How were you introduced to alcohol as a kid?
7How did you get introduced to alcohol, specifically as a kid? I remember I was allowed a tiny sip of beer, a friend was allowed to dip her spoon into a beer and lick the spoon. What were the creative ways parents allowed tiny taste test?
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My stepdad was an alcoholic…we always had a fully stocked bar and lots of people around that just didn’t give a shit…surprised I don’t drink now.
@sweetjoey My dad mostly drank beer, but he drank a lot, generally alone. There was always alcohol around, but his example made me incredibly uninterested. Now that I’m in my 30s, this aversion was further cemented after he ended up in the hospital for 3 months last year, not sure he’d make it back out. He did, thankfully, and has stopped drinking, but we’ll see if his luck holds.
@smigit2002 @sweetjoey
alcohol is NOT our friend! Prayers for your dad’s good health and long life.
My Dad played on a “beer league” softball team, so every Friday night during the Summer I’d go to their games. Afterwards, we’d usually end up at The Corner Bar which further normalized the concept of drinking, & though my folks weren’t of the ilk, seeing people hammered got to be a normal sight. Then one day, guessing I was around 7th grade, maybe 8th, I stayed over at a friend’s house & his older brother bought RL & I a six-pack of ICBM’s as he called them…Icy Cold Bottles of Michelob…and the rest is history. Fortunately, I realized by the time I was in my late 20s that I didn’t need to be blasted every time I’d drink…Now, I can enjoy A beer & be satisfied.
@tohar1 my drinking epiphany came when I was 26 and quit for a few months:
It’s possible to have a couple of drinks and stop there.
I think I’ve been drunk maybe three times in the last thirtysomething years, and those were mistakes, but I’ve got just shy of 500 different beers in Untappd.
Being good tea sippin southern Baptist my parents did not keep any alcohol in the house… except one bottle of Jack Daniels to make brisket with… my brother and I would drink it and replace the drank amount with tea because we could match color… parents just thought it went bad every few months… they did not find this out until me and my brother were in our 30’s
@Koolhandjoe that’s hilarious
@Koolhandjoe
It went bad every few months. Hilarious!
@Koolhandjoe We also had no alcohol in our house & I saw my Dad drink one beer one time. That was because a neighbor came over with beer. My Mother served it with ice because she didn’t know how to serve it. We also were So. Baptists.
I never tried a beer until I was maybe 16, from a friend’s house. I discovered that I loved beer.
@Koolhandjoe We had a few of those kinds of conversations with our parents when we were old enough they had no possible way to punish us. Fortunately since we had lived through our escapees, nothing was broken, no one was hurt and the bulk of our stories were those of kid stupidity everyone mostly laughed- although had we been caught at the time I am reasonably sure, especially my brother, we would have been grounded for approximately 3 centuries, and longer if they could have.
@Koolhandjoe You win story time.
@shahnm @Star2236 @daveinwarsh @Kidsandliz @zinimusprime My parents were both raised very sheltered never pushed any boundaries… I have only heard my Dad say 1 bad word my whole life and it was on a roller coaster he got on to show me there was nothing to be scared of… my Mom may 3 or 4 total… My brother and I put our poor sheltered parents through so much… my whole life my parents would say to me “We can only pray that one day you have a kid that is just like you.”… and now that I am a parent of a 15 year old that is exactly like me… not a week goes by where I don’t call them can apologize for something I did… hoping they will lift the curse… but my brother has got it worse… 2 girls and another girl on the way… and they put him through it too.
@daveinwarsh @Koolhandjoe How do you keep a Baptist from drinking? Invite another Baptist!
Whenever dad would have a beer we were allowed to have a drink as long as we asked. Dad figured that would eliminate the taboo of alcohol. He was right.
@tinamarie1974 pretty much the same for me and my brothers though it was mostly wine at holiday dinners
@tinamarie1974 @zinimusprime
When my parents drank beer and wine at home, once we were of elementary school age, they would offer and pour us out a little.
They didn’t invite us when they enjoyed mixed drinks at home -
which they only generally did on the patio in good weather, during their “private relaxing conversation time together”, and which they enjoyed a few times a month and which usually usually lasted an hour or two.
Often they enjoyed these on Sat or Sun afternoons.
For these events, it was fine if we interrupted briefly (phones call, quick questions, etc), but we weren’t invited to come outside and join the conversations.
we were not invited to sample the mixed drinks.
I don’t recall ever stealing from my parents liquor cabinet. I did help self and friends to one of their bottles of wine now and then (rarely), but my teenage escapades usually involved either illegal stuff or bottles purloined from some other kids’s parents.
@tinamarie1974 same! My brother and I would always beg him for the first sip!
I never was tempted as a kid. My olfactory sense made me have absolutely zero desire. I tried it a few times once I became of legal age, but whatever buzz it may have provided wasn’t worth the horrible taste.
