I’m pretty sure “N**gas in Paris” is Kanye and Jay-Z discussing Ben Franklin’s diplomatic missions to France.

[iv] I’m not saying that this happened to me, but it did.

[v] There’s a 0% chance that he said that.  But remember when he was a thing? WOOOOT DRUNK MARATHON

[vi] No matter how much you feel a need to inform that girl that she’s really like, honestly suuuuuuuuper beautiful.

[vii] Just kidding.  That’s not possible.

[viii] Unlike Dance Marathon, Drunk Marathon is generally not post-gamed with a block eleven.

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