Next to a story on the death of Penn State freshman Joseph Dado on The Daily Collegian’s Web site earlier this week was an ad featuring the image of a T-shirt bearing this message: “thevalleyishappy.”

Thevalleyisnothappy. Not after what happened to Joey Dado. Maybe not before, either.

The toxicology reports won’t come in for a while, but it will be a major surprise if excessive consumption of drugs or alcohol didn’t play a role in Dado’s death. And so we will confront, yet again, the problem of bingeing among Penn State students.

Notice I use the words excessive consumption and bingeing. We’re not going to stamp out drug and alcohol use. In every corner of the globe, humans ingest or inject mind-altering substances, solid or liquid, legal or illegal, mild or intense. Getting high is one of those human universals, right along with making food and shelter and shrines and rules and jokes and stories and songs and art.

What is it about us? We get bored easily. Thanks to the mixed blessing of a consciousness that enables us to think about the future, we worry a lot. And we have trouble connecting with each other.

Theworldisnothappy.

George Nathan’s famous quote, “I drink to make other people interesting” is only part of the story. We also drink to make ourselves interesting. We feel bolder and cleverer. Everything seems funnier. We relax. We can forget, for a while, the problems we haven’t taken care of and the problems we are unable to do anything about.

This is why country clubbers gather at cocktail hour, undergrads do Jello shots and high school kids toke up in the woods. But that all’s-right-with-the-world feeling we all seek is fleeting. Then we have a choice: Let the euphoria ebb and allow the stresses and strains of existence to resume throbbing in our psyches or give the euphoria a boost with another shot, another beer, another hit. The bar, the keg, the stash is right there.

Alas, it doesn’t work. Though the euphoria ebbs, the chemicals remain in the body. Go back for more and tipsiness gives way to drunkenness or disorientation. That’s when the bad stuff happens.

I have lived in a student neighborhood for more than a decade. When I walk past the fraternity parties I don’t see kids having a good time. I see kids who are so inhibited, so uncomfortable in their own skins, so lacking in confidence, so at a loss as to what to say or do that they drink themselves stupid.

I have seen kids staggering down the street, cursing and shouting and occasionally crying and puking. I have read the reports of kids falling out of windows, getting sucker-punched by strangers and waking up in strange beds, victims of sexual assaults they hardly remember.

This is not youthful exuberance. This is frustration, loneliness, terror. I feel sorry for them.

Thevalleyisnothappy.

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Postscript to last week’s column: Readers with good memories may recall I wrote about a T-shirt I bought in Paris. It had Mickey Mantle’s likeness on it, along with the nonsensical words “Red Sox Team from New York City” and “Club Matches Sprouted from National and Regional Events.” I mentioned that I’m too old to wear a star athlete’s jersey, especially if that star athlete happens to be a student in one of my classes, as Daryll Clark was at the start of the semester. And I ended with the thought that I’d make an exception if I could find a Daryll Clark T-shirt with the words “Buckeyes Team from Penn State” on it.

Well, one has only to ask. A package arrived from my old buddy Michael a few days ago. In it was my shirt, emblazoned with Daryll Clark’s image, along with all the nonsense words.

Now I’m hoping I get invited to a game so I can wear it.

Also this week, I received a present in response to my previous column about my bout with Lyme Disease: a get-well box of rugelach from Heidi, another old pal. To the uninitiated, “rugs” are lovely, buttery flaky rolled-up Jewish pastries.

The confluence of the packages recalled another gift Michael sent me during our undergraduate days: a box of knishes that, sadly, had grown mold in transit. I repackaged them and returned them to the sender with a note: “Thanks, but I’m not very hungry.”

Then there was the Order of the Ugly Shirt. Michael and I and another friend, Butch, began exchanging hideous shirts on our birthdays, always with the price tag left on. Sometimes there was one-upsmanship: You send me an ugly shirt that cost $3.69, I send you an uglier shirt that cost $2.49. Sometimes we regifted, marking the price down from $2.49 to $1.89.

These are among the things that friends are for.

You may reach Russell Frank at rfrank@psu.edu. But hurry. The rugs are going fast.