Picture it: eyeliner smudged on your eyes all the way down to wine-soaked lips. You’re teetering down the road in clunky heels, 7 missed calls but you don’t care— you’re laughing. You’re crying at a tree stump because it’s so profound, and you’re so eccentric, and everything about you is just so unique that no one will ever get you.
The first time I drank alcohol, I was 17 years old. As a teenager, this idea enthralled me: the world of Skins (and Gossip Girl, Euphoria, Pretty Little Liars; you get it). I wanted reckless behaviour, messy relationships, and wild nights out that led me to standing on a bench, squirting vodka into my mouth out of a water gun.
It never happened.
That is, until one random day after school, when I came to be holding a bottle of wine at a friend’s house, and suddenly, I was drinking it. The £2 off-brand Echo Falls choked up on a laugh when my new group of friends proposed smashing bottles outside Sainsbury’s and having a dance battle to Lil Peep songs.
Once it had become “just a part of the day” in one instance, it was easy to accept it in every other. Drinking started to accompany hang-outs, lunchtime smokes, or sad nights after arguing with my parents like the cool, edgy teen I was.
Cheap wine became my drink of choice for years after — a sweet, almost-juice that was now a part of my day as much as it was of my life.
There’s something that feels momentous about being a reckless teenager. Like you’re fulfilling the dream of teenage dirtbags worldwide. Like you really do look just like Effy from Skins.
Surely, it’s easy to stop though
I decided to quit drinking just as casually as I’d started. After a failed uni attempt during COVID, I realized I wasn’t as wild as I was at 17; I wanted to be someone new instead. I’d failed at making friends and being wild as an adult, so instead, I decided to be truly cringe. Nerdy. Awkward. Unexpected.
Because my life was just that: unexpected, something so unfamiliar to me at this point. I was a fresh and abnormal specimen. Someone who struggled making friends, who liked writing more than smashing bottles, who felt anxious around new people.
But in my second attempt at uni, I drank again.
Then halfway into the first year, unsure of what day it was, I stopped again.
This relationship went on and off throughout my degree. I claimed one day to be sober and begged for a night out the next. This thought that was so stuck in my head pulled me back each time: 17 was the best year of my life.
Even with everything I had going for me (friends, hobbies, and way less mental illness), I would be cooking dinner at 6 pm instead of lying in a field thinking:
Is this good enough? Is this me?
Being sober felt boring — so the switch between drinker and non-drinker was super confusing. I just couldn’t tell what was natural and unnatural behaviour from me. Was I someone who drank and partied like I did at 17, or someone who drank tea, read poetry, and learned yoyo tricks? Was I becoming someone new at every decision switch? A different evolving version of myself made up of sobers and drinkers?
Or was I still just old– a moulding image on a field somewhere in the past.
I feared that, maybe, the only person I ever really was was the pre-teen in the front row of her Latin club. A sweaty, beautiful shrub chewing on a Squares bar over participles. Maybe this was the person I needed to preserve all along.
The last time I said I was sober, I was visiting my parents. And the last time I said I drank was at a friend’s birthday a few years ago. In case I couldn’t resist ordering a pitcher when no one was looking, “I drink a bit” was my agnostic way out. I ordered two ciders on a deal, a decision I spent three days thinking about. I managed half of one before realizing there was only one choice left:
I won’t drink, for real this time
The summer-y buzz went all the way to my chest. I wanted to get rid of it– pretend it never happened and order juice instead. But it was reaching my throat, and I couldn’t drink anything else if I tried. After years of wild nights out, I was all full of liquid at one cider. The drink felt more like an intrusion than anything else. A home-invasion in my throat. In a weird, sick haze, (kinda like a slow motion gossip girl montage) I started thinking about the things that felt real:
- Year 6 homework on the sofa
- Red dye in the bathtub
- A never-washed fake septum piercing making your nose slobber
- Picnic food in the woods
- Cake in a wine glass
And the things I was not:
- Someone who drank.
If you’re at this point and need some help, here’s what you can do:
How to think about your sobriety
First of all…
It’s not just one decision.
It’s never that you drink one day and you don’t the next. Maybe you’ll start by only drinking at Christmas and birthdays, then go down to just Christmas, then ditch the whole idea and just turn down a drink whenever you can. But if you’re only drinking to fulfill a teenage fantasy or to fit in with a certain group of people, then that’s not the fantasy — and they’re not your people.
But why do we have that fantasy?
Some psychologists have said we’re the most nostalgic population going. I mean, Y2K wasn’t even that long ago, and we’re already wearing skirts over jeans again. Researcher Rida Ali says that 70% of Gen Z regularly watch media from former decades. So what, we just can’t let things go? Is that why I still have Mitchel Musso from Hannah Montana as my lock screen? Is that why we make up these trends that romanticize everything that has ever happened to us?
Maybe the person I was as a teenager was monumental, but that doesn’t mean it was perfect. The carefree, drunk, eyeliner-smudged youth did need to happen. For that time in my life, it felt necessary. But just because it used to be, doesn’t mean it is now. Appreciate that era as the best time in your life then. But there’s always gonna be so much better to come. And this takes us to thought number 2:
You are not one thing
Our generation is more sober-curious than ever, and whilst the Skins aesthetic is a beautiful, fond memory, we’re also making a new kind of self-image. The clean girl, the weird girl, whimsicore, goblingcore; we were never meant to be just one thing. You’re not stuck.
The person you are now is just as good as all those other versions.
Maybe the person I was as a teenager was monumental, but that doesn’t mean it was perfect. The carefree, eyeliner-smudged youth did need to happen. For that time in my life, it felt necessary. But just because it used to be, doesn’t mean it is now. Appreciate that era as the best time in your life then. But there’s always gonna be so much better to come.
So what do you do now?
The idea that you might never be the fun, overly-friendly life among your friends anymore can be terrifying. Maybe you won’t get the dopamine hit when a stranger admires and adores you anymore. But what if this is just one possibility of being out of a hundred new, exciting ones?
What if there’s something more thrilling than ever that makes you feel more alive, more authentically you than you thought possible? It could be at a book group, a jewelry making class you were always too hungover to get to, or somewhere as simple as a conversation about anything other than the next club to hit. Take a moment to think about that. What do you actually like doing? What do you want to like doing?
And, maybe, you might find something more interesting when you’re going out and looking for who and what you are without trying to run with an Echo Falls bottle rattling in your pocket.
