by Savanna Carlsen

Created on: March 02, 2009

It was ninth grade and I was fourteen or fifteen years old. It was the last year of junior high school and I decided to sneak some hard liquor from my dads liquor cabinet. I mixed a whole bunch of different hard liquors together and added water to the rest to make it look like they hadn't been touched. I put my mixture in an empty squirt bottle and took it to school with me. I would meet my friends in the bathroom and we'd squirt it into our mouths. I was rebelling because my dad was so strict and wasn't letting me have a life. I couldn't go to the skating rink on Friday nights. I couldn't hang out with my friends at the mall. I couldn't even talk on the phone privately, he would have to sit next to me to listen to my conversations. I don't know what made me decide to start sneaking alcohol to school. I guess I knew sooner or later I'd get caught.

I can't say how long this actually went on, bringing alcohol to school and getting drunk. Some other kids who got drunk and went to a school football game got suspended for a week each. That should have warned me of the consequences, but I continued to bring alcohol to school. At one point I had a pair of sunglasses on in class and my teacher called me up and asked me to take off my glasses so she could see my eyes. I took them off and looked at her. I don't recall what happened after that, because she didn't really say anything. I thought I had it mastered. I'd bring it, hide it in my locker or inside my jean jacket, drink it during passing periods or during bathroom breaks. I was having fun!

It was a Friday and a friend's parents were going to take some of us to a local amusement park that night. I filled up a nice sized squirt bottle to take that night for us to have fun with because I was going straight to my friends house after school. During math class I get a slip to go down to the office. I had no idea that my secret stash was found and I was called down to have my parents called because I was suspended for a week. I laid with my head down on the table awaiting my fate. My mom came to pick me up and took me home so we could meet up with my dad and she could explain what had happened. Surprisingly, after he yelled for a bit, I wasn't in as much trouble as I had thought I was going to be. Although for that whole week I was home, he certainly had a lot of hard chores for me to do.

I'm not sure how long it was after my suspension that I got back into drinking again. The one thing I really recall after that was I went to a friends house after school one day, and we played strip poker with a couple of guys while passing a bottle of booze around. I remember getting pretty lit, enough to make me stumble out of the house and start walking down the street while waiting for my mom to come pick me up. I recall her pulling up next to me while I stumbled down the street, and got into the car thinking I would pretend like I hadn't been doing anything bad at all. Looking back now, I realize she obviously smelled the alcohol all over me, but never said a word about it. I think that's strange to this day, because if I saw one of my kids stumbling down the street, and they reeked of alcohol, I certainly wouldn't keep my mouth shut about it! It wasn't until maybe my senior year of high school, one of my friends confessed to me that she turned me in back in ninth grade. She said she was worried that I was becoming an alcoholic and that she told the counselor at school that I was bringing alcohol to school and getting drunk. I was pretty upset with her, but I forgive her now. Luckily, I didn't become an alcoholic, but surprisingly, I married one.

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