Lollipop

I cant tell you when my first drink was.......because I was so young but I can tell you that for as long as I can remember, there was ALWAYS wine with dinner. If it was a beef dish, it was usually a good bottle of cabernet, If it was Italian, it was a good Merlot, if it was fish or chicken, it was an expensive white.... followed by a Port with desert. Oh an let us not forget that on different occasions, Mimosa's at breakfast kick started our day.
It was never a big deal to me because it was just the "norm" then when I got to be oh gosh I guess around 12, my friends were just starting to dabble in alcohol and pot. They all came to me for advice on what to drink, at TWELVE I could tell them the difference between a white and red, good or decent for the money, I could explain the difference between a light beer, dark beer, or lagar, why draft beer is "the best for a quick buzz" and basically everything they wanted to know about whiskey, from how each one tasted to how to make certian drinks.
By the time I was 30 I was waitressing in a bar and helping the bartenders create their "own" specialties, and telling them how to tweak certian drinks in order to make them irresistable. Gee, wasnt I the "smart one"

Obviously, this is NOT the "norm" in my home anymore and I am the oppisite with my kids. They say there is a silver lining in every cloud, the only one that I have found in this one is the fact that my boys have never had alcohol and seem to have zero interest at this point, my oldest will drink socially on occasion, (not right now, she is pregnant!) They have all seen the negative effects of alcohol, I just pray every day that it is enough to keep them from it.

Liss

c'est la vie

I remember being allowed a very tiny glass of wine at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner when I was young, but I think I was in 10th grade when I had a couple wine coolers with a friend for the first time. After that it became fairly regular to drink on the weekends. I carried a little bottle of Southern Comfort in my purse when going out socializing, I was cheered for shot-gunning beers, and even people in the "in crowd" were impressed that I could buy liquor without being questioned.

I had my first blackout just before graduation and only God knows what happened (and I suppose all the people at the party do too). Someone came up to me at a restaurant that summer and said, "you were that girl who was naked at the party". Uh, yeah, I guess that would be me.

And that's the way things went for many more years. I drank, got drunk, did something stupid, and had to figure out later what I did. I've been carrying around a lot of baggage from hurting myself and my friends. God, the remorse is so painful.

At the time, I didn't relate my drinking to my feelings of emotional disconnect, but based on some things I've read recently it could have been what led me to the need to punish myself with alcohol. Who knows?

aloneagainor

following up first with your side-issue...
We're so self-deluded in our addiction. Denial reigns supreme. Addicts just aren't thinking straight. It's so frustrating, the way society deals with addicts. That aside...

There's a picture of me when I was 2, seated on the couch with beer bottles propped up all around me. Germans and their beer. I never developed a taste for it. Alcohol...whatever. I was interested in ESCAPE. Read and studied and considered all aspects of LSD and planned for it and sought it out and finally at age 18 came into some. Escape grande. It was intentional and deliberate through and through. Taken another 18 years to figure out what I was hiding/escaping from, looking for. Living life on life's own terms. To my surprise, reality is actually easier to take straight.

2dayzmuse

I never minded forcing down the booze. If I hated the drink, I drank it anyways. That to me says there is a problem in itself. No amount of peer pressure could force me to drink something down that tasted so horrid, for example, rum. I hated rum and drank it only if I had to. Can you belief that? I forced it down to feel drunk. I also wasn't a puker. I never got sick very often. Only a few times in my long drinking career did I ever got physically ill from drinking to much. I had bad hangovers, but never bad enough to make me quit. The thing that made me physically ill was when I was going through withdrawals. Thank God I never have to to through that again.

GreenTea

I didn't really have to "force" things down either. When I first started on beer it was PBR's (Pabst Blue Ribbon -- lots of "character", like a buzz saw). I can't say it tasted bad. It was more like, "okay, that's what that's like -- interesting effect on my palate".

I think I went from that to Old Style, then to MGD's (Miller Genuine Draft) for a long while, although I'd try almost any beer. I never developed a taste for the bitters though, like Guiness, or the "flowery" beers like Sam Adams. I would drink Bass or Killians if I couldn't get Harp.

By the third or fourth one though, almost anything tastes good to me. Rum I wasn't too crazy about at first, or tequila, or even brandy, but I aquired a taste for those pretty quickly. Harp and margherita's used to taste simply *great* to me. I never did do the aftershave thing. I used to know a guy in school who'd down a bottle of Robitussin or Nyquil for lunch every once in a while, (his nickname was "Otis").

I wasn't too bad with the puking either, except at first, back in high school. It took me about a year or so to realize "don't drink the foam!". I developed a cast iron stomach there for a while, and then it caught up to me, so I learned how to avoid things like mixing liquors together (rocket fuel) and just sticking to the same thing all night. Yeah, the hangovers were really bad (especially vodka hangovers!) and after a while even eating food before bed didn't help with that.

