From legal troubles to broken relationships, students share how binge drinking has negatively affected their lives.

I am recovering

When a student who wishes to remain anonymous began binge drinking in seventh grade, having a good time quickly developed into major abuse.

“By the end of the year, my grades slipped, I had no trust with my parents and my relationship with my brother was lost,” he said. “By winter of sophomore year I had my first [Minor in Possession].”

A week into spring break of his sophomore year, he held a party at his house while his mom was out of town. Two days after being put on diversion for his first MIP, he received another MIP and received a charge for hosting a juvenile alcohol party. His was among 16 other MIPs handed out that night.

Since the incident, he has entered an intensive probation program to recover from his alcohol abuse. After two years of required counseling and 20 hours of community service, he will have his record expunged and all of the charges brought against him dropped.

“After that night I realized that I definitely had a problem,” he said. “I was out of control.”

This teen is among half of all U.S. teens who, if they drink before age 14, will develop an addiction to alcohol, according to the Center for Disease Control.

Through the recovery program, he has discovered how to cope with the triggers of his abuse.

“My main reason for using alcohol was pretty much to manage my emotions,” he said. “Now that I’ve gone through treatment, I have the tools and the skills to cope without using the drugs. As of Feb. 4, I am 68 days sober.”

His mother agreed that his sobriety could not have come at a better time.

“The most positive changes I have seen are the motivation to do things right, the light back in his eyes,” she said. “[I] have enjoyed seeing the person he has always had inside reemerge.”

I lost a friend

Even though she doesn’t drink, Sarah Thomas has felt the effects alcohol can have first-hand.

“I had this friend that I used to hang out with all the time,” Thomas said. “I knew she drank, but she never did it around me because she knew I didn’t like it.”
Thomas and her friend were on their way to an event when Thomas found out that her friend had been drinking when they got to their destination.

“I was driving and she was in the backseat,” Thomas said. “When we got where we were going, she was stumbling and asked if I would go with her to the bathroom. I thought she had been acting funny. I just kept wondering, ‘Did she drink? She couldn’t have; I was with her the whole time.’ I just kept denying it.”

Thomas’ friend passed out on the bathroom floor and Thomas didn’t know what to do.

“It was so scary,” Thomas said. “The fact that I’d never seen her drink and there she was, passed out in front of me … I had no idea what I was supposed to do, so I found someone and told them. They called an ambulance but she ended up going home with her dad.”

Thomas’ friend’s drinking hadn’t ever affected Thomas before.

“She knew how to control it, but this time she went overboard,” Thomas said. “Of course, the time she went overboard, she was with me.”

Their friendship ended that night.

“She said she was sorry over and over but I just ignored her,” Thomas said. “I wish I would have confronted her about it. I wish I would have blown up and yelled at her. Maybe if I had, it would have gotten through to her and saved our friendship.”

Through her experiences, Thomas believes drinking in high school isn’t worth it.

“Seeing what happened to her and losing her as a friend just reinforces what I already knew: I won’t drink in high school,” Thomas said. “I lost my best friend. It just seems stupid. There are better things you could be doing.”

I binge drink

According to the Center for Disease Control, one in every five high school girls binge drinks. For one student who wished to remain anonymous, binge drinking is just another trend she has caught on to, as well as a habit she has learned from watching her parents.

“Seeing my dad drinking the way he does makes me want to stop but I can’t,” she said. “He is another reason I started drinking. I think it strongly influences kids when they see their parents drink.”

While teenage drinking is bad, the extremes of all the consequences are not fully recognized by most teens. Drinking can damage the body but it can also damage relationships with friends and family. For this student the relationship with her mom has slowly disintegrated.

“I had a few friends over one night and we decided to get some alcohol and drink in my basement. I had the person bring it over to my house and we thought we had successfully snuck it inside and drank it before my mom could catch us,” the student said. “The next morning my mom had told me she knew I had been drinking that night. I tried to lie but she told me she had seen me sneak it in the house.”

For that student, now it is harder to connect with her parents and there is  a lack of trust between them.

However, she said that she chooses to ignore the  negatives of drinking for the fun of it.

“I still drink,” she said. “It’s fun and my friends and I like how it makes us feel. We basically just don’t care about anything when we are drinking. I don’t really think about the consequences of drinking. Sometimes I do afterwards, but by then it’s too late.”

Unfortunately, the student recognizes that the only way she’d stop drinking is if she became in trouble with the law.

“I would probably stop because after getting in trouble once,” she said. “The consequences would escalate and it’s just not worth it.”