Journal Prompts- Day four: Things you thought you would never do, and now do regularly.

I'm still a day behind with the Journal Prompts so I should probably pick a day to do two of them. Also, sorry for how long the journals always are. I'm assuming that's why I don't get many comments because it's too much to read. I just can't help it though!

So I'm sure I'm in the same boat as a lot of people with the thing I thought I'd never do but now do regularly. I've thought hard about it and it was tough to pick something and that is because there isn't much that I used to say I'd never do but do now. That may be from being so stubborn or being so anxious. I'm guessing it's a bit of both.

I'll come right out and say it. Drinking is the thing I said I'd never do and now do regularly. Now, when I say 'regularly' I don't mean it's an every day thing, I mean I do it fairly often. Once a weekend at least but maybe once during the week as well. I want anyone who might be reading this to know that I'm in no way trying to boast about being drunk and I'm not intending on making it seem like a good thing to do. I just simply have a good reason why I said I'd never do it.

Remember in grade school or high school when they would have police come in and talk to you about drugs and alcohol? You may not have had that, but they did it at my elementary school. I'm a very influential person and so having the police come in and talk about the dangers and consequences of drugs and alcohol really stuck with me. As well as them coming into our school, we had some kind of field trip at some point in grade school and I can't really remember what we were doing but I know there was a time they talked about drunk driving. I remember they put goggles on us and fixed them to make them incredibly blurry and impossible to see out of. They said, "This is what it's like when you've had too much alcohol. You don't think you could drive like this, do you?"

Apart from being taught that it's bad to do, I had my own anxieties about it. That started basically around when people around me wanted to try experimenting. I'd associated being drunk with vomiting, being dizzy, not being able to stand or talk and not being in control of yourself; everything I was afraid of. So of course when I was in my mid-teens I definitely avoided being anywhere I thought people would ask me to drink. I did really good with it. I'd started smoking weed when I was seventeen and thought it was good enough for me. Some people drank to have a good time, I could smoke. Eventually that stopped working for me when I put on about thirty pounds after a summer of smoking every day and had an incredibly severe panic attack when I was high. So I quit that.

One day during winter break of 2009, I was hanging out at my boyfriends house and we'd invited a couple people over to hang out with us. They'd brought alcohol with them and my boyfriend had some of his own. They all began drinking and I started feeling awkward and a little left out. I thought I'd have a little bit and give it a try. After a few mixed drinks, I still wasn't feeling anything so I'd took a couple shots as well. I remember starting to feel different and I realized that I must have been a little buzzed. Feeling good, I had a couple more shots and left it at that. In the end, I think I got a little drunk and declared that there was nothing to be afraid of.

The next weekend my boyfriend, brother and I bought alcohol again intending on it just being us drinking. While on Facebook, we noticed an old friend of ours was online and we decided that it would be fun to get to know each other again and it would be easy to talk since we'd be drinking. She ended up having a bottle of alcohol of her own and when we came over we started drinking quickly to get over the initial awkwardness of not having seen each other in a year and a half. Amanda, our friend, started drinking when she was fifteen and was clearly used to people drinking a lot. She's one of those people who's pouring shots for you and making it impossible to say no. I think I was so happy to be hanging out with her again that I wasn't paying attention to how much I was drinking and before I knew it, I was actually intoxicated.

I felt amazing. All the social anxiety I usually felt was gone and the shyness I was used to had disappeared. I was talking to Amanda as if we'd never stopped hanging out. I was unable to suppress little confessions I'd been keeping from her. I told her how I checked her Facebook every day when we stopped hanging out. I told her how much I'd missed her and hated that we hadn't hung out. After that weekend, things started changing.

Every weekend after that we drank. It was almost like some kind of tradition that we'd subconsciously made up. Every weekend we invited as many friends as we could to come over and we'd drink until there was nothing left. It was such a new experience for me; hanging out with more than a couple friends, hanging out with people I didn't even know and not having a single bit of anxiety about it. Usually I'd be in a corner, quiet and scared to talk to a single person. When I drank, I talked to as many people as I could. I felt great.

To this day, there hasn't been a weekend I haven't drank. Along with feeling great while drinking, there's been many bad times because of it. There's been nights of tears, nights of fights, blood, break-ups, fear and disaster. Even with that knowledge, I've never once thought about not drinking. I've gone against everything I used to be afraid of. I've thrown up more this year than I can count, I've been too dizzy to even close my eyes. There's been times where the room spun so much that I'd camped out on the floor and there's been times where I'd be so not in control of myself that I, at one point, didn't even recognize my boyfriend.

I fight with my mom a lot about it because she hates when I drink during the week as well as the weekend. She says to me, "Do you really hate yourself that much that you have to drink during the week too?" I constantly come back saying, "It's not because of that. It's just fun to do when you're with people." I do believe that too. I do believe it's just an all around fun thing to do with your friends and if you have the opportunity to drink with them, why say no?

But because of my deep love and friendship with my mom, I've slowed down on it to ease her concern. She tells me often that she can't believe that I drink since I used to be so afraid of it. That's why I chose it as the topic for this journal.

Again, in no way did I make this journal to exaggerate how much I drink, or how 'wasted' I've gotten. I'm not trying to be 'cool' or anything like that. It's hard to explain, but if you knew me two years ago and then knew me now you'd know why I chose drinking as the topic.

Yes, clearly I'm self-conscious of talking about it. -_-