Living in a college town that has been dubbed the drunkest city in Indiana is not easy, especially if you’re trying to stay sober.

Alex Shaffer, an IU senior, has struggled with substance abuse since he began smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol at 13. By the age of 15, he was binge drinking alone and said that mixed in with mental health issues was not a healthy combination.

The CDC defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent or above. In essence, consuming an excessive amount of alcohol in a short period of time. That’s especially relevant in college because according to a study from the IUPUI School of Public Health, 18-to-21-year-olds in college are 77 percent more likely to binge drink than those not enrolled in college.

So when Shaffer arrived in Bloomington in 2014 as a freshman, his problem was exacerbated.

“After about a semester or two semesters –that’s when I got introduced to Xanax, started doing that, tried molly, cocaine and all that,“ Shaffer said. “And by me returning to school next fall after a full year, those things just became a regular—one or the other or a combination of those things was going on pretty much everyday.”

Halfway through his sophomore year, his parents decided to pull him out of school and enroll him in a rehab clinic in Indianapolis. When that didn’t work, and he picked up his second DUI, the court ordered him to be checked into a residential program for at least 30 days.

He moved to Minnesota for 10 months to undergo drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

“Even when I got there I was against the whole thing still,” Shaffer said. “But two or three days in I kind of had a little bit of a revelation thanks to help from my counselor and then pretty much from there I just picked it up and ran with it.”

Even after he had learned to trust his counselor, Shaffer said the process of detoxing or withdrawing from a substance, was miserable. He said the worst of all his withdrawals came from the Xanax.

“I would say Xanax was definitely what kind of push me over the edge,” Shaffer said. “And that’s where all my scary withdrawals symptoms, they were related to Xanax and just abusing that pretty much every day.”

He ended up spending 50 days in rehab and then he went to the next stage of treatment, which allowed him to get a job, and to come and go from the clinic as he pleased. He spent 3-4 months in this intermediary phase before finally transferring to a halfway house, where he lived with over a dozen others going through recovery.

After spending about 3 months in the halfway house, he said he knew he was ready to get his life back on track and return to his education.

But Shaffer said he knew his parents would be skeptical and concerned about letting him return to IU. It was after all the place that enabled his addictions and provided him with new ones.

However, one of Shaffer’s roommates during rehabilitation in Minnesota was also an IU student and would help him find a way to convince his parents to let him return to IU. His roommate was further along in the recovery process and told him about Students in Recovery Bloomington (SIRB).

“I figured my parents would be very against the idea and rightfully so,” Shaffer said. “It is a big party culture and I hadn’t had good success in the past with it and he explained what SIRB was.”

SIRB is a student organization at IU for students in addiction recovery. It falls under the departmental umbrella of OASIS, which provides campus wide-wide alcohol and drug prevention programs.

Shaffer said he and his parents met with OASIS twice, learned about SIRB and he said that is why they felt comfortable letting him return to Bloomington.

“This was something that students were apart of and successfully maintaining the recovery being a student and still enjoying IU’s campus,” Shaffer said.

Leah Bunger works as a substance abuse intervention specialist with OASIS. Her role as a counselor allows her to meet with students in recovery and come up with prevention and treatment strategies.

“I definitely think it’s good for them to have a connection with other students who have gone through similar things and that they can relate to each other and have that support,” Bunger said.

That support is integral because Shaffer said it can be hard going through recovery and being a college student. He said when he is overloaded with exams or simply stressed by life he is tempted to put his recovery to the side.

“That’s one thing I have to work on going forward, just staying consistent in all aspects of my life and not overloading any one part,” Shaffer said. “At least not for a few days at a time because as soon as I start focusing on something other than recovery and if the recovery slips, everything else goes with it. If I go back to drinking or doing drugs everything I’ve worked hard on in school, and with SIRB and with my family, that’s pretty much gone in an instance.”

He said is grateful that he and his parents found SIRB. It has allowed him to discover a passion for psychology, which he is studying at IU now. And it has even provided him with a job because he now works in an administrative role.

“It was really important for me to go here and be successful here and without and without SIRB I wouldn’t have that,” he said. “That’s something that I’ll always be thankful for, grateful for probably more than I can like describe it in words honestly.”