When you have confidence and strength of character, saying “no” to a glass of liquid courage at a party is a no-brainer

Alcohol is liquid confidence in a pretty glass bottle to many people I know. They drink for fun, for courage, out of anger or depression. They end up getting stupid and sick, and regretting many things they've done along the bumpy path of partying. No thanks. I choose to stay sober.

I don't go to parties very often because alcohol is usually there. I've been to a few parties here and there and always ended up playing babysitter: a great deterrent. The last time I went to a party I walked through the front door and heard wailing. I followed the horrific noise up the stairs only to find my friend sitting in the bathroom half naked next to a toilet, crying. It turns out he drank too much alcohol, too fast. He'd never drunk before, made up for it that night, and now was a complete and total frantically depressed mess. His moods changed within seconds, from being happy to see me and then back to crying again, thinking he was ruining the party for everyone. He was a disaster, a light switch of polar opposite emotions.

Another time, a friend of mine got completely plastered and ran around outside in the middle of winter without a shirt on. His favourite shirt ended up somewhere in a tree. But the one drinking incident that is forever etched in my memory occurred at a family reunion. I was 13 and my family was partying it up. It was way past dark and we kids decided to play a game. We placed a red glow stick in a bottle, threw it and raced frantically to find it in the tall prairie grass. In the middle of our game, a group of younger adults in our family interrupted us. One of them began flailing at our bottle, having a fake with it, throwing feeble punches and making weak kicks, while the rest of the group encouraged him. He looked pathetic. Right at that moment, I could not figure out for the life of me why someone would want to do this to themselves.

Many people, not just teenagers, drink out of curiosity, to feel good, to fit in, for confidence or to feel older. Peer pressure is a large part of the decision, but I blame the advertising industry as well. Everywhere you look, you see pictures of beautiful girls drinking pretty coloured liquid in large crystal glasses to make us believe that if we, too, drink this amazing liquid, we will get our chance to be as beautiful, or for boys, to get close to someone as beautiful. I think the constant bombardment of ads for alcohol and cigarettes is part of a substantial push in the rising amount of teenagers turning to drinking and smoking too.

The music industry is pushing an almost identical message. Many artists condone smoking marijuana and using other illicit drugs. Artists under the legal age limit are singing songs about getting drunk in clubs. Take the song Tipsy by J-Kwon, which starts off with this as an intro: "Teen drinking is very bad / Yo, I got a fake ID though." Songs like this send a message to all of us that breaking the law is all good and fun. One of the most popular definitions of "party" on www.UrbanDictionary.com is “when everyone gets together at someone's house, gets drunk, consumes illegal substances like weed and coke, and trashes the place completely.”