Identifying Reasons Teens Drink Kathy’s lengthy affair with alcohol was nearly a birthright. She grew up in Rockville, Md., the fifth child of seven in a family in which, she says, problems were barely acknowledged and rarely discussed. Especially the alcoholism that Kathy says was a part of her family history.

In 1964, when Kathy was 10, her parents opened a restaurant. . . .

Kathy and her siblings all helped in the business, which took on a nightclub atmosphere after 8 p. m. “Customers would come for dinner, then dance and drink all night. At 1 a. m. they’d be stumbling out to their cars to drive home,” she says.

By the time she turned 12, Kathy had been drunk more than once—and figured out that she liked the euphoria of intoxication. “Drinking made me feel grown-up, cuter, smarter, and helped me flow with the rest of the world,” she says. In her chaotic, sibling-filled household, she was essentially an “invisible child,” she says, with no one noticing her drinking.

Maid of honor at age 14 at her sister’s wedding, Kathy remembers drinking beer after beer until, thoroughly intoxicated, she fled the scene—before the wedding photographs were even taken. . . . “Looking back now, I can say that I was in the early stages of alcoholism by then, having blackouts. Everyone else was busy surviving and doing their own thing, and no one seemed to notice that I needed help.”

—“This Mother Drank while Pregnant. Here’s What Her Daughter’s Like at 43,”
Alexandra Rockey Fleming

Kathy became addicted to alcohol in her teen years. Which factors influenced her drinking? Check all that apply.

She had a family history of alcohol addiction.
She liked the way drinking made her feel.
Her friends pressured her into using alcohol.
Her family did not care that she drank, even though she was underage.
She had easy access to alcohol through her family.
She was strongly influenced by positive messages about alcohol in the media.