The Draw the Line poster really hit a memory with my childhood that I wanted to tell my story. As a little girl, up untill I was fourteen, I can remember my mother and her friends drinking every day after school. I hated her friends and had so much anger, that I could not understand how a mother could have her children taken away two times and still not give up alcohol. My siblings and I all left home when we were around 12-14. I lived wherever I could find people to take me in ,so that I wouldn't have to go back home to the smell of alcohol or cigarettes. My mother and her friends would drink till evening then go to the bars, sometimes we didn't see her for days. But when she wasn't drinking she was the best mother you could want but it never lasted. My son and I have discussed it and they know what my brothers, sisters and I went through. I would actually come home from school and sneak beer out and throw it away. I think my siblings and I turned out pretty good considering being in an orphanage, foster homes and living with various people. we were all trying to survive on the streets somehow that's why I have such a passion for youth.
Drinking does not only affect people but the state also. There are counseling costs ,rehab costs, therapy costs. My mom would go see us in our foster homes which also cost money because we were all scattered in California somewhere. My mom later had medical problems as she got older. Alcohol took it's affect on my dad and he eventually died from liver disease,so I tell people it will catch up with you later in life when people decide to quit by then the damage is done to all your loved ones. Draw the Line, do not contribute to minors,be a responsible adult remember infants don't have a choice to come in to this world of alcohol, my mother used to beat on all of us for no reason only when she was drunk ,alcohol makes people do crazy stuff just like drugs.
Teenagers if you are in the same situation as I was, tell some one, a counselor , police officer, friend or relative,there is help you can get and people that really care and get you through it. I had so many kind people and good role models out there . So Draw the Line, make your self responsible and make adult responsible too.