Liquid Courage

_{photo by Nathan Powers}

If I can remember correctly, the first time ever where I tasted alcohol was at my uncle's wedding. I had seen my aunt drinking this drink out of a can and had asked her for some. I was a kid then and always wanted to have a taste of everything, so she had immediately taken a last sip from the drink before handing me the almost empty can.

I had gulped the whole thing down at once and didn't know it had alcohol in it until the effects started to kick in. The drink wasn't much, so the effect wasn't either. I just had this uncontrollable urge to sleep and kept nodding off during the whole journey back home, even my mom got upset with me because she was tired of apologising to people in the public bus who I kept hitting with my head everytime I closed my eyes and almost fell.

After that time, I didn't touch another alcoholic bottle until years later and this was because I've never really been a fan of it. I hated how bitter the whole thing tasted and would always refuse to drink it whenever it was offered to me by someone. I remember this one time where my dad, who also doesn't take alcohol, had come home with this bottle of wine.

It was wine so I just knew it was going to have a sweet taste to it because every wine I had tasted up till then was always sweet. So when he opened it, I had been the first person standing in front of him with a wine glass, asking him to give me some, which he did.

The moment that thing touched my lips, I knew I wasn't going to drink it again. It wasn't exactly bitter, but it wasn't sweet either, it was just somehow. I later found out it had alcohol in it and had given it to my brothers who were more than happy to take it from me.

Ever since then, I made sure to avoid alcohol as much as possible. Even the one time where we had gone for my secondary school reunion and everyone just seemed to want to drink beer for some reason, I had made it clear to them that I didn't want alcohol because I didn't like it, and had taken some soft drinks like some of the girls did.

But you see, all of that was years ago, it's an entirely different story now. When I got to the university, I found out that every event somehow had someone supplying alcohol in it. And I tried to fight it at first but some of these events I really wanted to attend and belong, so I decided to take one or two sips of it and then one day I decided to try the entire bottle.

And although I hated every drop of it, the feeling afterwards was something out of this world, the confidence that it gave me was something that I enjoyed, and now I find myself occasionally having a bottle or two whenever I'm with the guys.

I still hate the taste, but I love the feeling it gives me. Luckily for me, I've been careful enough to not take more than I can handle, so aside from speaking boldly to people I normally wouldn't talk to, my alcohol journey has been pretty normal...nothing embarrassing has happened yet and hopefully won't.