Zini

I ask this question because someone mentioned at my AA meeting the other day how from the first time he drank as a teenager, he was drinking like an alcoholic.

That got me to thinking about the first time I ever drank. I was 16, so I started a little later than most around me. I drank half a bottle of tequila and a few shots of vodka and blacked out within twenty minutes or so. There was a whole night I don't remember, in which I was passed out on a parking lot floor, with my friends continuing to drink and play music around me. They found the whole thing slightly hilarious. I woke up with my hair dreadlocked in vomit in my friend's bed, and to this day I don't know where my shoes from that night ended up. (Steel-toed doctor martens. God how I mourned them.) No one else knows either. Looking back, I'm lucky I didn't die of alcohol poisoning right then and there.

I didn't drink again after that for a couple of years.

Then, in university, at the age of 18, I started drinking again. I remember one incident in which I woke up with dried blood in my hair: I'd fallen through the gap between the seat and the table at a fast food place and hit my head hard on the back of the chair. This only came to me in greyout flashbacks the next day.

I drank hard throughout my twenties, even going to work once completely drunk after a night spent drinking vodka with a friend until 8 am. But it was a job I hated and I thought it was funny, pulling a fast one over the heads of the powers that be. I never saw a problem with my drinking in my twenties because EVERYONE around me was drinking to excess. It just seemed like a rite of passage, something I would grow out of. People told stories of their drunken exploits like they were badges of honor, earned on the road to real adulthood. It was easy to overlook alcoholic behavior, to see it as something normal, something that made you interesting and unconventional and not bound to the straight-laced rules of society. Add to that the fact that I had a lot more stamina, both for all-night parties and for getting through hangovers the next day.

And some people did grow out of it, beginning to complain, in their 30s, about how their bodies couldn't take the hangovers anymore, how they couldn't get by on a few hours of poor sleep a night. So they just stopped drinking, or cut back to a couple of glasses of wine with dinner a week.

Except I couldn't and didn't stop. So it wasn't until I hit my thirties that I became aware of a problem, even though I had been drinking alcoholically all along. My disease definitely progressed, but the symptoms were there all along, for anyone who knew how and where to look.

And so, in hindsight, because hindsight is 20/20, what was a moment or incident early on that seems now like clear evidence you were heading for the wall all along?

Zencat

I had been drinking for a quite a few years before I noticed I needed a morning wake-me-up to settle my 'nerves'. I was about 25 then. It kinda dawned on me wile sitting in a bar before work that I was doing what this older guy next to me was doing. He was drinking to steady his 'nerves' too. His hand was shaking really bad, but after a few drinks he was good to go. I thought to my self wow, I used to jokingly say I was an alcoholic, now I know I am drinking like an alcoholic.

Krang

I started drinking before leaving the house, be it school, work, family events, you name it.

least

Waking up with the shakes so bad I couldn't have my usual coffee but started drinking wine instead. Would drink one or two or three glasses, then pass out until mid afternoon. Woke up with the shakes again, and drank again... I knew then that I was in deep trouble.

JTele

When the checkout clerk at the liquor store started saying "see ya tomorrow!"

CarolD

I don't know what drink on which day slid me into alcoholism....

I consider when I continued to drink ..after alcohol had
turned me into a woman I detested....

Yes...I was then an active alcoholic.

Grateful to say God and AA have changed me into a non drinker

doggonecarl

The very first time I got drunk, I loved it. Red flag. The second time I got drunk I got passed-out-carried-home-in-the-arms-of-my-friends drunk. Choke-on-my-own-vomit drunk. But that didn't stop me. Thirty five years later...here I am. Go figure.

Zube

Good question...

When did I go from being a cucumber to a pickle?

Not sure when...
Kind of like when you have a headache and take an aspirin...not sure when the headache went away, you just know it's gone.

I do recall one day before I stopped that I could not for the life of me remember the last day that I did NOT drink. That was spooky.

I did begin to question myself every Saturday and Sunday morning around 9am when I'd roll out of bed and walk directly to the fridge for a cold beer.

I vividly remember the first day I stopped drinking, however.

Zube

LaFemme

If you are talking the first sign I had a problem I would say:

When I was 21, and while living in Italy found out my mother had been in surgery...I was far from home and shook up and I remember drinking a Gin and Tonic really fast to deal with it. That was a warning.

When I was 25 and living in Asia and on nights when I didn't have anything else to do, getting a couple of bottles of wine to drink as something to do, an activity. That was a warning.

At what point did I slide off the scale from Problem Drinker to full blown alcoholic? I think when I moved to DC into my own place and started drinking at all hours of the day....ironically, this was also when I started trying to quit.

My first drink was 18, when I bought for some people I wanted to be friends with and had a little too much Southern Comfort...but I didn't get sick and didn't get overly sloshed all things considered.

nandm

When I was 15 and just starting my drinking career. I did not realize it then but it is not normal to be counting the number of beers we had to go around between the group I was drinking with to not only make sure I got my fair share but in hopes that someone else would not drink all theirs so I could have it. I can only say is it progressed from there. At that point I had a compulsion to drink alcohol.

