Looking in from the outside

By a 19 year old female from NSW

'Will twenty dollars be enough?' My friend Lilly and I giggled shyly to Jack, a boy one year older than us who had just invited us to pitch in on the beer for the evening. As with most things during the early teen years, we were filled with nervousness and confusion, was this enough? Were we looking way to desperate giving so much money? Trying to pretend you'd done something a thousand times before was second nature to me back then, but thinking back to it, being a 14 year old with no previous drinking experience really shouldn't have been that strange. It turned out 20 bucks for the two of us was just right (big sighs of relief from Lilly and me) and 6 hours later we were nicely tipsy singing 'we are the champions' at the top of our lungs with a big group of friends.

That first night was a lot of fun, I spent the bulk of the evening doing the regular things a first time drinker does 'You are soooooooooooooooooo my ultimate number one best friend ever in the world forever and ever... what's your name?' and by about midnight I was ready for bed. Crawling into the nicely made out mattress on the floor, I lay down and wondered if Lilly had had as much fun as me - I had been so caught up with my new 'best friends' I hadn't really seen a lot of her that night. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, another of my good friends Rebecca came bombarding in the room 'THERE you are!!! Lilly needs you, quick, quick, quick'.

Lilly was lying on the bathroom floor with her head uncomfortably resting at an odd angle against the wall. She mumbled some incoherent words, coughed and spluttered alarmingly loud and then all at once, her body heaved and the nights dinner, snacks, and beer came pouring out all over her dress. The night got very messy, Lilly told me things I never even thought a girl of our age could know about, let alone be thinking about herself. She ripped her clothes off and announced she was so ugly she might as well show everyone what she looked like naked and tried to parade herself around infront of the whole party, she vomited and vomited and vomited till it was only a bright yellow substance and told us all if we ever told anyone she'd hate us so much she'd have to kill herself. The next morning, we all woke up with throbbing heads and bad tasting mouths. Lilly woke up with a cloud of shame and embarrassment over her head. None of us said anything about it.

From there on in it just got worse and worse. There were 5 or 6 of us girls who would have to meet together before any party - one girl would be the designated sober one and was primarily in charge of Lilly. Then there would be 2 others, who wouldn't get completely wasted, and the others were free to do what they wanted, we rotated on a weekly basis - our tasks were to take her drinks and hide them, distract her so that someone else could swap her drink for another non alcoholic one, hold her hair back when she threw up, clean up, and put her to bed. For a while we seemed to have a grip on the situation, we all did what we had to do and rarely spoke about it outside of 'party hours'. Then one night she threw the biggest tantrum I have ever seen and told us all she was sick of our pity, sick of watching us pretend we cared when she knew we didn't.

Angry at her for being so unappreciative, we stubbornly told her FINE! And refused to care for her that evening. So hurt and angered by our actions and fuelled by all the alcohol she has consumed, she locked herself in the bathroom and attempted suicide.

The next few weeks were mayhem - my best friend Rebecca and I took her to see a counsellor for a few weeks which seemed to do her good. She refused to tell her parents so we had to pool the money together ourselves, but we figured it was worth it. Unfortunately, Lilly didn't really take to the help and she ended up leaving our school and cutting us all off entirely - I think she just needed a fresh start with people who didn't know her deepest darkest secrets and problems.

I have seen her since, and I know she's doing really well now, and I can only hope that some of it is because we took her to get professional help. It's great to see her happy again, and to know that she has her drinking under control, but every time I do see her I can't help but feel really sad and angry that alcohol had to ruin our friendship the way it did. Her problem was a huge weight on the shoulder of our great friendship, and in the end we just couldn't handle it.