Are all universities full of drug-taking party animals?

[Fibbke]

A friends dd is half Danish and after looking around a few unis in this country has decided to go to university in Copenhagen. She was horrified by the "drugs and the squalor" at the unis she looked at and knew people at. My own dd is very put off going to uni for the same reason.

Do they have a point?

I'm going back to uni as a mature student this year and if it's all drug taking party animals I'm totally fucked as I've got two kids and am an old fart!

My kids do swimming lessons at our local uni sports centre and whereas the coffee shop when I was originally a student would have been fry-ups and dodgy coffee - now it's selling "superfood salad" and various grains that would make a corking Scrabble score!

God where did she go? Most students I know barely drink and def don't do drugs. They are much much tamer than my generation.

If you are just at uni for the sake of it and doing 'a micky mouse degree' as she calls it, there is more likely
The chance of people like you think. If doing maths, English etc, there is less likely.

This is nonsense as someone who did history and was friends with a lot of English students at a uni where 70% were private school kids and a masters at Durham I can emphatically confirm it was the students from the affluent backgrounds doing "serious degrees" taking the most drugs. I worked the whole of uni about 14-20 hours a week so I couldn't get "off my face" as I always had a shift at work. I graduated with a first class hons and all the people I knew from rich backgrounds who took loads of drugs got 2:2s.

As always it depends on the uni and the group of friends you make but there is defiantly a lot more to uni than drinking and no reason she should live in squalor. She will find like minded people!

Most students I know barely drink and def don't do drugs

Drugs are absolutely rife. Don't want to name the unis but they are popular and northern!

Of course it isn't true. My uni has a lot of slightly older students who just want to get the best results they can.

I'm at a Northern uni and have never come across drug use. Booze, yes but no drugs.

Huge disparity in experiences and views here, I suspect if you want drugs they'd be dead easy to find pretty much anywhere.

I've had two DC through uni in the last five years. There are drugs and students do drink but it's not compulsory. DC1 hardly drank at all but managed to socialise and do lots of sport. DC2 did drink but not ridiculous amounts or often.
Drugs are in every school, college and uni for those that choose to take them. The more money the students have the more likely it seems that they take drugs in my experience.
Not a reason to study abroad unless that's what you wanted to do anyway.

I have two who have graduated from northern universities in the last couple of years. The stories they tell me about drugs make my hair stand on end. They say friends at other unis have similar experiences but don't tell their parents about it.

I also have one currently at uni in Ireland who has seen very little drug use.

DD loves a good time. She plumped for the party halls at uni out of fear of being stuck with people who didn't like going out.

We dropped her off in her flat; 4 boys, 4 boys, mix of ethnicities from all over the country, had a bit of a chat with the parents, all nice normal people.

She phoned the next day. I said, "Were they wild enough for you then?" She went a bit quiet, then told me that everyone had gathered in the living room and basically produced the drugs they had brought with them, all except her and one muslim boy. And that basically set the tone for the year.

DD had quite a problem with weed at uni. Her friends were more into ket and coke and mdma. One lad is basically brain fried now. One lives in a smart penthouse flat and showed her a suitcase of money he had earned from dealing.

I sent her to uni with dark blue ikea plates. They all got broken because they were the best ones for chopping a line of coke on. They had a big long table in her flat for the eight of them. One night one of the boys found a bag of coke behind a cistern in a very dodgy club and laid a line the whole length of it for everyone to partake. Their flat was the party flat and always full of people.

Honestly the stories she told me.

My dp works at a popular Northern uni and my niece and nephew have just graduated for northern unis, dp reckons that students today drink and go out far less than we did (20 years ago), they're more body conscious and more likely to go to the gym than the pub after uni. My niece and nephew have had their fair share of nights out but they both lived with at least 2 tee totalers and for their other house mates drinking more than once a week would be very, very unusual . I suspect if you want drugs they wouldn't be difficult to find but you wouldn't have difficulty avoiding them.

Oh my DD and all her mates go to the gym, eat really healthy, many are veggie or vegan. Doesn't stop them doing loads of drugs though. The two things are not related.

Drugs are available everywhere. They are available in every school and college too. Most students do not do hard drugs regularly. Weed yes - but as that seemed to be a badge of honour amongst the Prime Minister hopefuls I'm not sure you can read much into that.

Some kids will spend every evening wasted - they'll have dropped out before the year is out. The majority don't. They go to parties, drink a bit, sometimes a lot, smoke a bit of weed, go to lectures, work in the library, volunteer, do sports, revise for exams. Most manage a reasonable balance of work and fun.

The culture is different in Europe - students don't get maintenance largely so tend to stay at home.

Tinkly you sound weirdly proud of your DD's drug habit?

Tinkly you sound weirdly proud of your DD's drug habit?

Well thankfully she doesn't have a drug habit any more; she has grown up and learned some sense.

No I'm just trying to describe how massively, shockinglynormalised and out of control drug use is in some unis. I haven't even touched on the horrifying and disturbing stories.

And most parents are none the wiser; my best friend told me cheerfully that there were no drugs where her daughter is at uni. My daughter has told me all about what my best friend's daughter gets up to.

Yes my daughter is an oversharer and I am a worrier. Its a bad combination.

Thing is, all these kids with anxiety and depression and mental health problems at uni, I would imagine a massive, massive percentage of it is down to drugs.

TinklyLittleLaugh I have one oversharer and it makes me realise how little most DC tell their parents.

There is some but not all, dd barely drinks even. I suspect Copenhagen has similar issues.

I would imagine there are issues with drugs and drinking at all unis. But not all students involve themselves in these things. My DD's both drank at uni but didn't do drugs. They both worked very, very hard as did their friends. They also both had loads of fun.

Ps all this talk of "northern" universities is rather odd as the only open drug taking I've experienced was in Cambridge! It's young people, they go wild, they even go wild in Denmark.

Missing out on a university education because some people do drugs is a pretty bad reason not to go. There are also drugs everywhere, not just at university, and you’ll be exposed to them at some point whatever you choose to do.

I'm interested in the parents saying that they know that their DC haven't tried drugs at uni. How can they say that with confidence? I've never asked the question of mine; it seems pointless. I assume they'd be likely to say no even if it was an unconvincing no and even if they said yes what could I do about it except say not a great idea which they probably know already.

In other words surely once DC go off to uni don't parents on the whole stop asking too many questions to which they might not like the honest answer? Or am I unusual?

I went to Northumbria and my best friend got in to Oxford, we were both complete fuck heads. You name it we took it, as did everyone I knew. Some parents knew, some thought their little sunshine's were tee total it wasn't that long ago we graduated.

I think many students, like PM hopefuls, try things. That’s common. The majority don’t follow it up but plenty do. There is certainly big time drinking by some. However the majority finish their degrees and get jobs. They will come across all sorts of behaviours amongst work colleagues and clients. All of these problems are in society and few people are completely isolated from them.

Obviously the parents in Tinkly’s DD’s flat had no idea. Children have to grow up and maturity can work winders! These DC have probably done drugs at home and the parents probably had no idea there either!