Then after a while the hangovers seemed to sort of ease up as long as I got a decent amount of sleep and enough water. I didn't realize it at first, but what was happening was that the hangovers were just stretching themselves out over a few days. Towards the end there, I'd be drinking again before the last hangover went away.

Then a few years ago, I started being able to notice exactly when the hangover from the night (or two nights) before would end, (I used to be a binge drinker). I'd get like a momentary shortness of breath, maybe some light headedness and a little ringing in the ears -- I'd usually have to sit down for a minute -- and it felt like I went through a transparent wall or barrier or something. And then I'd be okay again, just feeling lousy and tired and worn out.

It scared me pretty badly the first time it happened, (although I never went to see a doctor about it -- didn't want him telling me not to drink so much I guess), so I started learning how to pace myself throughout the night to help lessen the effect.

It wasn't usually as bad as that one time at work -- I had to sit down in the lobby for a few minutes because I couldn't walk to the elevator -- I felt like I was about to collapse and then after a few minutes of my heart pounding, I was okay again.

I learned to lessen the effect -- water helped a lot as did pacing my drinking. Oh I'd still get totally plastered and have blackouts and do utterly stupid things, but I was sort of easing into it so I could ease out of it later. How many times had I been at the pub for about eight hours and then wake up in my bed late for work and feeling like total crap... wondering how I got home... remembering later over the course of a few days that after the pub closed I went to another bar that stayed open later... and after that closed, came home and had a few more beers out of the fridge.

Scaring feeling coming out to the parking lot not remembering where you parked your car, (or if it was even there), and just praying that there weren't any dents, or messed up tires or other damage. -shudder-

In retrospect, I think passing through that "hangover boundary", a couple of times I might have come close to experiencing a small seizure.

But anyway, I'm babbering again... I'm glad I don't have to go through any of that ever again.

NYCGirl

I don't remembering ever having to force the booze. Real young at home I would be allowed to sip, especially the cordials. creme de menth (always green), Drambuie, courvasie, beer, wine.

My first two drunks I puked, I think being a pot smoker I was expecting the buzz to hit me quicker and when it didn't I drank more. I soon learned and the puking stopped, great learning experience lol. I don't think I puked again after that unless it was self induced 'cause I was plastered and just knew I had to bring the rest up... sorry if I grossed you out .... I know I'm not the only one that ever "prayed to the toilet gods".

Wow,, the more I think back the more I realize what I lush i really was, it's kind of upsetting at times.

I think I'll start a new thread......

NEEDTOBESOBER

I never had to force the booze either- first was beer that my dad let me drink and loved the way it tasted and made me feel, either that or wine or margaritas i was alaso allowed to drink.

Blake

The first time I drank, I was about 7 or 8. I was at a family wedding and they had a champange fountain of some sorts, I kept sneeking glasses from it. I got plastered and most of the people thought it was funny, except my parrents, they were pissed.

I started drinking on a regular basis when I was 10. I used to sneek bottles of liquor out of my parrents wet bar and go camping in a friends yard and we would all get toasted. It felt good to know that I was the person in charge of getting the alcohol and it made me feel accepted.

Eventually, alcohol gave way to harder drugs once I hit highschool, but I was allways the guy that could get you what you needed...that way you had to be nice to me and let me be friends with you and respect me or else I'd tax you or cut you off completely.

paloma

How about stories of the first time you drank ALONE?
I started a few years ago with this lovely routine.
Husband travels a great deal, so I would look forward to a Friday night alone with the tv and a good bottle of wine. It was relaxing for a short period of time. Then it just became scary and very lonely.

Mike Flanders

My first time being drunk, would have been at a family friends wedding reception, I think I was around 8-10 years young. I don't remember much about it though.
The first time in my adolescent years, was when I was 15. Two friends, and my girlfriend got wasted on stolen whiskey. I drunk so much that one of my friends had to take me home (on public transport), and I threw-up for the first and last time (due to accute alcohol ingestion). That put me off drinking for about 5 years. I found out later that my other "friend", who I left with my girlfriend tried to rape her. But I don't think about that much anymore.

djfriedm

GreenTea...your story is a lot like mine. I probably started freshman/sophomore year of high school...and didnt just slowly started drinking. I drank hardcore right from the start. I thought that drinking was the answer to my problems and my feelings of worthlessness i was experiencing at the time.

GreenTea

I hear you. For me it wasn't so much peer "pressure" as it was peer "acceptance". I sought it out and no one chided me into it. What I was seeking was a group where I was accepted.

For the longest time I thought that drinking to get plastered was normal. The way I learned it, anything else and you were just wasting the beer. Later, when I started doing my drinking in bars, I couldn't understand why people would get weird with me just because I was getting drunk. Isn't that what we were all there for? Wasn't that the point?

So naturally I had to start finding a different class of bar.