caboblanco

when was the first time you got drunk and how was that experience? Did you enjoy it? did you start drinking from then on?

I drank some of my dads gin when i was 15 or so. I got drunk then played chess with him. I could barely talk but somehow he didn't notice it. It felt great. Even though I loved the feeling I didn't start really abusing alcohol until my late 20s

Ironman9292

Id say the first time I actually got drunk was when I was 16 at a hotel party. I thought it was pretty fun at the time to be honest. I definitely started drinking every chance that I got (weekends mostly) I was always the weekend warrior so to speak with my drinking. (even earned the name tank) It wasn't until around the age of 23 that I really started self medicating with alcohol. I had made a bad couple of choices that have drastically affected my life and I found myself turning to alcohol more and more to cope with them. I can honestly say that I wasn't a full blown alcoholic until my mid to late 20s though. Now im 22 days sober, 32 years old and trying to learn how to function and live without booze. (something I should have learned in my teenage years)

zjw

I was probably about 4 when my aunt and uncle took my brother and I to a concert they neglected to bring any kid friendly beverages so they just gave us each a coors light. I drank the whole thing it wasnt all that tasty tasted like seltzer water to me at the time but i drank it anyhow then at around 5 at my moms wedding the bar tender thought it woudl be funny to spike my shirly temple with gin. I got drunk he laughed everyone else laughed it was all a joke etc.. What did i know.

I cant help but wonder how events like that played into my future misery. It was always just totaly ok my step father always had a fully stocked fridge full of beer ANY activity involved beer with him it would be abnormal to see him drinking much of anything else to me it was Normal for adults to hammer beers endlessly.

zjw

just reading what i just wrote is like a facepalm kinda moment. How insane is it that at htose ages people where giving me booze and exposing me to so much of it.

wakeup call there is nothing normal about activities like that.!

dwtbd

early teens first time blackout but loved it, and then it was every chance I got and if possible to blackout. Spend a good couple of years in a row drinking everyday and passing out while smoking pot daily.
Went through a grown up 'phase' , stopped drinking and smoking pot when newly married and children were young, but started drinking socially and a few years later was drinking almost nightly after everyone was in bed. The last few years the dinking had become almost a chore, remember actually being tired but getting up off the couch to go in my garage and get drunk. Thought about wanted to want to be done, but..
2-3 weeks ago decided , after recognizing the onset of dependence(meaning binge to blackout drinking was now being accompanied by having to have a few hits of whiskey in the am to combat crushing guilt and anxiety) oh and once when trying to quit ago a yr or so ago I thought of the brilliant strategy of smoking pot after a near 20 yr hiatus, which just meant in a week a was drinking beer whiskey and smoking pot nightly. Stopped smoking pot again maybe 6 or so months ago, which lead to heavier drinking, just wasn't as effed up ya know?
Anyway..2-3 weeks ago quit found RR and AVRT and am quit, for good. BTW I liked my last drunk/high just as much as the first, that is the problem (was) heh gotcha AV *******

ChooseSobriety

8 years old :-)

soberhawk

I was about 12 drank with my siblings, they are a little older, we slandered on our parents and their dysfunctional alcoholic marriage.

I could not see the irony in that then – as I can now.

GracieLou

I was 13 and I was camping with the family and a friend of mine came too.

I do not remember where we camped or even why. Our family were not big campers. I remember me and my friend walking around the campground and running into my brother who had hooked up with some kid who was also camping. He had a bottle of liquor. I cannot tell you what kind it was, only that it was amber so whiskey or bourbon. I remember getting very giggly. I also remember the kid saying that I had to watch because the stuff would make me horny and my answer was "well then give me some more".

I don't remember much other than my friend told me she found me sleeping outside of the tent twice and woke me up and got me back in the tent.

I did not get drunk again until I was eighteen and my drinking moved fast. I was having blackouts by nineteen.

Tamerua

I was 20 and a total lightweight. It took a few years of training to get to the binge level that I got to. I wasn't that interested in alcohol.

Soberpotamus

Sixteen And in a car with a bunch of boys! Peach and strawberry wine coolers! I had a blast. They were my friends, no hanky panky going on. We really did have a blast though. And I remember being so dizzy, things were spinning. That was when everything was happy and fun and great... no bad side effects really, well, not until my hangover the next day!

In high school, I drank whenever we could get alcohol, on the weekends, at lake parties... I am from a lake town. So we'd have lake parties at people's houses, bonfires, parties at deserted areas, etc. Those were the places we'd drink. And we'd also drink in vehicles, parking in town... not smart! It was a small town, and that was our fun.

I didn't have a problem until I was 20 and in college, living away from home, my own apartment... that's when the real partying and binge drinking began. By the time I graduated college, I had a pretty serious drinking problem. I drank until I was 27. That year, I decided to quit. I managed to stay sober over a year.

Then, I attempted sobriety again around age 34, the year I married my husband. I stayed sober for eight months.

