His friends hover around in a semi-circle, drunkenly cheering him on as he downs one, then another, then another before he starts to get dizzy. Pouring the liquor is an older, bearded man whose presence at this teen hang is unsettling, to say the least. But nobody cares, likely due to the empty bottles of Grand Marnier, Patron, and prescription pills strewn about the room. Things soon turn ugly when two boys get into a fistfight.
After that, someone passes out. Another stops breathing. Watching this all unfold is a group of suburban parents, off to the side of the room behind a long piece of masking tape. Reality parties are a product of Straight Up , a Ventura County, California-based organization that seeks to bolster awareness of youth substance abuse and peer pressure.
Straight Up has been producing them since , mostly in Santa Monica and the surrounding LA area, but as far away as Oklahoma, too. The clips are alarmist, poorly acted, and kind of amazingβso much so that I decided to see these mock scenarios performed live. Another thing Reality Parties are about? Involuntary recall of the dumb shit you yourself did in high school.
The parents present at my Reality Party agreed: Nothing they saw was very shocking. Kids today, as it turns out, really do suck at partying. But what was actually happening was not that surprising.
That was the consensus from the other parents who witnessed teens fake-chug beer, fake-talk about where to get a fake ID, and fake-heckle a neighbor who fake-threatened to call the cops. The mood changed later on, though, during a debrief session with a police officer and experts from youth drinking and addiction programs CLARE Foundation and Westside Impact Project.
