Drinking til you drop

When both girls were living here, I used to encourage them to go out.  Seems weird probably but step-daughter was reclusive by nature and could easily spend hours upon days holed up in her room, hiding from having to deal with the world.  Being out in society and learning how to manage social relationships was actually something she really needed to work on.  She has some social anxiety issues so it was tough work for her at times.

One time the girls went to a local dance held at one of the night clubs.  They would hold teenager dances on the Friday nights, no one over the age of 18 allowed and no alcohol was served.  They weren’t exactly closely monitored like a school dance was but you know, most teenage dances really aren’t.  As one can imagine, there was lots of drinking and drug intake by lots of different kids attending.

This one particular dance ended really quickly for the girls one Friday night.  It was winter and I think close to Christmas and I get a frantic text message asking me to go and pick them all up because it’s not safe to be there and all kinds of things are happening.  Through a series of text messages, step-daughter made it clear that she was freaking out because there was this girl in the bathroom when she was in there and she was so drunk that she passed out and started having a seizure.  Then all the other kids were screaming about how she was dead.  The ambulance and police were there and there were a few kids puking and passing out all over the place.  Sounds like some kids had gotten into some bad stuff.

I was pretty sure no one had died since my pager hadn’t gone off so I headed in and picked them all up.  One girl high-tailed it downtown to find a party because no way was she going to go home when it was only 10 at night (plus she was lit up pretty good already).  The rest of them went home, kind of freaked out.

What it did do was generate some good discussions around drinking and what’s appropriate and how much and how often and when and why people drink and the girls were adamant that they wouldn’t let each other get that drunk that they passed out.  For all their drug issues, they actually held that promise while they were still friends.  I think it was a lesson that must have really stuck with them and it’s probably a lesson we should have talked about before someone was found unconscious on the bathroom floor since it could have easily been one of them!