underage drinking

[CAPTAINZING2000]

Just curious

How many started drinking underage on here?

I started at an early age. Peer pressure plays a big role in many of us in our ealy drinking.



Later on, it didn't seem to matter much since, I spent a lot of time drinking alone any way!!

[Sugah]

The first time I remember being intoxicated, I was six. I don't remember all of it -- it was also my first blackout. I was a weekend drunk by the age of 9. So, at 34 when I got sober, I'd been drinking alcoholically for twenty-five years.

Those who drink before the age of 15 are 4 to 5 times more likely to become alcoholics than those who don't drink until they're "legal." I grew up in a rural area where it wasn't unusual for kids to be given quantities of alcohol in the home at a young age. I've spoken at three town hall meetings on the topic of underage drinking to impress upon parents that this is not okay and harmless.

I don't think it's my parents' fault that I'm alcoholic, nor do I think that drinking young made me alcoholic--though if underage drinking was less acceptable in my home and community, I may not have gotten the kick start that I did.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

[CAPTAINZING2000]

I used to help the area farmers. We'd put up hay for them. I always ran with kids older then me. We'd put up hay and go to a rural cafe that sold alcohol. The old guy never carded us at all. I started getting served at 15

[Tommyh]

i started drinking when I was 13 or 14
I loved the effect booze gave me then.I could not wait until the weekend so we could get more.

[Lily]

My first drink was at 10 on a dare and i got drunk. I started drinking at around 13 regularily.

[CarolD]

I did drink underage....but it was quite social....after high school
dances. we piled in cars and went to Cairo Ill.
where the nightclubs had strippers and no one asked your age
I do remember being drunk once and throwing up ruining my formal.

Peer pressure? No...I liked feeling sophisticated.
A fantasy ..for sure!

Married at 17...was an Army wife at 19
so again...social drinking at post dances
over weekly card games
We only bought a bottle if we were entertaining.

I was then drinking Scotch ..leaving behind
the sweet fancy mixed drinks.

By 21...legal was no big deal.
I had never drank by myself...or been to a bar without a guy.

Do I think my underage drinking was a factor in
my eventual slide into alcoholism? No I do not.
That happened decades after my first drink at 14.

[dgillz]

By 15 I tried it, by 18 I was getting drunk whenever I could.

[CAPTAINZING2000]

Darn, you were in IL. ???

[lizw]

At 13 I had my first drink and drank as often as I could following that. By the time I was 15 I was drinking in bars and by 19 I was in treatment.

In my country the legal drinking age then was 20.

I started attending AA before I was even old enough to be drinking legally so you could even say the only legal drink I have ever had in my life was a slip, as my last drink was a few months before my 21st birthday and I'd been sober in AA for about a year then.

[Tazman53]

I was about 11 when I had my first beer/beers, there were 3 of us and I drank 4 out of the 6 pack.... I did not like the taste, but for some reason I knew I was having a life changing experience!!!! I had found the ANSWER! Took me about 40 years to find the SOLUTION for the ANSWER!!!!

[Rusty Zipper]

[odaat]

I got drunk as a one off at about 6, but didn't really have any understanding of it, so didn't repeat it. I enjoyed it though, fell asleep under a table at a picnic.

First deliberate drink/drunk was when I was 11 or 12. Started drinking whenever I could after that, by the time I was 13 I was drinking most days. Started blacking out at around 13.

It wasn't peer pressure that led me to drink, I had one drink at a social event and it helped to numb the pain I was in, so I continued to seek out that numbness.

When I was 17 I started drinking in the mornings.

Went to my first meeting when I was 19.

I think I managed to get into recovery so young because my Mum is a recovering alcoholic. I was 14 when I woke up with some AA literature under my pillow. Took a while to action it, but I knew where to go as soon as I hit rock bottom.

[zoomer]

I was 12 at a friend's house on New Years Eve. Loved the buzz and drank when ever I could as a teenager. Thought I was grown up at 21 and tried to drink everyday. First time someone knoticed I was not a normal drinker was at 24. Went to my first rehab at 25. Now at 45 I have 4 and a half years sober and plan to stay that way one day at a time.

[Astro]

I took my first drinks around 13 or 14, sips of my parents ever-present beers, then I started helping myself to wine and hard liquor when they weren't watching. At 16 I took a job at a restaurant and became a daily drinker, it was easy to help myself to anything I wanted from the bar and off tables.

At 17 I started hiding bottles in my bedroom, the first time my Mom found one I think I knew I had a problem with alcohol (and naturally denied it), but it was 23 years more before I did something about it.

Drinking was a lot of fun for many years, but it sure didn't end that way.

[findingout]

First time, 15 years old, at a friends house, drank enough straight vodka and rum to black out, pass out, and throw up ( not necessarily in that order). Continued to drink for the next 25 years even though one or more of those three things was often the result.

I don't know how much of it was peer pressure and how much of it was that heavy drinking was normal in my family. We didn't have problems, we drank.

[BeyondBSC]

I brag about making martinis for my grandfather and sipping every other drink (he had 8 a day) while on vacation when I was 9. I am still a vodka girl, although moderation is the key for me…not that I am always successful. I have two boys, 16 and 12, a long family history, a long in-law family history…I have put it threw my kids heads that drinking is the worse step to take in your life.

[MCH]

12 or 13 for me and I could be relax and be spontaneous for the first time in my life. I could laugh and play right along with the rest of them and I was hooked. Everything fell into place that night and every waking moment after that I spent dreaming about alcohol and planning my next drunk. I never crossed any lines, I was the real deal right off the bat. I loved the stuff. I drank most weekends, some evenings, and even though life was painful and rocky between drunks, the thought that my next one was just a few days away got me through. I knew that I'd do anything for alcohol.

[CAPTAINZING2000]

How sad it is to think of how, the drinking started.

It wasn't taking a drink, it was taking a drunk.

Dares of who can drink the most etc.


I think, the spewing everything inside my intestines should have been a warning that, drinking to extremes isn't good

[MCH]

Absosutely - I felt sorry for the girls at school who didn't drink the way I did, they were missing out. I felt so cool when I could hold just as much or more than the boys I joined in the drinking games with. But hey, now I look at it as a blessing, it put me in touch with this program and God. Had I not been alcoholic I never would have found this way of life. And its a hummer. All those people I thought I was so far behind at the end of my drinking, perhaps I've bypassed, at least in understanding. I know I have an understanding and compassion for the weak of the world that I would have missed out on, and that's who I am today, thanks to this program, and thus, my alcoholism.

[CAPTAINZING2000]

There was a little German town not too far from me. The girls would come by with beer and have me drive their car and we'd ride around and drink. They could drink as much if, not more then me !!

[123bubblegum123]

I started at 11, but I've always been more into drugs. I think alcohol is the gateway drug, not weed!

[bob_sapp]

I had my first drink at 13. I agree, it is definitely a gateway drug. I think it's the worst drug too. I feel like I have lost my entire generation to alcoholism, and the worst thing is that it's not just accepted by society, it's encouraged.

[CAPTAINZING2000]

Originally Posted by bob_sapp

and the worst thing is that it's not just accepted by society, it's encouraged.

I agree 100% on that

[bob_sapp]

Originally Posted by CAPTAINZING2000

I agree 100% on that

Try going to university nowadays. They do everything but put a gun to your head and force you to drink.

[CAPTAINZING2000]

I'd hoped that the tragic deaths of several students to alcohol poisoning the past decade, would help in promoting more awareness to this problem.

Nothing worse then, young men and women away from home for the first time with the peer pressures to fit in with other students.