I didn’t try alcohol until I was 25, but I’m definitely an outlier.

No. I didn’t drink alcohol until 21, and didn’t try weed until 25.

My friend and I bought weed once when we were 17, but we never got the chance to smoke it before a third friend ratted us out. I started drinking alcohol and smoking weed a year later when I got to college.

There’s an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in my area called “Never Had A Legal Drink.” It was created by and for people who decided that they were alcoholics and had to stop drinking before they turned 21.

Plenty of people get into drugs/alcohol at an early age.

I was a nervous kid. I didn’t try alcohol until 20 and weed till I was 31. They can be fun but remember your brain is still developing. Don’t really use them until that has stopped. They have profoundly negative effects on your developing brain.

And alcohol is literally just poison. Id avoid that completely if you don’t have a strong desire to drink. I say that as a neurodivergent that self medicates with alcohol. It’s not good stuff.

Not regularly or often, but yes. It’s actually legal from the age of 14 here (under parental supervision and only lower-alcohol stuff like beer). So I’d have a bit here or there for special occasions like New Year’s Eve. From the age of 16 you’re allowed to drink unsupervised. At that point some of my classmates already got drunk regularly. I never liked alcohol (or rather its effects) that much though and to this day I’ve never been drunk. These days I might drink something like a glass of wine every few weeks or so.

i started drinking at 14/15.

My psrents gave me a sip as a teen and I hated it. I tried it again at 21 and hated it then too. It was only a few years after that I tried something I liked.

I think I had a small amount of alcohol at weddings and new years celebrations when I was a teenager.

My parents don’t have the healthiest relationship with alcohol. it’s not the worst, but it never seemed cool or fun. It was just dad having a few cheap beers while watching the game. They never told me not to drink, either. No “forbidden fruit” allure.

I first got drunk at 13. It wasnt until 16 I was binge drinking around once a month and doing any drugs I could get(mostly weed). Around 22 I stopped drinking every weekend and stopped binge drinking. I wouldnt recommend it. But i dont think it had to much of an impact, except for having experienced a lot of crazy and dangerous things.

I think I’ve always been older than you…

I think I got drunk for the first time at the age of 13, partied hard til I was 19, then “took a break” from it and went hard again in my early army days (2015/16). I haven’t had any alcohol in 8ish years or something like that (for more than just religious reasons).

Some people, like me, just got drunk to be in a “better” position to make some indecent proposals to drunk girls in pubs/clubs, and once you’re out of that cycle (in my case, I met my now wife) it loses any utility. Other people really enjoy the effects of booze, and that’s it. The first group will more easily leave it in the past, for obvious reasons.

Yes, but I’ve stopped most of it since then. Had some great times, a few not so great, but in the end those were mostly good experiences.

Also alcohol is a drug, and one of the worst one.

No, didn’t touch it at all until I was in my mid 20s, and then it was only alcohol.

Tasted maybe a handful of times before 18 including being offered a shot of vodka once. I barely drink even now (23 y.o), maybe 1 unit every 2 or 3 months.