Now if you are asking when did I cross the line into full blown alcoholism then that answer is entirely different. I crossed the line into needing to drink to live somewhere around 27 years old. That is when I started having the obsession about alcohol.

The difference between compulsion and obsession is similar to someone walking down the street and sees a can...with compulsion they find they have the desire to kick the can and they do but go on doing their thing afterwards. Someone with an obsession sees the can, kicks it, then goes all over town trying to find cans to kick.

dingding

I loved drinking from the firs time i did it. 3 cans of tennents super in Pontins age 15.
Whe in uni my drinking was something to be admired. when i started working it got in the way of my drinking. now that i am married with three children my drinking should have changed. It didnt. still 10 pints down the pub with friends. It was time to stop.

elfgirl

With a strong family history of alcoholism, I think my mom wanted us to grow up with a "normal" view of alcohol. So from the time we were 14 or 15, we'd have a glass of wine with dinner on Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. About 16 or 17 we could occasionally have a beer on weekends, that kind of thing. I remember when I was 16, I got stood up for prom which happened to be on my birthday which happens to be very close to mother's day. Since I was supposed to be gone all night my mom and grandma made plans to go to a musical, so I ended up sitting at home, alone on my birthday, devastated that I wasn't going to prom... So I grabbed a bottle of bourbon out of the cabinet, poured a glass, and watered the bottle. I got blackout drunk and peed my bed.

Warning sign much?

By the time I was 17 I had decided I didn't like smoking pot because it made me "stupid" so I would drive all the stoners around as long as they brought me beer. I regularly got blackout drunk, frequently couldn't remember driving home, sometimes had to take 2-3 shots at getting the car in the garage. How my mom didn't notice this I have no idea- willful ignorance maybe? But again, warning signs much?

When I was 17.5 my mom told me to quit seeing my much-older coke dealer boyfriend or move in with him. So I moved in with him. In retrospect I'm not entirely sure how I survived the mix of cocaine, prescription opiates, and alcohol. I dropped incredible amounts of weight and everyone was "worried" about me. Blacking out was so common it didn't feel like it shouldn't be happening. Everyone around me was addicted to something and it was just normal life. Yeah.

The thing is, I got so much better after I left my ex that I really thought everything was okay and I didn't think of myself as an alcoholic. Problem drinker, sure, but alcoholic? Not so much... I was "under control" and successful in life with a good job, good boyfriend, new house. I also drank at least a 6-pack a night and blacked out occasionally but again- it was not a problem, happens to everybody. Right?

This is getting long so I'm just going to close by saying when I look back over my life I see enormous red flags everywhere, the whole way through, and I wish someone had grabbed me at 16 and shaken me and said THIS IS A PROBLEM!!! I've spent most of the last decade in denial while I attempted moderation, and I feel like my blinders are finally- reluctantly- coming off. So even though I wasn't at a really terrible place when I decided enough is enough and found SR, I think I have always-and-forever been an alcoholic. I've just been an incredibly lucky alcoholic and didn't do as much damage as I could have, either to myself or to others.

Mark75

It wasn't until I stopped having a say in whether I would drink... I just did, drink, and kept on.... It happened after a lifetime of heavy/binge drinking... I was in my late 40's, I guess. It wasn't the amount or the time of day or any other external quality... it was the day, or the days, I became powerless.

Artoro

The first time I drank (at 15) I cried like a baby the whole night because I liked it so much. I guess it was all downhill from there...

SSIL75

I always wanted to drink the next day. My urge to drink was greater the more hungover I was. That was from the very first time I got drunk. All my friends would be like 'man I'm sick.. I'm going to bed early tonight", but not me.

smacked

Every time I drank, I drank to get drunk.. as far back as I can remember. That's a problem, and I'm glad to be done with that destructive behavior.

recycle

I was about 10, and my uncle gave me a small glass at a holiday dinner. I liked it and I did not understand why I could not have more.

It was not a "problem" until decades later, but from that first taste I liked it, I liked being buzzed, and I wanted more of it.

Mcribb

I was miserable without drinking no one should be that miserable.

Scolova

When I was young I use to walk in my sleep... or so I was told.
Many years later I figured out that if I am stressed out, working 14+ hours a day and also try to slam down the beers:
I wake up late for work, nude (later find underwear and slippers in hallway), step out of bed and into a puddle of water (which turns out to be my own urine), then realize the urine covers almost half of the bed... Even after giving myself the best shower I could and rushing to work, I was told I smelled like a bar's restroom, then let go.
Today I don't blame them, plus it took 3 days to air out that mattress.

WatchTheSky

Interesting question! I was a "love at first sight" alcoholic. Had my first glass of champagne when I was 15 and ran around the wedding reception trying to find a way to get more without my family noticing. The first sign of alcoholic drinking, I guess, was when I was 16. I was really upset and had just purchased drinks for an upcoming sleepover with a friend. I was home alone, so I sat on the kitchen floor drinking alone. I felt better and knew I was in love. I didn't drink regularly until my first week at college, when I became immediately known for my frequent binge drinking. I think I've been an alcoholic my whole life. It just took those first drinks to trigger it!