This is a very interesting thread for me. I am just starting yet another attempt at sobriety and this thread has got me thinking about why I started drinking.
I have never had a social life and barely drank at all until I was 20 (I am now 33) and I had a couple of awful episodes at family gatherings where I got terribly drunk, probably as drunk as I have ever been since. For whatever reason these incidents which were within a few months of each other in my 21st year, didnt put me off.
Even though I lived at home with my mom I started buying cider on the way home from work once or twice a week, only amounted to 3 or 4 pints each time. There wasnt any reason I can think of for doing it at the time, I wasnt particularly unhappy and no great situational change occured. I still cant explain it.
Anyway, one thing led to another and it became a daily thing to buy the cider, then the amounts each day would increase. By the time I was 25 I moved out and now live on my own. Since then my contact with my mother decreased as visiting her meant I wouldnt drink, as she was becoming concerned. As the years have gone by my life has become centred around alcohol.
I visit my mother once a week- if I am not so hungover it is impossible- I have shut myself off from every other member of my family, I drink literallly all the time I am not at work ( how I kept my job I dont know), even if I wake at 6am I will start drinking, I dont open the curtains in my house anymore, I am seriously overweight, I am a mess...
There are many more examples I could go into to illustrate the way the years have unfolded for me which I wont go in to, but all this started just by simply trying alcohol in the first place.
I started drinking and I got hooked. I think it is that simple.