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Your eyes may have rolled contemptuously after they glided across the title; another article built on the vitriolic and banal rebuke of alcohol. An article, again, on the inextricable link between having a casual drink at a party and juvenile delinquency. Alcohol is poison, cirrhosis, so many units a day, don’t binge drink etcetera etcetera, I’ve heard it all before.

No, this won’t be one of them. I find, as I’m sure you do, that the inundation of such impersonal and indistinguishable information on alcohol creates not awareness but an apathetic attitude. The intention behind such warnings cannot be refuted, however, it is one of compassion and education.

Instead, I wish to give you a very personal account on my experience with alcohol for the past three years. In it, I hope to show how you may avoid such susceptibility to sensationalism and romanticism that comes with the adolescent attitude towards it, and be mature enough to drink properly. I will not, however, discourage you from drinking; this will, hopefully, show both the advantages and disadvantages of its consumption. I must stress that this is not an exhaustive guidebook through your exposure to alcohol; it is wholly personal and does not account for dispositional differentiation. I wish it to be absorbed and used, somewhat, as a lubricant for the uneasy transition into the latter part of your adolescence.

Before I first drank, I had no natural inclination towards it. I had tasted wine, had tasted beer, both were inferior to the taste of soft drinks: what was the point of drinking it? Of course, I was aware that should you have one too many your legs may start to betray you, your speech may start to slur and become nonsensical, and your face may well become red and blotchy, but I maintained a naïve skepticism of its psychological effects. I took great pride, then, in what can only be described as the solidity and loyalty of my mind. It can’t be altered by any such drink, I thought. My mind is mine. This notion strikes me as absurd now, given its neglect of biological evidence, but nevertheless I maintained it. I maintained that my mind was sort of cocooned in itself, insusceptible to any extrinsic alteration.

It only took four pints, however, to completely debunk my theory. I was at my brother’s 18th. Everyone was drinking, and, being part of a wholly inclusive family, I was not left out. I drank rapidly, trying to keep up with the speed with which my brother’s mates were; it must have only been three quarters of an hour. The effects were not severe. I wasn’t falling over or slurring my words. I just felt more relaxed, more confident around those older than me, confident enough to have a laugh and joke. No, the immediate effects were rather benign, but, crucially, it proved my theory wrong. Now it was easy for me to change, and this was the way to do it.

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