The beginning, was innocent in appearance - merely a bottle of my father's beer, in order to calm myself before the big exam.
My first drink, an experiment recommended by a friend in the senior class, was meant only as a last resort - I needed to pass this test, you realize. Ah, but how that amber liquid metamorphosed to pure silk in my mouth, sloshing down my throat at first, quickly changing to a tender caress. The first sip, followed by a second, and a third, and so on in rapid sequence. I proceded to another bottle, just as possessed of tranquility as the first. When my temples throbbed with the excruciating intensity of a thousand bass drums the subsequent morning, the lucidity gained from the previous night's feast with Bacchus had somehow slipped from my grasp. I failed the exam, so piercing was my headache.
Upon arriving home, I made my way directly to the liquor cabinet, in the hopes of discovering a tangible comfort to assuage the misery brought on by my scholarly defeat. A mostly filled bottle of bourbon sat in the foremost corner of the cabinet. I swallowed it all down that afternoon, and was left with an empty decanter - which I stowed away in the cellar, lest my parents know of this newfound pastime – and a somewhat intriguing sense of inebriation. Days, weeks, months passed, and I found myself indulging in alcohol much more often, for a myriad of reasons. One day, I had a terrible quarrel with my girlfriend - a bit of Jack Daniels put that unpleasant situation out of my mind.