@DrWorm Beer in particular smells (and tastes) so awful that I hate going to bars because of that. When I lived in Holland they couldn’t believe I hated everything (their 4 and 6 year olds were given small drinks) so they had me taste every single thing in their rather sizable collection of stuff. Sherry was the worst. I had to spit that out in the sink. There was maybe one wine I figured I could choke down if I had to drink to be polite but that was about it. I also hate tea and coffee due to taste and smell as well. It has never seemed to me to be worth trying to figure out how to get myself to like that stuff.
When I was 12 I was at a wedding. My friend (who’s sister was getting married) was 14 at the time. She was drinking a fuzzy navel and said it was so good and gave me some to try.
“funny fact”… my 14 year old picked a Chinese restaurant for her birthday dinner this year. She wanted a virgin margarita as a special drink. When it came she said it tasted funny so I tasted it. Sure enough - she had tequila in it.
Honestly, I could have let her finish it because it’s legal here for her to order and drink it. but she didn’t like the taste of it. But she def had fun telling people she got to try tequila
@mbersiam
Where do you live?
@Star2236 wisconsin.
@mbersiam
Where in Wisconsin can you drink at the age of 14 or am I missing something?
@mbersiam @Star2236
In some states an accompanying guardian adult can order or approve the order of alcohol drinks for their underaged legal changes, when all are together at a restaurant. Maybe WI allows that.
@Star2236 - @f00l is correct. At the age of 14 a minor may drink alcohol legally when they are accompanied by a legal guardian. This is at a bar, restaurant, or private household.
I grew up in Michigan and this was the wildest concept to me. I remember the first time I saw a minor order alcohol at a bar and was flabbergasted. But it was like no big deal to anyone in the establishment.
I feel like I need to ETA my original post too. I am Catholic. So I was in 2nd grade when I first tasted wine. We had it every single week at church.
@mbersiam
I had never heard about this till now. I just read the rules about it bc I too live in MI and as @f00l posted mi is no longer one of the states that allows minors to drink. Only 6 states do but I forgot them already.
@f00l @mbersiam @Star2236
I didn’t know that was a thing and not sure I agree. Just WOW!
@f00l @mbersiam @Star2236 It’s the same in Texas… the legal guardian mist be within vision of the minor.
Intentionally = Crappy beer. It was a very bitter, nasty American style lager like Budweiser.
Accidentally = The big bowl of “fruit punch” at a wedding reception. After my second cup I was told that I was taking from the adult punch bowl that was filled with delicious sangria.
When we were little dad drank beer mom mostly margaritas and were were allowed to have a sip if we asked till a certain age. I remember being on the boat with my brothers and my dad and my little brother asked for a sip of beer while my dad was driving and my dad said ok next time he turned around to get the beer which was not long my little brother had chugged the whole thing. After that it was very monitored. Of course my mom says she doesn’t remember any of this along with the fact that I’ve been driving by myself since I was15 and that was just in 1998.
Both my brothers drink now. I drink every so often. One brother would probably be labeled by medical terms a functioning alcoholic. My partner (were not married) is the same. That’s why I really don’t drink bc I keep him in line about his drinking.
I was allowed to try a sip of Coors at 4 or 5. Predictably, I thought it was gross. In my tween years I was allowed to taste wine at home once or twice but it, too, was deemed disgusting. I thought it tasted rotten. Haha. All of that, plus some other factors, probably helped keep me from underage drinking, so all of my drunk shenanigans stories are firmly planted in the legal zone.
Did you know that Gin and Sunny Delight don’t make “screwdrivers?”
Neither did we until we had no choice.
I’m not from the US, so pretty much wine was available with Sunday dinner for as long as I remember.
I don’t have childhood memories of being too young to have any…
. So at least since I was about 5… Although as kids preferred the wine watered down with carbonated water, so it wasn’t very strong when young.
We usually had spaghetti on Thursdays and after I was around 15 or so my Dad would let me have about 2 ounces of his beer with spaghetti dinner, as he would extol the virtues of Genesee Cream Ale (!).
@lehigh Genesee Cream Ale is great! It is my favorite of the really, really cheap beers by a wide margin. Unfortunately, they don’t sell it where I currently live.
@Limewater We try to get to the Finger Lakes once a summer and I’m always tempted by the 30 pack of Genny on sale… but never pull the trigger (in part because it’d take me 3 months to drink that much beer)
@lehigh Oh, it always took me months to finish a 30-pack myself. That’s just fewer trips to the beverage store.
My brother and I would scramble to be the one to get Dad another beer, and of course we would open it up for him and sample it for quality control. Once Dad got a “fresh” half of a beer from my brother and noticed it!
My family didn’t drink. I tasted some stuff in college and when I lived overseas. Had to spit out some in the sink. Hated it all. I don’t like carbonation either. I don’t drink.
