Alcohol is everywhere: adverts, films, family parties, the fridge. So it can seem like a different category from the stuff in your drug awareness lesson. It is not. Alcohol is a drug, a depressant, meaning it slows your brain down. The relaxed, giggly feeling is your judgement and your reactions being switched off, one notch per drink. Adults have collectively decided to live with this particular drug, but living with it means understanding it, and at your age the understanding matters more, because it hits you harder.
One fact first: most people your age are not drinking. The surveys show it every year. However it looks on social media on a Saturday, "everyone drinks" is just not true.
| Situation | Legal? |
|---|---|
| A shop selling alcohol to someone under 18 | Illegal, and shops lose their licence over it |
| Under 18 buying or trying to buy alcohol | Illegal, and fake ID is fraud on top |
| An adult buying drinks for under 18s | Illegal, with one narrow exception: 16 and 17 year olds having beer, wine or cider with a meal at a table, with an adult |
| Drinking at home, over the age of five, with parents' permission | Legal, surprisingly |
| Under 18s drinking in the street or park | Police can confiscate the alcohol and take you home |
That home-drinking law shocks everyone. Legal from five. But the Chief Medical Officers, the UK's top doctors, advise an alcohol-free childhood, and say under 15s should not drink at all. The gap between what is legal and what is smart is where your judgement comes in.
You are smaller than an adult, so the same drink puts more alcohol in your blood. Your brain is still building itself, and the parts alcohol interferes with, memory and judgement, are the parts under construction. And you have no calibration: adults have learned, slowly, what one drink feels like versus four, while teenagers famously find out all at once. That is why young people end up on the ground far more often than measured adult drinkers, and it is biology, not weakness.
Ask police officers what alcohol really does and they will not mention livers. Alcohol multiplies whatever is already happening. An argument multiplies into a fight. A walk home multiplies into being lost, alone, phone dead. A photo multiplies into a permanent regret. A stranger being friendly multiplies into a situation you cannot easily get out of. The drink is only half the risk. The place and the people are the other half, which is why a park at night with older kids and no adults is a different proposition from anywhere with people who would look after you.
If you are ever somewhere people are drinking, the rules that actually keep people safe are simple. Stay with your friends and leave with your friends. Keep your phone charged and know your way home. Never let anyone wander off drunk on their own, and never accept that someone unconscious is "fine, just sleeping".
If someone collapses after drinking: roll them onto their side in the recovery position so they cannot choke, call 999, stay with them, and tell the paramedics honestly what they had. Alcohol keeps absorbing after the last drink, so someone can get worse after passing out. "Letting them sleep it off" is how young people die from drinking. Ring. Nobody gets in trouble for saving their mate's life.
"I'm not drinking tonight" is a complete sentence and needs no excuse. If you want one anyway, keep it concrete: training in the morning, parents pick you up and check, you just don't fancy it. Say it with no drama and move the conversation on. Anyone who keeps pushing after that has told you something useful about how much they respect you. Write your line here:
Childline is free and confidential on 0800 1111, about anything, including if someone at home drinks in a way that scares or worries you. That last one matters: if that is your house, you are not alone, it is not your fault, and Nacoa (0800 358 3456, nacoa.org.uk) exists exactly for you. Talk to Frank has the straight facts on alcohol like any other drug. And in an emergency, 999, every time.