My brother sneaked a bottle of dad's good whiskey out of a cabinet when I was 11 and I took a big swig from it. After that, I didn't drink alcohol until I was about 25, give or take a year. That one swig was enough til then, believe me.
At 25, I saw myself as a dedicated husband and father working 60-hours a week who totally deserved a Friday night out to get sloshed and laugh my arse off with the work-crew, and I made it a near-weekly habit. When my wife said that for every one of my Fridays out with the guys, she deserved a Saturday out with her girlfriends, I saw the logic in that...mainly because it was basically an ultimatum; "Give up your Fridays or give me Saturdays."
The real trouble started soon after our daughter was born. I'd found a better job and we moved from our quaint little town to a big city, where Shelly's nights out with a bunch of new gal-friends included lots of drugs, weed, and philandering, and weren't limited to Saturdays.
I wasn't going out drinking with the crew on Fridays. I worked late, worked weekends, and my co-workers were more, um, sophisticated, you could say. Plus, they were mostly women and mostly married. So I only drank occasionally during that time; on holidays, sometimes my birthday, sometimes at barbecues; and I didn't drink enough to get drunk. I really had to stay sober because we had 3 kids and Shelly got totally wasted nearly every day, right up til the divorce. Well, and after.
Fast-forward to today; I don't drink alcohol.