My final attempt was at age 36, this April. I'm almost five months sober.

silentrun

My brother and I snuck alcohol from my grandma's house. I was 16 he was 15. I threw up. Hated it. Didn't have alcohol again until I was 20. Maybe got drunk 5 times in my 20's. By my 40's it was almost every night.

bigsombrero

Senior prom, I think I must have been 18. I got real goofy off just a few beers, it was pretty obvious it was my first time drunk. I still couldn't really handle the taste at all and would have to take big gulps. I went off to college and was itching to get in with the "drinking crowd" and my second night in the dorms I came home and puked all over the floor. I remember everyone thought it was funny. It never once occurred to me that this was a bad thing.

ForMyGirls

12 years old when I had a couple of friends sleeping over. We got into my parents liquor cabinet. I had gotten slightly buzzed before sneaking a beer or two from the fridge, but had no experience with liquor. Being the dumbazz that I was, I didn't realize that 12 oz or so of liquor did MUCH more to you than a 12 oz can of beer, and drank glasses full of it straight up. I blacked out and wound up sleeping in my own vomit.... Thankfully my Mom found and monitored me so that I didn't drown in it...

Began drinking and smoking weed regularly in highschool. Every weekend, and often times during the week. Graduated highschool, and found the perfect job to pay my way through college... Bartender!!! What better job, right? Flexible hours to schedule classes around, good money, and mucho booze/partying!!! Lol

Pretty much drank every night from that point (18 years old) til this year (40 years old). It's a damn miracle that I've somehow managed to accomplish some pretty good things in life (family, career, etc)... The drinking wound up progressing to the point of threatning to destroy ALL OF IT though!!!

So glad that I'm feeling good about my new chosen path...

LuLu13

I was 11 and on a houseboat in Kentucky. It was a family vacation. My parents were asleep and my older brothers invited me to play poker with them and have a beer, I thought that was so cool. I got drunk, they hid cards and took all my money. They thought it was funny until I said the boat was spinning and I was going to throw up. They hung my head over the front railing and when done let me climb the ladder to the top of the boat where I slept, under the stars in a sleeping bag. Woke up in the baking Kentucky sun with one hell of a hangover and a smart@@@ fisherman honking his horn yelling get up sleepyhead. I managed to get down the ladder and into the kitchen where my mom was starting breakfast. Upon seeing her I burst into tears and yelled "The boys got me drunk last night!" Such a tattle tale, so much for being cool at 11!

Grungehead

14 or 15. Me and 3 other friends all sneaked liquor from our parents on New Year's Eve and we had permission to sleep in my best friend's tree house in his back yard. I got blackout drunk, puked and passed out in the tree house. When I woke up I had frozen vomit on my sleeping bag and they were not there. It got down into the single digits that night and they all went into my BF's house to sleep and left me out there.

Not too good of a start to my drinking career.

TKS

It was probably at a school disco when I was about 15, and we would buy a bottle of 99cent passionfruit flavoured Spumante. I don't really remember my own experience, but I do recall that one kid was on medication that didn't mix well with the booze, and he was throwing up in a phone box. There was a stern public announcement at school the following week on the stupidity of drinking. Goes to show how much attention I paid back then.

Johno1967

I was in senior year at High School and went on a junket with a group of other kids that was interested in going to a University School of Mines. We were lodged in Kalgoorlie-Boulder which had about 50 pubs in a city of about 25,000. Being a mining town with a rough reputation drinking was and is still very much a part of the local culture. The Chamber of Mines and University took us all out for dinner on our last night and put the alcohol on without any limit, despite the fact that none of us were legal age seemed not to matter to them or the Restauranteurs. I hit the lager and then got into the wine and anything else going. At the end of the night I had to be helped on to the school bus and managed to repaint the accommodation with vomit and was a complete blabbering mess. The supervisor was unimpressed but reasonable about it the next morning but remarked maybe I shouldn't drink again.
For some reason I didn't get into the University.
I avoided alcohol for 9 months after that and the next time the same thing happened except I was in the Army and had just posted to my Battalion after Basic Training. The NCO's were far less sympathetic.

bitmap

I was 14. A friend was dating an older guy who thought she was 16 and they had a party when her parents were out of town. After that, I periodically stole from my parents cabinet and then at 15.5 to 18 we started hitting the bars every Friday or Saturday night. I rarely drank for years once I was legal.

TKS

Oh this thread reminds me of how early the wheels really started falling off for me. I was in my late teens, and there was a club that served $1 drinks until 10pm. Of course myself and mates would all buy four each round, drink one only, then go back for four more, for hours beforehand, and by the happy hour cutoff time, we would have a bar table teetering under the weight of the entire surface covered in FULL drinks (bourbon & coke), so we could keep smashing them down until 1AM without paying full price.

Fandy

I drank gin at a slumber party, age 15, got horribly sick from it...the smell still nauseates me to this day.

i don't think threads like this are particularly helpful as they are wishful for "good old days" drinking was "fun".
most kids experiment, but some never stop.