Everybody has a Story--"Rum"

My friend called me and said we should hang out, I should have said no...but if I had he probably wouldnt be alive today.

When I got over there it was like any other day, but then it started getting late and we ended up fairly bored with a gallon of Bucardi Rum... We started drinking, and we were duking it out on a killer pirate video game (it seemed only fit with the rum and all) the more we drank the funner the game got, and the more we got into the game the more we took up a pirate's drinking habits.  this continued for a while until my friend started feeling queezy, by this time the drink was almost completely gone, and I found myself finishing his glasses off after everyone of mine.  Suddenly my buddy rushed to the bathroom and started Puking, I wasnt too worried because we had drank a lot and I had heard of that happening before so I thought nothing of it.  When he didn't stop I got worried...When I went to check on him I found him vomiting blood all over himself and into the tub.  at this Point my fun night came to an abruct end and I sobered up real quick.  I spent the rest of the night forcing my friend to try and drink some water and keeping his head out of the puke so he could breath.  eventually at 6:30 AM I got him out of the tub and onto the couch where I gave him some water to try and drink, a piece of bread if he was daring, and then I had to walk 6 miles home in the brisk early winter morning air back to my house to avoid Parental detection.  right when I got home I pretended to have just woken up and begged to be able to go over to his house "early today" my confused Parents agreed and so I walked all the way back with a hang over to make sure he was ok.  eventually he could drink water and keep it down for a while.  but he stayed sick for about 18 hours.  I'm lucky I didn't watch my friend die from alcohol poisoning, because he should have been in a hospital.  That experience changed the way I thought about a lot of things like life, drugs, my friends, who I really care about, how destroyed I would have been if he had died, and it really just opened my eyes to the fact that its not all about fun and games.  Some things matter more to you than you could know, but don't make it take a near death or death experience to have you realise that.  bottom line is that yea it is a lot of fun, but if your not safe, or responsible, and even when you are sometimes, crap catches up with you.  its not worth the end result.

JG, age 16