A long note to tell Tara. Although I thought it was wrong for me evangalize my teetotalism, Tara made a good point: if I didn't want her to drink because I wanted her to take care of her body/brain (another example of being paternalistic: I also got her to start wearing her seatbelt, which she often wouldn't do when she was in the backseat), then I should feel the same about my other friends. So, I decided to have a conversation with one of my closest friends about it. Looking back on all this, I think I should have very much taken a "your body, your choice" approach to everyone, although I do think it was all right to at least make sure they were making an educated decision about what they were doing to their body.

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Talking about drinking because he didn't want to be "that guy" and he was that guy who was really drunk around the girls on Friday. 12 shots.

I explained the "you shouldn't need it, and it could hurt your health, so why have it?"

He said he felt bad about it and would try going to a party sober for once. He hadn't thought about the health stuff and that kinda "scared" him When I talked about it. Told me to remind him next time he said he was going out. Thinks that things might be more enjoyable with less, his conversations with people would be better because he'd care about what they'd talk about and give them avenues to talk about themselves like he does when he's sober (he doesn't when drunk).

I mentioned that people take the drug that your brain releases when you die and he started thinking about it, got quite, said he got close to having a panic attack, and was acting just like e did that first night at UNC. I was really scared it'd happen again. he said he was going to get some water and I started talking and he shooshed me.

I quickly changed the subject and made sure not to talk about drugs anymore.

He said he was feeling depressed after thinking about the alcohol stuff and he said he didn't want to disappoint his friends.

Then transition from that was how you had recently helped me with a lot of stuff by pointing out a hypocrisy in my life or something, which forced me to face it and at first I felt bad/depressed when realizing that I had been wrong/bad/wasting for a while, but after that period I removed the hypocrisy and I was better/improved. He asked for an instance:

Talked about my happiness with UNC, how you made me question if I were happy there, made me think about transfer. Talked about class checker briefly. Mainly UNC and how I wasn't satisfied. I talked about how it was hard because on one side of my brain I had to think about how great Harvard was and constantly be reminded, and then I also had to experience some really bad parts of UNC. Explained all the math stuff i went through in 521 how hard to find motivated people like me, explained that maybe one reason I didn't like drinking was because it was epitome of what I didn't like st UNC: people wasting time/not being productive/not being motivated. He felt really sad for me. Said he thought I should transfer.