by Amanda Brooks

Created on: May 23, 2008

BUT I DID NOTHING

I won't try to say I was the perfect teenager. I had a definite taste for alcohol and marijuana, I liked to hang out with the wrong kids, all that stuff. If there was a rule to break, I was there for it.

A couple of weeks before my junior year began, an exboyfriend of mine died in a car accident. He and his brother were too drunk and stoned to see the semi they ran into. Two young lives, ended in the snap of a finger. This sobered me considerably. I began to wonder if the path I was going down was the right one. I mean, it sure was fun, but if I kept up that way, would I live to see adulthood? Could I do that to my family and friends?

Less than a year and a half later, another classmate died in an alcohol-related accident. I knew at that point that it was definitely time to clean up my act. Three deaths in half as many years, I had no desire to be the next.

One would have thought that this would have scared me off drinking forever. But as an adult, I assumed that I could automatically handle the consequences of drinking. However, I found that some people can never start drinking, and I'm one of those. I almost lost my kids before I discovered this, but I got the idea before it was too late. Basically, I went to both sides of the drinking mountain, and ultimately chose the better one.

Alcohol has had its effect on my family in other ways. My father was an active alcoholic for 50 years or so, alienating himself from the rest of the family. My brother, when drunk, blacks out and does stupid, crazy things and remembers none of it. Once, my husband drove home drunk. When I was told that he drove and not the designated friend, I was hysterical. No matter what I did in the past, I could never bring myself to drink and drive, and his doing that upset me greatly. Fortunately, my husband agreed, and it hasn't happened since.

Since then, there have been several alcohol and drug related accidents in our small town, some with serious injuries, some with deaths. In all cases, most of the victims were teens or young adults, and their friends would clean the accident scene, so no evidence of intoxicants would be found.

One summer, one weekend found two fatalities from two separate alcohol-related accidents. One was a high school acquaintance of mine, the other a kid who worked at the restaurant at which I worked. Although both deaths bothered me, the younger kid's death haunts me.

Adam was going to be starting his junior year of high school, but colleges were already

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