Farm family. I’m told that at about 4, I sat on the hired man’s lap and he fed me sardines and sips of his beer. As we kids got older, we were drafted to be “bar tenders” at big family gatherings. And nobody paid any attention if we tasted our products.
When I was 6, my parents were visiting with my aunt and uncle. Everyone was drinking beer, and I kept asking my aunt for a sip. Eventually she told me “if you drink this entire beer in one go, I’ll give you $100” I was a good negotiator, so I got her to up the price to $200, and she agreed. I downed that sucker like it was a juice box. After that, she tried to have me lay down under a fan, and told me she’d pay me immediately if I watched the twirling fan and puked. I tried, but I kept it down.
She had to make payments, but eventually the debt was settled. All I remember buying from it was a new bike.
Anytime anything remotely close to alcohol gets brought up, this story goes along with it.
Aside from that, I remember getting pretty bad alcohol poisoning around 11-12 yrs old where I was found passed out in front of a funeral home after being pressured by a much older kid to drink, and taken to the hospital via ambulance. I had my stomach pumped, and was told that I puked on the ambulance driver and kept telling my mom I “didn’t want people looking at my nads”. For years after that, I couldn’t smell hard alcohol without wanting to puke. My BA level was around .326
@lichme oh my gosh Lich! That is too scary!!
@lichme
holy crap
We were always allowed a little of lower alcohol content items. Like a sip of beer, a sip of wine, a sip of champagne on New Years, etc. The only thing I ever liked was when I’d get a 1/2 (small) Dixie cup of Baileys. My mom would have a full Dixie cup and give me the 1/2. This was probably early teens. My parents really didn’t drink much.
I’ve let my kids had sips here and there. Maybe a margarita or daiquiri. They just had to stay home after. They are all adults now, and none of us (my kids, me or my brothers) have any drinking problems.
I think I was 10 the first and only time I ever saw my mother with a drink. She had a glass of white wine at my cousin’s wedding. I asked if I could have a sip (I don’t know if I knew what it was or not, since she didn’t drink). She let me have a sip, and I didn’t like it. I still don’t. She didn’t like it either.
My dad had beer in the fridge on random occasions, but I never could get past the smell enough to even ask for a taste. Still can’t stand that either.
I can’t remember going to a family gathering or a friends family event that hasn’t had alcohol my whole life. Not saying that everybody I know is alcoholics bc that’s definitely not the case but I definitely don’t live in a dry area. In MI, winter is very long and with so many lakes around where I live it seems to be very much of the norm to to relax and enjoy the summer. It’s also very much of the norm to enjoy a cold beer or few while you relax too.
Violently.
@rogerbacon
Not sure if this is sad or funny.
Wanna talk about it, Rog?
Grandpa’s farm was on Route 66 and there was a roadhouse about a half mile east of the driveway. On Pinochle night, he would stop by the roadhouse and have them fill a cider jug with draught beer to bring home and put it in the icebox for all the folks playing cards.
My brother and I would ask, “Grandma, what’s Grandpa drinkin’?” She would always tell us, “That’s beer, you wouldn’t like it.” Then she would get a couple of those tiny orange juice glasses, fill them up about halfway, and give them to us just to “prove” it.
This was a routine we repeated as often as possible. We thought we were oh so smart, but we weren’t fooling anybody. Grandma let us do a lot of things when Mom wasn’t looking, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t fooled either.
I miss them all terribly, and I hope I set an equally “bad” example for all my grandkids.
So when I lived near the Chesapeake Bay I volunteered at Jamestown foundation on the boats. The Susan Constance had just got her cannons. We were going on a test run (early in the morning because we had to sail with the strong river tide). Ran into someone we knew who was out on his boat who was active in the boating and tall ship community. We asked him if he wanted a beer (this was like 6:30am on a Saturday). He was known to enjoy his drink, perhaps a bit much at times and we wanted to surprise him we had cannons. What better way to do so than shoot him a beer?. Made sense to us. He said yes.
We put one down the bore of the cannon, turned the ship so the cannons were facing him, and shot it in his direction. He went over, fished it out of the water, went back into the wheelhouse, opened it and cussed us out over the radio because beer was spraying all over the place. LOL
Actually shooting the cannon off was interesting as about a zillion gulls took off from the James River Bridge (we were near that). Unbelievable how many birds took flight. I am sure we pissed off the towns on both sides of the river as the echo from the cannon boom was really loud and as I said it was around 6:30am on a Saturday morning.
Grandma didn’t approve of alcohol, so I was told from a very young age it was “Daddy’s Soda” and got one tiny sip. Thought it was gross and never tried to drink it on my own. He drank PBR before it was cool.
Warning; I got carried away as usual, this is the shortest version my OCD could manage.
