retrieving first paragraph

I have a table column that stores a few paragraphs of text. I want a preview page that retrieves the first paragraph, and then links to the full text on another page. 1) Can I limit this in the MySQL query? 2) If not, how would I select all text up until the first \n? I so far have ereg("(.){1,}\n", $text, $excerpt); I want the parentheses to capture the text up until the \n in the variable $excerpt, and then stop there. How do I do this with ereg? Thanks, -Lisi