My name is Alejandro and I wanted to share my story on when I started abusing alcohol and where I am now. The first time I tried alcohol was at a quinceanera. I was chambelan and another girl brought four lokos in the limo. At first I didn’t know what those were. I asked her and she did say it was alcohol. She kept offering me until I said yes. I took like 4 or 5 sips and I was already starting to feel tipsy since it was my first time drinking. I started to like the feeling of it that I was craving more. I asked her if she had more and she gave me a full can of four loko. I got really drunk that day. Thankfully, I didn’t get caught by my mom. After that day, I started drinking every weekend. Hard liquor and specially four lokos. I enjoyed feeling drunk. I started getting invited to house parties to drink and I would always be there. 

When I went to high school, there was a day that I took alcohol to school. It was a pink bottle and my school would sell slurpees in strawberry and pineapple flavor. I would buy the strawberry flavor since it was pink and I would go to the restroom and replace it with alcohol. I would then go outside during lunch and nobody had an idea that I was drinking alcohol during school. I felt so cool. It started becoming a habit. I met new friends and they introduced me to weed. I tried it and I liked the feeling of it but I would always get paranoid. It always gave me a panic attack so I knew I didn’t want to keep using weed. I wanted alcohol. 

During sophomore year I met a guy that I really liked. We became official and dated for about a year and two months. During that time I was not abusing alcohol because I was so happy with him and I didn’t need other ways to find happiness. After we broke up I went through major depression. I missed school for about 2 weeks and I was drinking almost everyday. I started going to gay prides and more house parties. I got a fake ID so I would also go to clubs that were 18 and over since I was not 18 yet.