Binge drinking on college campuses across the country is wildly spinning out of control. In addition to students making complete asses of themselves in public because they are unable to walk in a straight line without laughing or shut their mouths for more than five seconds, some of the more irresponsible ones get behind the wheel of a car and end up causing accidents that either seriously injure or kill themselves or innocent bystanders.

In the last year, the national Task Force on College Drinking analyzed all of the alcohol related deaths, injuries and incidents at college campuses across the United States. They found and presented their findings in the annual Journal of Studies on Alcohol that due to excessive consumption each year, 1400 students are killed, 500,000 are injured and 70,000 acts of sexual assault are committed. In addition to these staggering figures, the Task Force also determined in its study that among all college students, 44 percent are habitual binge drinkers.

But none of these statistics, which are on the rise practically every month, show the dangers of being blitzed out of your head and losing an eyebrow.

I mention this because unlike most normal Americans who spent their college days partying in fraternity basements drinking strange alcoholic concoctions out of a collectable Alvin and the Chipmunks tumbler, my party days were tragically cut short in the prime of my youth after a Fourth of July celebration that went spinning horribly out of my control.

I was stuck in Austin in a lousy apartment with an annoying roommate being forced to study two consecutive semesters of Spanish for four long hours a day, five days a week, not including the time that I spent studying the day's confusing verb translations and conjugate formations. It left me very little leisure time to myself to unwind. Needless to say, I was getting a little "loco en la cabeza."

Soon, the Fourth of July rolled around and I figured that after devoting all of my time to memorizing how to say "I need to fix my record player" in another language, I decided it was time to get out and celebrate my country's independence in the most patriotic way I knew how – drinking heavily.

I called every friend I knew of that had stayed in town for the summer with the hopes that they too had nothing better to do than sit and home eating stale microwave pizza and watch old Ken Burns documentaries on PBS about the elaborate plumbing system of the White House's presidential bathroom. Luckily, one of them came through.

Matt was a close, personal friend I knew from working with him at the college radio station for a whole year writing and performing a weekly, hour-long comedy show. He was fairly older than I was, and lived a much, more comfortable lifestyle than myself since he was studying to be an accountant and had a swank apartment than made my dorm room look like an old, empty refrigerator box.

As it turned out, he was holding a Fourth of July celebration of his own at his lavish abode and welcomed me to join the festivities. Knowing the kind of party animal that Matt was over the years, there was definitely going to be drinking involved and I jumped at the chance to play "Bobbing for Jello Shots" in a keg of Old Milwaukee.

I should also mention that the reason I drooled at the prospect of drinking my consciousness away was that almost two months before I received Matt's invitation, I had turned twenty-one years old, which as many underage college students know is a sacred day when you become a true adult with important responsibilities and choices that will decide the course of your life. Questions such as should I throw up in this garbage can in the bar or run to the door and puke in the street outside.

Before I turned twenty-one, however, opportunities for partying didn't present themselves very often. My friends from Tyler, Texas (which itself was one of the last remaining dry counties left in the country) would often come to visit me in Austin and we'd always go down to 6th street, the centralized location for partying in the city on a Friday evening. And since 6th street has practically all of the city's action, police would patrol up and down the street until last call came around looking for underage drinkers who were sneaking into bars to grab a sip of anything they could weasel their way into getting whether it was with a fake ID or a friend who was old enough to buy them something. They even managed to snag President George Bush's daughter, Jenna, after she was caught trying to wet her whistle at Cheers' Shot Bar.

My friends from Tyler, Aaron and Mike, were 23 and 22 respectively when I was just twenty and despite my constant bugging, they refused to buy me any alcohol since they were scared to death of having to call home and ask for bail money because their friend wanted a Manhattan.

So needless to say, Matt's invitation was a golden opportunity to make up for all those years of being left in the dark by my so-called friends. I went to the nearest drive-in liquor store I could find and stocked up on enough beer to get the first three strings of the Dallas Cowboys blitzed and arrived at Matt's place thirty minutes later to find that all of his friends had started "celebrating their independence" way ahead of me.

I was falling behind everyone else, and I didn't want to seem as though I didn't know what I was doing so I basically drank whatever was offered to me, which technically is classified as "binge drinking." Then after doing seven consecutive shots of Jagermeister, which went from tasting like sour NyQuil to candy by the fourth or fifth shot, I could barely sit up straight in my chair. I looked one of those bobbling head dolls that souvenir vendors sell at Texas Rangers' games.

Day turned into night, and I was on the verge of passing out when the rest of Matt's friends literally carried me into the house because I couldn't walk without tripping over or stepping on a chair, a lawn ornament or Matt's pet cat. They plopped my almost lifeless body on the sofa when Matt's roommate conspired to do what all caring friends do to each other when one has more to drink than the others – shave off a noticeable part of their body.

I was practically asleep when his roommate brought the suggestion to the table, but one of Matt's other friends, whose name escapes me because my brain was on a permanent coffee break while I lay in a drunken stupor on my friend's designer sofa, said that they should go easy on me.

I was home free, and I didn't even know it. They could've written, "I have an inflamed colon," all over my body with a permanent marker while I slept, but one person stood up for me and tried to save me from embarrassment and I was too smashed to even realize it. Because about thirty minutes later, I called this person a particularly nasty name, which I thought was the funniest thing since the banana peel was first used in a comedy sketch, and according to Matt the next morning, the next sentence out of his mouth was, "Somebody go get a razor."

Matt's roommate did the honors and using a nose hair trimmer, he shaved off half of my left eyebrow leaving a small patch of facial crabgrass sticking out of my forehead. Just before I fell asleep when Matt came to check on me (probably to take pictures that he could use against me if we ever ran for president), I told him that I just had the strangest dream that mobile pagers were vibrating on my face. I asked him if he thought that held any special meaning or significance to him. He compressed the biggest laugh of his life down to the back of his throat and responded with an uneasy sounding, "No."

The next morning I woke up earlier than anyone else in the household, probably because I got the most amount of sleep. I was severely hung over for the first time in my life, and I had a headache that could stun an elephant. It was so bad that I didn't even notice the bald spot in the middle of my forehead when I walked into Matt's bathroom, which had a full-length mirror over the sink. In fact, I walked around the apartment talking to everyone with ease and confidence, totally unaware of what they did to me the night before.

Finally, Matt had to just flat out tell me to go look in the mirror since at that moment; I had a better chance of catching a fly ball at the seventh game of the World Series with my teeth than taking a hint from anyone in the room.

I was shocked – not that people I trusted would do such a heinous thing to me, but that I remembered I had to go home that same weekend to spend time with my parents who would be pleasantly surprised to learn that they blew over 30,000 dollars of their hard earned money on tuition, textbooks, food and room and board, so their eldest son could let complete strangers shave him.

But to this day, I thank the powers-that-be that on that fateful night, I fell asleep on my friend's couch and not behind the wheel of my car while barreling down the Interstate at seventy miles an hour because I certainly could've lost more than half an eyebrow.