Great piece Michele. I am currently navigating life with my 17-year-old nephew living with us. He has come from a world where alcohol flows in abundance and he has the default setting that drinking a lot is cool. So far he has had one weekend out where he claimed that he drank a lot but he can handle his booze so it's okay. Until he told me that he can't remember a thing. (That's not handling your booze in my books) He also felt so awful that he ended up missing a day of college.

Alcohol is not something that features much in our home so I have absolutely no qualms in letting him know that this is totally unacceptable. I don't care how "cool" his friends consider drinking to be. He claims to be into health, in which case, why flood his body with poison? I will be the nasty aunt who bans him from partying at the weekend if he misses college as a result again.