Being a Teen Made Me WANT to Drink…

As always, there’s great stuff to read down at the Farm…

“The younger someone starts drinking alcoholic beverages, the more likely he or she is to reach for a drink to relieve stress when older, a large new study suggests.”

I’ll bet the researchers never even considered testing the stress levels of teens as teens, however.

Adolescence made me wish I had a drink-though I didn’t know it at the time. Having “skipped” all of 2nd grade with the “should be outlawed” Gifted tag, it was only natural that by Junior High I was a social retard. And, as such, daily teen life was filled with stress from the moment I heard my mother shout that it was time to get up for school.

And though Mom did a pretty good job for a single mother of two at 23 years old, she did not have the time, nor energy, to teach me how to groom, dress or talk in public- let alone fight. And if you can’t do any of the first three well, you better at least have some working knowledge of the last one.

I didn’t.

Hello, stress!

Which inevitably led to “ahhhhh…” Ahhhh, in case you didn’t know, is the beginnings of alcoholism and/or addiction. It’s the almost magical feeling an up and coming junkie gets when indulging in that first drink, toke, hit or fix of the day. If you are an addict or alcoholic you know exactly what I mean… “Ahhhhhhhh…..”

The shoulders relax, the body loosens, the mind begins to numb.

“Ahhhhh….”

And it’s that lack of a magical moment that causes me to doubt whether someone is “really” an addict or alcoholic. When someone gets up at a podium in front of a lot of people and states, “It was never good for me…” or “It was downhill from the first drink” I wonder…way too much.

This I do know…if it wasn’t for “Ahhhhh…” why bother???

ISaid.