Kinda weird.
That night, I was drunk, I knew it because I couldn't walk straight, and I'd sometimes fall over. But mentally, I just felt normal. I didn't feel good, I didn't feel bad, I just felt mentally normal. And yes, the alcohol tasted bad. And it wasn't beer, it was whiskey, and it burned like a mother fucker. So that experience never lead to me drinking.
As an adult, my dad once brought home Mike's Hard Lemonade. I was curious about it, so I tried it. I liked it, I couldn't really taste the alcohol, it tasted like Sprite to me. I limited myself to no more than one a night. And at first I never felt drunk. No good or bad feeling, just normal. Then one day, I had two. And I didn't feel good. It felt very reminiscent of what my panic attacks from years earlier felt like. What I thought was happening was it was the first time I had gotten drunk since high school and I was the lightest of lightweights, so I was getting a sick feeling.. So I limited myself to one a night again. Then one night, after only having one, it felt like a panic attack again.. So I just stopped drinking, thinking I was like the lightest of lightweights that I get a sick feeling from from even one drink.
But you wanna know what was really going on, which I only realized years later? As an adult, the alcohol was making my Paxil not work, so the sick feeling pretty much WAS having panic attacks, because the whole reason I was put on paxil in the first place was to stop the panic attacks I was having. And it worked like a charm. But alcohol makes those kind of meds not work, so... > So even though I had had drinks since high school, I had never actually gotten drunk since high school. It only took a little bit of alcohol to make my meds stop working so I basically swore off alcohol. It didn't help that the one time I actually was drunk it didn;t feel like anything spectacular. So I don't even miss it.