I didn't drink alcohol in high school, but had plenty of friends who did. They just knew I wouldn't want to, and was not planning on staying in my hometown forever anyway. But I had classmates who were thrown out of the high school musical when they were caught drinking (drunk) the night of the first performance, the scene they were in got a hasty rewrite, 6 fewer dancers. We were 15 years old. I would say more than half my classmates were drinking - probably closer to 90% - before we graduated high school. It was "normal."

I had a few drinks in college (I think a total of 4, maybe 5) before I decided drinking was just something I did not want to do. All my friends did, even though the drinking age had been chaged to 21, and we were 18. They understood my decision for the most part - or just accepted it, and the rides home. The most amazing thing to me was that the woman who kept pushing, saying "Oh, but just try THIS one - it's yummy, you can't taste the alcohol at all" was the adult daughter of an alcoholic who made her childhood miserable. The one person who finally snapped at her, said "Cut it out, X, leave Karen alone! She doesn't WANT to drink, don't you GET it?" was the guy in our crowd who ended up in detox shortly after college.