MaxxPower

Don't know if this has ever been posted, i'm posting anyway.

I remember being around 11-12 years old, having a Beer bottle collection on my large dresser in my bedroom. The bottles had to be in immaculate shape to make the team. It was like a shrine! Also, collected anything Red Dog Beer related. Thinking back, I was fascinated at watching adults drink too...
That cant be normal! haha

Did you do anything like this?

Treerat66

Draining empty beer bottles from a crate at the tender age of two

Jsober

Sipping beers when they were left unattended. Idolizing adults when they drank. Believing beer commercials were reality and anticipating the day that would be me.

Hawks

Watched my Dad have a good time with booze, and couldn't wait to try it.

Beer can collection around the same age.

Mid teens, beer posters all over my bedroom walls.

Wore beer branded clothing all the time.

Just loved everything about it.

The labels, the history, the brewing and distilling techniques.

I even loved the smell of a bar / pub on a Sunday morning after a big Saturday night. (which made most people wanna throw up)

It was like the smell of fresh coffee or a roast meal in the oven.

Smelled like "home"

Few warning signs there I guess..... Lol

MelindaFlowers

I remember sipping (literally like an ounce) of my parents wine and pretending to be tipsy, like it made me feel grown up. First drunk was at 19.

Kllme

None, only drank underage once.

Only drank in college when going out. Maybe once a week.

I am an alcoholic because I have problems with anxiety and my Dad and his Dad and uncles drank alot but for the most part kept it away from me.

I am an easy diagnosis but Dr's are too stupid to realize it.

zjw

Same story here. I also liked to swipe them now and then from the fridge. My step father always made me deliver and open them for him occaisionaly i'd shake them up and allow him to open them.

Growing up to me it was more normal to drink beer each day then water. At least thats how I saw things with my step father. You did anything and it involved drinking beer. Beer was a must have with him. That was totally normal behavior to me.

Nevertheless

I was pretty much the opposite. My dad was a beer drinker,and I didn't like the smell or taste of it. I never really paid a whole lot of attention to that sort of thing,until around the time I became a teenager.
Then I found out smokin dope,and catchin a buzz was the kool thing to do. I was 16 when we got a bunch of beer,and after about 3 of them I was hooked.
I didn't stop till I was almost 50.
Fred

alphaomega

I would hurry up and drink as much as I could when she stumbled to the bathroom, of whatever was in mommys glass that was making her crazy.

Then I'd go to sleep.

I was 4.

gaffo

When I was a teenager the drinking age in Florida was 18, which really does make a huge difference. An 18 yr old will buy beer for a 16 yr old who will share with a 14 yr old. A 21+ yr old generally wants nothing to do with getting booze for teenagers. I could drink everyone under the table and never ever puke and almost never get a hangover. PBR was $6 a case most of the time. Virtually everyone I knew drank. Weed was the evil thing and I didn't even like that. No one cared about a fifteen year old pouring Everclear in his Gatorade or sharing a case of brew with his buddies. I knew I was an alcoholic by the time I was nineteen.

Aellyce

There is some scientific research on the development of alcoholism suggesting that the people who enjoy their very first drinking experience a lot are more likely to develop alcoholism later. Many people don't like the effects of alcohol at all when they try it for the first few times, and they drink again mostly because it's a social habit.

I don't quite recall my very first drink, but remember my first episode of getting drunk vividly. I was ~13 and I drank a bottle of liquor with a friend in a park, in the middle of the day. Look at even the condition of doing it... And I remember it being very enjoyable and euphoric. I went home later that afternoon fabulously drunk, and scared the *** out of my parents, who very rarely drank and never used any drug, did not even smoke in their lives... I did not develop a drinking problem until my early 30's, but I know in a few ways that the "seed" of addiction has always been there.

SoberLeigh

Oh, dear AO; that is simply heartbreaking.

Ryno03272009

Definitely was all about wearing clothes, having patches, stickers, posters etc about beer, cigarettes and weed when i was a young teen. I remember in highschool wearing a budweiser hat on my football team bus on the way to a game and my friend had his Marlborough hat on near me. My coach looked at him and said "what the F**k are you doing wearing a tobacco product hat on my bus?! Dont you know that ***** bad for you?!" Funny thing was Coach didnt say anything to me about my budweiser cap lol And when I was in college (of age) i had "the wall" which consisted of hundreds of labels i peeled off of the many varieties of beers id tried and stuck to "the wall."

Turtle82

I was the opposite. Sounds of my drunk dad beating my mother or watching her guide him as he crawled across the floor to bed or having to clean up his puke didn't glamorize alcohol at all. However, attending a Christmas party where I sat next to a tray of rum ball refrigerator cookies and eating too many gave me my own first drunk. Only weeks later, I partied with school friends and drank straight from the whiskey bottle to black out. That would have been a red flag if I knew anything about alcoholism then. Memories of my dad kept me in denial about my own alcoholism for many years.... no way I was like him in my mind. After I attended my first AA meeting and read pamphlets from the walls there, I learned what the real tell-tale signs were and the light-bulbs started coming on.

DarkDespair

Have to say that I was the opposite as well. Remember being like 7 or 8 years old and noticing that adults drank beer all the time, at every possible gathering or event. My dad (not an alcoholic) liked his couple of beers as well. So I sometimes had a sip here and there. Didn't like it at all and couldn't understand how nearly every grown up I saw would drink it.

