6 Lies I Believed About Alcohol When I Was In High School (from our College Intern, Savannah Behr)

As a teenager, you think your 15-year-old peers are almost always right and that your friend's 17-year-old brother is the keeper of all wisdom known to man. Especially about alcohol. When he tells you that alcohol is the safest drug or that 21+ is an injustice, you take it as gospel. 

Myths and exaggerations about drinking are passed around by teenagers like a game of telephone. Here are six myths I believed in high school and why they’re dangerously untrue. 

Alcohol is less harmful than other drugs.

This particular myth is everywhere. Alcohol is sold at grocery stores, people drink anywhere from Easter brunch to a baseball game, surely it must be the safest drug. However, alcohol is a “high-risk drug” due to its serious health, safety, and addiction risks. When considering overall harm to society combined with harm to individuals, alcohol is more dangerous than heroin. Not only that, but because alcohol is a carcinogen, no amount is technically safe. 

“I know my limit,” and “If I don’t feel drunk, I’m not."

As a current college student, I still hear things like this all the time, but the idea that we can predict and perceive how much alcohol we can tolerate is false. Alcohol impairs brain functions, one of which is our ability to gauge how impaired we are. The drunker you get, the less able you are to tell how drunk you are, and the more this “limit” becomes obscured. And anyway, your body's ability to process alcohol and how much damage it does changes all the time, with constant shifts in body chemistry.

If we lowered the drinking age, people would be safer.

A frequent complaint teenagers make is that the 21+ drinking age is not only annoying but also makes drinking more dangerous because young adults won’t “know how to drink.” People use Germany’s gradual drinking legality, starting with beers and seltzers at 16, as evidence that the U.S. should lower ours. Yet this example may suggest otherwise. They see huge spikes in alcohol-related deaths and injuries at age 16 and again at 18, when liquor becomes legal. Though it isn’t a dramatic difference, Germany also has higher rates of alcohol-related deaths and injuries than the U.S. overall. They do have lower rates of alcohol-related car accidents but this could be attributed to far stricter drunk driving laws and better public transportation. 

Alcoholics drink all day, every day.

Many people think alcoholics drink 24/7. This can certainly be the case, but alcoholism is a spectrum with many different presentations. An alcoholic can embody a dramatic image of a man with a five o’clock shadow, swinging around a beer, and slurring insults at strangers. An alcoholic can also appear as a 17-year-old with a 4.0 GPA, on the field hockey team, with perfect attendance, and committed to UCLA, yet drinks to the point of blacking out every weekend. 

Diluting or sipping alcohol makes it safer, no matter how much you drink. 

While diluting your alcohol and drinking slowly can reduce immediate risks like vomiting or passing out, the important thing is how much alcohol is consumed. Not the method or time frame. Whether you drink several beers over a few hours or several shots within one hour, you’ve still put that much alcohol into your body. In some cases, it allows you to drink much more and delay what eventually becomes a much worse reaction. A perfect example is “BORGS,” or “Black Out Rage Gallons,” where a concoction of 50% vodka and 50% water is put in an empty milk gallon and sipped over the course of a day. Sometimes electrolyte powder and flavor is added. You might think borgs are safer, after all, they’re half water and those electrolytes must help. The issue is that you’ve still ingested a fifth of vodka, which is a dangerously large dose of alcohol. Yes, it’s generally better to drink more slowly and with as much water as possible, but the best thing you can do is drink less, not differently. 

Everyone drinks.

I’ve heard this more than any other claim and even remember saying it myself. However, though rates of teen drinking in Marin are quite high compared to other places, teens consistently overestimate how much their peers are drinking. Using data from the California Healthy Kids Survey, 11th graders drank the most. However, 68% had not drunk at all in the month in which they answered. 20% had drunk 1-2 days, and only 1% had drunk 10-19 days. This perception that “everyone’s doing it” is false and only serves to influence teens to fall into unhealthy patterns of drinking.

The truth is…

 Though your friend’s 17-year-old brother is really cool and, honestly, you’re flattered he’s even speaking to you, he’s probably just as misinformed as you are. When teens believe that everyone’s drinking and that they can predict and control the effects of alcohol, they start earlier and take more risks. In reality, the small percentage of your peers who do drink probably aren’t paying attention to whether you are. You don’t need to follow them.

Savannah Behr is a Marin native and student at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she covers student health and safety for the CUIndependent. A Tam High alum, Savy brings lived experience with teen cannabis addiction and a passion for helping youth and parents better understand the real impact of underage substance use. Through her writing, research, and peer connection, she aims to support informed, prevention-focused conversations in the Marin community.