My First Drunk

I first found alcohol when I was 11. My grandpa had died of cancer the previous winter and I was unsupervised during the long summer days. There was a liquor store by my house. My friends and I used to go there, buy sodas, steal candy. One day when I was there, I walked around the aisles, looking at the different bottles, their colors, their shapes. Wondering what the difference was between gin and vodka. Wondering at the variety of alcohol. Alcohol always held a promise for me. It promised me that I would be cool, self-confident. That's what the ads and TV shows and movies told me. That's what my drinking family members showed me. That's what I believed, that alcohol would just wash my cares away.

And so it was really no surprise that one lazy afternoon, I walked down to the liquor store. I bought a Pepsi. And I decided on the walk home that I was going to get drunk. I was going to mix whatever liquor sounded exciting with my Pepsi. I was going to get into my great-grandparents' liquor cabinet and drink their exotic sounding alcohol. My mom would never notice because she rarely drank, rarely even opened that cabinet. She would not notice.

I opened the cabinet. It wasn't locked, didn't even have a lock. I looked at the different bottles filled with their different-colored potions. Peppermint Schnapps. Peach Schnapps. Beefeater Gin. Smirnoff Vodka. Vodka. Vod-ka. I liked the word. I grew to love vodka.

I grabbed the huge bottle. I grabbed my Pepsi bottle. We went into the living room and turned on the TV and sat at the coffee table, me and my vodka. I opened the Pepsi. I opened the vodka. My heart raced. I was scared. I was excited. I smelled the bottle. It smelled like rubbing alcohol. I was scared. I picked up the Pepsi bottlecap and I held it with one hand as I poured a small amount of vodka into it with the other. I smelled the bottlecap. Still smelled bad. I stuck my tongue into it. It tingled. It definitely tasted bad. Okay. I poured Pepsi to the brim of the bottlecap, in effect making the world's smallest cut drink. I poured it all into my mouth. It didn't burn as badly this time, or maybe the soda's carbonation was outweighing the bite of the vodka. I did this again. And again. I liked it. I wasn't scared anymore. I was laughing. I poured about two shots worth into the remaining 16 oz of Pepsi. I sipped it the rest of the afternoon and I had a sweet sweet buzz.

For the first time it occurred to me that this was what it was like to be me, to be relaxed, to be carefree, to be fearless. I was eleven years old.

I drank alone until high school, when my goody-goody friends started experimenting. That's when I went off the deep end. Quickly.