I remember being a little girl, 3 to 4 to 5 years old, and having big family parties, sometimes for holidays and sometimes just because. My parents liked/loved to entertain! My grandfather would let my older sister and I to try puffs of his sweet smelling cherry cigars and give us sips of his beer or whatever alcoholic drink he had. (my dad would do the same) I remember clear as day running to the sink, choking on the discusting smoke and feeling sick. Apparently that didn’t have any lasting impression because I also remember being that same age and finishing off everyone’s almost empty cocktails and beers. My mom wasn’t a drinker and my dad was a professional, his drink of choice was Dewar’s scotch on the rocks and also beer. There was a full size fridge in the basement always fully stocked with at least 10-15 cases of Narragansett canned beer (YUCK) AND 25 cartons of Marlborough cigarettes. (All the makings for a teenagers downfall
) I did start smoking around 11/12 years old. It wasn’t until I was 16 years old and on my way to a summer reform school about 5 hours away from home and my dad aloud me to smoke in the car. My mom was the main disciplinary and she was pretty pissed off about that one.
On my parents/dad’s defense I don’t think the overload of beer and retts would have been a thing if it wasn’t for the fact that they were/are both extremely frugal, penny pinching people. My grandmother living in New Hampshire with cheaper prices and taxes WAS the only reason for the hoard! When nana moved from New Hampshire the fridge was empty.
Being a latchkey kid my entire life, raiding the fully stocked bar was a afternoon delight for me at a very young age. I always hated the taste of all alcohol and I never NEVER drank without any other intention of getting drunk and escaping reality. I was a blackout drinker from the get go. I started bringing Kahlua, Bailey’s Irish cream, and vodka to school, mixing it with the school’s milk about 6th grade. I was even already mixing any pill with it if I thought it would get me to zombie land quicker. Not cool!! Looking back, that’s so crazy and rediculous. I was SO young and screaming for help and attention! I thought I was so grown up back then and I WAS definitely more mature than my piers just because I was on my own with my parents both working. That wasn’t the norm back then. Now, at 55 years old, I can’t believe HOW YOUNG a 12 or even 16 year old child is! They’re freakin babies!!
I was 12 years old when my mom dropped me off at my first AA meeting. As you can imagine, THAT didn’t go over well at all! My mom and I fought constantly, I was out of control and misrable. I hated myself! …along with everyone and everything!!
At 25 years old, after several inpatient rehabilitation hospital stays, several overdoses, jail & prison (which saved my life and i’m extremely grateful for) and years of putting my family through hell, I finally walked into the first AA meeting that I actually WANTED to be at. I WAS FINALLY READY!!
Today i’ve been sober for 31 years, i’ve never relapsed and i’ve never been more happy with who I am. Getting sober was scary, I didn’t think i’d ever have fun, boy oh boy was I wrong!! Over time I learned to love myself and at 45 years old I finally could feel my mom’s love. I always “knew” she loved me but I wasn’t able to “feel” it. I’m SO extremely blessed, many people, both men and women, go to the grave without resolving mommy/daddy issues. Life’s SO short, thank goodness I found my way, there’s NO rainbows without the rain.
@Lynnerizer Wow. Congratulations, you were dealt a really tough hand and you prevailed! I think your story is remarkable.
@Kyeh Thanks! It’s kinda crazy the things we all go through and how well (or not) we make it through. I had always wanted to write a book and/or go to schools and talk to young kids. I thought sharing my story could possibly be helpful, at least letting kids know that they aren’t alone in their feelings. The real clincher of my childhood was when my parents both switched partners with their best friends! My mom left us when I was 17 to “go find herself”. She ended up “finding herself” with my dad’s best friend and then HIS ex-wife found herself knocking on our door! It might’ve not been SO bad IF she hadn’t brought her grown son who’d been molesting me since I was in kindergarten! I can’t thank my lucky stars enough that I was able to make it through one messed up childhood!
My Mom always used homemade cough syrup. Honey, lemon & whiskey
@wingsgirl26 My friend’s “Family recipe” was similar, but called (specifically) for Southern Comfort.
Taken in a 150 to 200 ml dose, if I recall…
One year, I think I was about 13, at Mardi Gras I told my parents I was going with my best friends and her parents and they stood much further down the route than we did. She told her parents the same. Well…the krewe of this particular parade threw Jell-O shots off the float by one of the daiquiri shops which is where we had ventured to. Yeah. We consumed a ton of them and a few hours later we hobbled home puking the whole way. I’m pretty sure I just went and passed out in my bedroom before my parents got home.
Somewhere there’s a picture of toddler me on a table, a beer in both hands, upended for maximum guzzling, and the important fact to consider here is that this was long before cell phones, so someone took the time to find a camera, make sure it had film, add a flashcube, shoot a picture…and THEN take the beer from the toddler.