At a bar in Kazakhstan, Sagdi Nurmanov, petroleum engineering senior, (left) toasts a beer with his neighborhood friend Nariman Tokymbekov. At the time of the photo, Nurmanov was 18, legal to drink in Kazahkstan, but not in the United States. Photo provided by Sagdi Nurmanov

Eight years after his first drink and five years after first legally purchasing alcohol in Italy, Rakash Prasad was finally old enough to drink in Oklahoma.

Prasad, computer engineering senior, came to OU from Italy when he was 18 years old. He had been going to bars in Italy since he was 13, but waited three years before he could enter a bar in the United States at 21.

“It’s [screwed] up, because all of a sudden you can’t drink,” Prasad said.

In Italy, there is no minimum drinking age. Although bar-goers are supposed to be at least 16, bartenders never checked IDs, Prasad said.

Prasad said he didn’t stop drinking when he got to the United States, he merely adjusted his habits.

Although he stopped going to bars, more stricter drinking laws didn’t stop him from drinking in his dorm room and at parties, he said.

Before coming to the U.S., Prasad said he was warned about differences in the alcohol laws by his friends in Italy.

He was not, however, told that beer from gas stations could not be higher than 3.2 percent alcohol by volume.

Prasad said the first time he drank beer from a gas station in Oklahoma it felt like he was drinking water.

“The fact that you’re drinking more, [makes] you think you’re getting more drunk, but you’re actually just fooling yourself,” Prasad said.

Prasad’s roommate, Saydi Nurmanov, is a petroleum engineering senior and international student from Kazakhstan. He said people who drink at a younger age become more familiar with the effects of alcohol and are more mature drinkers because of it.

Before Nurmanov arrived in the states, he was nervous about drinking underage in an unfamiliar country, but he said this fear was alleviated quickly.

“It was very weird ... I didn’t feel free. I became dependent on people to buy me alcohol,” he said.

Prasad said that in Italy, drinking with family helped people build maturity and become more responsible drinkers before they went out drinking with their friends.

“[In Italy], the first time you drink, it’s with your grandfather or with your parents,” Prasad said. “When you’re drunk, you really have to trust the guys you’re with. With family, whatever happens, you have more control.”

For some international students, adjusting to Oklahoma alcohol laws was easy.

Takayuki Tsukamoto, a first-year zoology graduate student and exchange student from Japan, said he didn’t drink very much in his home country and said he hasn’t drank at all since coming to the U.S.