LFCNZ

Just curious, my family are not very big drinkers and through my teen years I hardly drank at all due to being introverted and not socialising much at all and my distraction was playing football.

As I got older and started to realise I didn't want to be alone for ever and I needed to start socialising more I used alcohol to help bring me out of my shell as it were and really that's where it all started.

To have a good time at all socially I usually had to be half cut, otherwise my social anxieties just crippled me!!

I still use drinking now to cope with social issues and boredom.

Dee74

Welcome LFCNZ...kia ora even

I drank to escape...who I was, feelings good and bad, pain both physical and mental, boredom....in the end I drank for anything really.

It feels really good to be free - glad you've joined us

Spacegoat

To escape from problems in the home mainly. Anxiety. Seemed to work.

It's a long time ago now. But that was why I first started getting F'd up on it

jaynie04

I drank to get to sleep for a while.
I drank because I didn't know how to turn off my mind.
I drank because I was a people pleaser and ran myself ragged.
I drank because I often didn't want to be where I was.

Now..
I have relearned how to sleep. A deep cleansing sleep without a 2am sweaty wakeup.
I take the time to calm my mind as needed.
I have found boundaries and learned to say no, and strangely most of my relationships are better for it.
And I have refigured my life so that my outsides usually match my insides.

Midton

I got my driving license at 17 and was serious about sport. I was also quite vain and my father was a daily drinker whom I never wanted to turn out like. So I never drank but used to go to discos and get drunk on the atmosphere, seriously.

I went to uni abroad at 19 and with no car started drinking. But most young people do.

In my 30s and living abroad and isolated I consciously decided to drink daily to relieve the stress and help me escape. I was totally ignorant of the consequences. I realised this wasn't healthy and luckily could cut back or rather swap it for weekend binge drinking. And that is what brought me here.

JeffreyAK

Interestingly, my parents never, ever drank. I started when I was an introverted teen, I guess out of curiosity and wanting to fit in with the budding musician crowd I was in. I didn't really like alcohol much at the time, and preferred to smoke weed - that was my favorite escape from what I looked at as an oppressive home life and a mean antisocial father. But I kept drinking through high school, a lot in college, then almost never at all in graduate school (quit all other drugs at that time). I binge drank fairly regularly for years, but alcohol didn't become a real problem until I was around 40. I guess we all have different stories, but often with some common themes - escape is a big one.

MelindaFlowers

At first, it was incredibly relaxing and seemed to make EVERYTHING so much more fun. It seemed to enhance every experience, like living on a higher plane. At first it felt like it opened me up. I was talkative, in good humor. If I was sad or worried it took away the worry that night.

At first it made me sleep like a baby. Back then, I was completely satisfied with three or four drinks. Three to four gave me an amazing buzz, like I was floating.

It was truly like finding out a magic secret to dealing with life.

Oh boy did all of that change.......................

Spacegoat

Interesting what you say there Jeff. I'm sure we all started out of curiosity somehow, mixed with peer pressure etc. I was given my first drink at home actually even though they didn't drink that heavily or often.

I preferred smoking hash and weed with the lads over drink. I kinda viewed my home life as oppressive in a personal sense, I enjoyed life outside of it but actually it was very abusive. And still (kinda) is. But as per the question…

Why I started binge drinking in my early teens was definitely to deal with a mixture of anxiety, anger, and frustration that would be building all week and I had no answer for (domestic violence etc). And usually I would wake up in trouble.

Didn't start drinking every day until my early 20's. I was ignorant of any consequences, hey I wasn't getting arrested so how bad could it be. I was self medicating by then. Stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia. PTSD maybe. Great fun altogether…

ScottFromWI

I started experimenting with alcohol around age 13 or so. I don't know why but looking back I drank to get drunk even way back then I think...the social aspect was secondary.

Iconoclastic

To answer your title question, I FIRST drank for social reasons. I lived in a drinking culture, just about everyone I knew drank, so it was a cultural tradition. Secondly, after I had my first drink, I very much liked the effect, how I felt and had another. Next drinking event, as there were many others, I drank due to tolerance, my drinking amounts increased in order to recapture the original effect experience.

MelindaFlowers

Tolerance truly is the cornerstone of addiction. When you can feel pretty normal after consuming an amount of a substance that could land others in the hospital.

