I’m 23 now and I shudder when I think of the way I used to drink in 1st and 2nd year. From having races to down bottles of wine to sneaking flasks into clubs, my stomach turns just thinking about it. I no longer ‘drink to get drunk’, but importantly I don’t look down at 18 year olds who do so. I mainly have stepped away from it due to the fact that my hangovers have gotten more debilitating with age. If I could still function the next day I maybe would.
At a mutual friend’s birthday last year, I was talking to a girl I went to school with. She mentioned that she had driven a few people over to the party. ‘Awh that sucks,’ I said sympathetically, ‘You’ve been stuck with being DD for the night.’
She then informed me that she’d recently found herself being the designated driver every night. She stopped drinking last year after finishing Dry January and realizing she didn’t ‘see what it added to her life.’
I couldn’t shake her gaze for the rest of the evening. As glasses got topped up and then toppled over, she’d wear a Mona-Lisa smile and keep talking about how excited she was for her run in the morning. Like she had unlocked a third-eye by going teetotal.
I think it’s very cool when young people decide to stop drinking. It’s a fact that alcohol is damaging to your health in the long-run and I know I’ve certainly woken up many mornings moaning about how I wish I had drunk less the night before. We’ve all ‘lost’ plenty to alcohol; whether that’s memories, productivity the next day, wallets, IDs, dignity or even teeth. Whenever anyone I know says they’ve stopped drinking, I think ‘good for them’ and genuinely mean it.
That being said, please stop acting like you’re better than me just because you’d rather have a matcha latte over a Dragon Soop. It infuriates me when ‘clean-girls’ on TikTok encourage conversations that look down on young-people’s drinking culture.
I don’t drink nearly as much now as I did a few years ago. I hate clubbing and have an appreciation for the goldilocks buzz of only a drink or two. But do you want to know how I’ve been able to mature this way? Because I had the chance to have my fair share of venoms in Subway and Gari’s specials when I was 18 like all young people who want to should! Everyone has the capacity to eventually grow up, slick back their hair into a bun, join an early-morning run club and be boring. But no one gets the chance to be a fresher again, making regrettable decisions in fancy dress on a Wednesday sport night out. So let them take shots!
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash