That might have two of the main reasons that it all later turned out so bad; it was fun, and I didn't get especially sick. Also the fact that it was "normal" amongst us teenagers to be really drunk in the weekends. These are only thinkable explanations - we always have a freedom to choose, and I chose to drink. It made me more popular, and I thought I had fun.

I had to lie to my mother all the time, and I lived with a constantly bad conscience. But the desire to be popular, and to have fun was obviously stronger. I was, and still am, also the kind of person who couldn't stand old routine, wanted things to happend all the time. A weekend without plans was the worst I could think of. I loved fancy restaurants, expensive dinners with expensive wines etcetera. It wasn't only the drinking - I also wanted to show off, get attention, though I didn't have much money. I never had...

The years went by and my friends started to vanish - the got married, got kids, moved away but I didn't seem to notice that they went onto another kind of life. I just went on with my drinking and what I considered as fun. During the teenage it was sort of "normal", as I said before and I guess it really was fun at that time, but the others grew up, and I remained in the drinking - hardly noticing what the others were up to. When I look back at this time now, it just seems empty, artificial or superficial.

Somehow I managed to get a good job, I had a nice apartment - the drinking hadn't started to affect my social life yet. It took many years until I started to get bad consequenses from my drinking - in fact I can say almost exact date. It was in 1984.

The heavy drinking during all those years destroyed my emotional life, but that I wasn't aware of of course. My lovelife was a disaster, I realize now, but I didn't then. It took almost a year after I'd quit drinking before I could cry, for example. I had no normal reactions - lots of horrible things happend in my life, but finally I lived in some kind of vacuum. Never happy, never sad...

Everything had to happen so fast, I could never wait and I was so convinced that the first feeling always was 100% right. So when I met this man, after three months we were married, I quit my job, and we moved to another town where I didn't know a single soul.