SoberRunner

The first time I drank was my senior year of high school. A teammate had a keg party and I ended up getting blackout drunk off of beer. I didn't even like beer--I still don't like it--but I drank so much beer I ended up throwing up and blacking out. That was the last time I had more than a sip of beer...

After HS, the next time I drank/got drunk was my freshman year of college. I played college sports so there were always parties to go to and we'd always get free drinks when we went to clubs/bars. I never thought I drank a lot (because I only went out 1-2 times per week) but my coach would continue to tell me he's worried I'm an alcoholic because I drink too much when I do drink.

Only if I would have listened to him... Still, I only drink 1-2 times per week but when I do drink, it's entirely too much and I've blacked out more times than I can count--so, it's definitely time for me to live a sober life!

suicideseason

Sisterbobby

I started drinking when I was 15 years old. socializing

Lenina

Because I couldn't sleep. Everyone kept telling me to have a "few drinks" and I would sleep. Brandy was recommended. yuck. Sherry, double yuck. Cheap, sweet white wine over ice was tolerable. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn't. But I kept trying. I didnt like the sleeping pills or the tranquilzers.

Before that I'd had drinks at parties but they made me throw up and I didn't like that.

I drank fast and drank to pass out and that passed for sleep. I looked like hell the next day felt even worse. To this very day nothing will convince me if I'd only been able to sleep I would not have turned to alcohol. Which, gentle readers, is a very poor sleep aid and an even worse pain reliever. But this was the early 70's and not much was available.

I was able to quit on my own for various periods of time, years even. But what was really scary? my body/mind didn't reset, it carried on like I'd never stopped at all. Even after eleven years. This is the nature of the disease. progressive. Baffling. Cunning. And truly sucky.

Today, I know it's not a choice. It's only a trick, a delusion.

lucky I survived.

Love from Lenina

neferkamichael

Peer pressure, wanting to fit in. :egypt;

SDH73

In my 20s I actually romanticized the vision of the alcoholic musician. Something to aspire to. So I drank a lot. At that age I was able to bounce back from my hangovers pretty quickly and managed to live a relatively productive life. In my early 30s things started shifting toward less music, more drinking, as the hangovers would leave me unable to practice. For a few years in my 30s I did absolutely no music. When I started to play again I realized that drinking like that and being musically active were not both going to be possible. One or the other.

I learned early in my performing career that a couple of beers would loosen me up on stage. Without that lubricant I was stiff and nervous. I didn't really like beer, but I would rush through the first 2 or so in order to have more "stage presence".

Oh, and welcome LFCNZ!

kinzoku

I drank because it made me not Kinzoku. Getting sober is about taking control of who Kinzoku is instead of hiding.

From the very first time I got drunk it was about escaping to a place where I could feel what I thought was happy and normal, which I am now learning was not happy or normal (it soon became apparent to others that this was the case) but hiding from my emotions and self.

Gottalife

I was nine the first time I got slightly drunk. It was a family wedding and my sister and I had free access to the bar. We liked the Babycham.

It felt good, I had a good time. From that day on I always associated booze with a good time. Whenever I drank, the sole intention was to have some fun. Imagine the despair when I drank to have a good time and end the night in a cell..how did that happen? Over and over. All I wanted was to have some fun, but the feeling I got in those earlier days became elusive. Try as I might I couldn't get that feeling back.

But I kept trying, hoping against hope that my downhill slide was caused by something other than alcoholism. At deaths door, hopeless and beaten, I finally realised I needed help. I knew I was very ill, but it was some time before I saw that alcohol was part of the problem.

Berrybean

STARTED drinking??

I started doing it because I was curious. I carried on doing it because I liked the feeling it gave me. Maybe alcohol and drinking seemed 'normal' to me as my dad was a daily drinker. But then, he never drank to blackout which is what I did from early on.

I would like to be able to say it was to help me cope with life and feelings and get to sleep - but in all honesty, for me, I think that came much later once I had enough experience of drinking to know who alcohol was capable of. And I don't think I even realised that's what I was doing at the time. It was more that once the alcohol was gone I realised all those things that it 'helped' with as I had to find a different way of dealing with them.

Nope. I drank because I chose to. I wanted to. I loved feeling drunk. I loved the feeling of not giving a s**t about anything. I loved pressing the 'F**k It' switch on all my responsibilities. As described by Mickey Bush: I loved the way it turned me from a waddling nerdy Duck to an Eagle circling its prey; and made me feel 'Prettier; Wittier; and Tittier'.