My First Time... Getting Drunk

The first time I got drunk was when I was fourteen. It was at a house party that a friend of mine was having to celebrate turning seventeen. I didn’t bring any drinks with me, so I was just being handed all kinds of stuff by random strangers, which meant that I was mixing loads of different types of alcohol. This, as I know now, never ends well. Cut to the end of the night when everyone is starting to leave, and there I am, kneeling in front of the doorway, blocking it for everyone else, whilst begging a girl I fancied to kiss me before I went home. The parents who owned the house just wanted to get rid of me, and slowly closed the door in my face. A mate’s dad was kind enough to take me home, at which point I vomited all over my front garden, while my parents watched on from the living room window. - Male, 26, City Centre

We were on a family holiday in Greece when my brother and I realised that the beach bar was left open and unattended at night. We were 12 and 13 at the time, and hatched a plan with some other mates we’d met to sneak over and drink as much as we could while our parents were chatting in the restaurant. We ransacked the bar and got started on a bottle of Ouzo; I don’t think any of us enjoyed it, but we were all too busy trying to look like grown-ups to let it show. We trashed the place and left in a haze of aniseed and vomit. The next day the hotel cornered my Dad and told him that they’d received three complaints during the night: one about us, and two about him drunkenly belting out Rod Stewart songs after drinking too much himself. I can’t help but feel directly responsible for the bad reputation British people have abroad. - Female, 32, Gedling

I’d never really drank much in my teens, mainly because my Dad owned a pub and seeing the state the locals would get in night after night put me off. But when my older brother got engaged I went along to his stag do. I was a bit of a loner growing up and I’d never really had big groups of friends, so, as the youngest of the group, I started to over-do it a bit to try and be ‘one of the lads’. At first I thought everyone was encouraging me because I was one of them, but looking back I realise they were just getting me drunk because it was funny. They said that our waitress fancied me, which led to me making a fool out of myself by telling her that I loved her and leaning in for a kiss. She rightly laughed at me, and told me to go home. I took her advice. I’ve never been drunk since. Male, 44, Bestwood Estate

I was eighteen the first time I got really drunk. It was at another friend’s 18th birthday party, and the place was packed out with her friends and family. Being a poor college student I decided I wanted to sneak some vodka into the venue, so I filled a plastic bottle almost to the top, and added a little dash of lemonade. This did not end well for me. After a lot of dancing and some throwing up, I realised that my smuggled vodka had leaked in my bag and destroyed the brand new phone I’d received the month before for my birthday. I had to spend almost £300 which, at the time, was almost all of the money I had, buying a new phone the next day so that my parents wouldn’t find out I’d wrecked the phone they’d bought me. I guess the moral of the story: don’t sneak vodka into people’s birthday parties. Female, 27, Sneinton