Fraternity Bros High On Xanax

What could possibly go wrong?

What compels a college boy to join a fraternity? Access to liquor, pretty girls, and networking opportunities? Maybe. But I’d say it’s the same thing that motivates a poor kid to join a gang: Love.

At a time when students have been separated from their families, the frat seemingly provides a surrogate family.

But does this work? Often, no. Though these guys’ Instagram accounts seem to indicate they've got it all figured out, with the homies, honeys, smirks, and duds to prove it, many are desperately lonely. They haven’t found love because, duh, the frat isn't their real family.

Sorry to generalize, but I know this terrain, having initiated into Washington University’s SAE chapter in the fall of 1995, which required eating dog food that was presented as regular food, sleeping in a mop closet, stealing firewood, and memorizing a piece of balderdash known as “The True Gentleman.”

After backpacking around Europe that summer, I came to my senses and resigned on my first day back at school. These guys weren’t my friends. They were just impressive at ripping gravity bongs.

A new nonfiction book set at the College of Charleston shows how drug dealers got rich praying on the insecurity of frat brothers. Max Marshall’s exquisite Among the Bros paints a picture of the early 2010s, a pre-#MeToo time when Waka Flocka Flame was touring Sig Eps and a campus-born criminal network flooded colleges in the Southeast with Xanax, hooking scores of well-heeled frat guys without even trying very hard.

Here at Drugs + Hip-Hop we’ve been warning you about the epidemic of benzodiazepines for years now, but I had no idea…