First drunk experience at 13 or 14, then I got it. Was all about the warm feeling it provided, leaving behind your worries. So I had to get accustomed to the taste, but once I liked that buzz, the taste didn't matter anyway.

huntingtontx

I was 13 and had a lot of trouble sleeping. My doctor told my mom to give me a glass of wine at bedtime. I still associate drinking and sleeping. I have switched to herbal tea, but I think wine at an early age was not a good choice. I also could not wait to be old enough to go into a bar. After I grew up, I did not like bars.

ardy

Little girl loved her Pop and Grand Dads and Uncles to bit.. someone left a open brown beer bottle on the ground .. picked it up took a sip it had a cig butt in it.. I was a very sick little girl.. Grand Mothers had a fit. the men never left an open bottle around again.. but I do remember the laughter click of the glasses and well the mess in the morning.. always helpped Mom clean up after a party.. when I was a teen had friends that always seemed to have bad hurts from drinking.. I had access to barrels of wine and beer in the basement.. never over did but it had to be tasted every so often.. College my friend Linda P and I went to the Tap on Sat Nights.. 1 small beer each and a pizza one night we were sick so bad.. my Pop stayed with us in the bathroom he thought we had over done.. nope Food Posiening ahhahahahaha took a week to get better.. I did not start to drink badly untill my divorce in 1980-1995... to muddle time.. to leave the world behind.. to hide from all the problems ... to sleep just lay on the bed and sleep... my oldest son was in college I got sick at work the flu ... tut tut people... one of his buddies came and got me .. took me back to their flat.. maybe one young man said all she needs is a little gold sch never spell it right.. the first sip was like heaven.. felt a tiny bit better.. then after 6 hours. and several just giving me a tiny bit more .. they found me playing in the water in the bathroom Yaahoooooo and someone was crying Ivan is going to be so pissed We killed his Mom.. they put me in the bedroom dropped me like an old car on the bed.. and covered me up.. woke up the next morning right as rain...mm in the process I gave the flu to 15 of his budddies. last time any of them helped me when I was sick. hahaaha. one of my best stories.. did any of them do anything not correct Nope they all Loved Ivan's Momma .. she cooks great listens to all the crap .. and tells the truth.. wish she was my Mom.. love them all very much.. but they over did badly. ahahahah

GracieLou

I never obsessed or romanticized alcohol as a small child. My parents were not big drinkers. Both were social drinkers and the only time there was really any booze in the house was on the holidays. There was still hard liquor left over from one Christmas to next.

I was allowed to have sips of my mothers drink on Christmas which was usually a Brandy Alexander. She would make a blender of it. I LOVED that stuff. It was like a special milkshake that made you warm instead of cold. She always made it with vanilla ice cream.

I also had sips of beer or champagne here an there but none of it effected me very much. I never stole from the liquor cabinet or stole beers and took them to my room. Looking back there was plenty of opportunity to do that, I just didn't think of it.

My first drunk was at 13 on a camping trip. It was not a holiday and there were no parents watching us. It was straight whiskey and I drank like an alcoholic. My mother did know I drank but because I was with my brother who was also drinking she didn't do much. She just told me she knew and not to do it again. I think if she punished me should would have had to punish him and he was the golden child. He always got a pass.

Interesting enough that was about the same time my brothers alcoholism came to a head and all focus was on him. Juvenile detention, treatment centers, counseling and al-anon. Drinking was not even on my radar, then his death also kept me away from alcohol.

As a teenage when all my friends were drinking and smoking pot I was reading books in isolation. I didn't want anything to do with that. The pain of my brothers death plus the family pretty much falling apart after hurt to much to join in with all that. If I had drank, I think the switch would have flipped then but I didn't drink. It would have been the perfect escape.

I never got drunk again until I was 18/19 and WHAM, the off switch was broken. That was the beginning of the end. From then on I drank alcoholically and it progressed to drinking every day until I quit.

The only time I didn't drink in all those years was the two times I was pregnant but I wanted to drink. If I had not had children I think my alcoholism would have progressed much faster then it did cause I was on a roll and that was the only thing that slowed it down.

ScottFromWI

My parents actually have a photo of me taking a drink of my dad's beer when I was a toddler, it was a conversation piece for many years. I started siphoning off small amounts from each liquor bottle and mixing it up into a bike water bottle with orange juice when I was around 13 or 14, we'd ride our bikes around ( a couple of my friends would do the same thing ). Around 15 or 16 high school beer parties started and I was welcomed into the "cool kid" crowd because of my capacity to drink a lot. By 17 or so my parents were fine with me having some of my dad's beer at home because they said they'd rather have me drink there than being out getting in trouble. Then college came and it was on.

Looking back, I don't blame my parents at all. My dad still drinks beer every day to this day, but he only has 1 or 2. He never had a problem with control like me. I could have seen it coming certainly, but I didn't. I do hope that my sobriety will teach my kids to be more careful around alchohol, because I know they will all try it at some point. But I honestly don't think I have any control over whether they become alcoholics or not, no one really knows why anyone becomes one. I hope they don't.

heartcore

This has to do with my future self as addict, rather than alcoholic, but I do remember being about 13 years old and "practicing" doing lines off a mirror using a straw - with Sweet and Low. I actually deliberately practiced this, because I KNEW that I would eventually do this, and had an irrational terror that I would blow out rather than in, shaming myself in front of the imagined "others."

I remember the sickly-sweet Sweet and Low drip lasting well into the next day...

Did I know about it from movies? When I look back, I don't remember ever having seen a real person do lines at that point. How was I so sure that this was a life skill which I needed to develop?

I grew up with an alcoholic mother, whose words were cruel when she was drunk. It was scary and unattractive and unwelcoming. Barring some experimental drunkenness as a teenager, I stayed away from alcohol until my early 30s. I was clean and sober through my twenties, but the "sober" was just an NA requirement, it didn't really have relevance to my core recovery.