I was fourteen years old when I was offered my first drink. It happened at a family friend’s Bar Mitzvah, and it was poppin’. There was a DJ who only played disco and blink-182, a bar for the adults, and a lot of dads dancing. But the boys I knew weren’t dancing; instead they were looking for alcoholic drinks left on tables, and they found them. Tons of them. Apparently people don’t care as much about finishing their drinks at an open bar.

So I followed these boys to the underside of a table in the back of the room and watched as they finished those drinks. A couple of them had had alcohol before, or at least said they had, trying to be cool. Two others were going to try it for the first time, so I watched as they sipped a glass of something orange with lipstick still on the rim. They made disgusted faces, then passed the glass around. When it got to me, I froze. That was the first time I really felt peer pressure. I held the glass in my hand and looked at what I later found out was a screwdriver: vodka and orange juice. Then I passed it to the next kid without ever lifting it to my face.

No one noticed. No one called me a sissy, or held me down and forced me to drink it; they just kept drinking themselves. I was lucky not to have to deal with more extreme peer pressure, and it was then that I decided I was never going to drink.

To this day I haven’t had a sip of alcohol. In high school, telling people that bit of information always led to curiosity. Most people asked if it was a religious thing. It’s not. Others would ask me if I drank beer … as if beer isn’t considered alcohol? I don’t know, drunk people aren’t the brightest. And sometimes peers would take my alcohol abstinence as a challenge, like “I’m going to be the person who gets Hunter to drink first!” But it never happened.

These days, as an adult, I usually get the opposite reaction. Telling someone that I don’t drink is usually met with respect. People will tell me that they’re jealous, that it’s a waste of time, or they’ll compliment me on my willpower. But honestly, it didn’t take much willpower at all; it just took me looking at the people closest to me. My family.

First off, my grandmother. She was beautiful, smart, loving. She was an amazing cook, a skilled seamstress. She was an artist, a gardener, and a handywoman. She could fix anything and hang wallpaper like a boss. But I never got to meet her, because she was a severe alcoholic and cigarette smoker who died before I was born.

Alcoholism is not a weakness; it’s a disease. It has nothing to do with willpower. It doesn’t matter if those affected are successful actors, Nobel prizewinners, political leaders, or a single mother of two like my grandmother—when an alcoholic starts drinking, they can’t stop. It’s just how the disease works. And it can be hereditary.

I see similarities between myself and my grandmother, little things that I’ve tried once and can’t quit. For example, I know it’s not the same, but I can’t have just one Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie. I also can’t stop biting my nails. And believe me, I’ve tried everything under the sun: I’ve put bitter polish on my nails that tastes like old feet, but in the end it would just make my mouth taste like old feet. I’ve snapped myself with a rubber band every time I raised my hand to my mouth, but that just hurt … a lot. I’ve even started getting my nails done with my girlfriend to curb this uncontrollable habit. Nothing works, and although it may not be a fatal habit, the fact that I can’t stop still scares me.

Ever since I was young, the idea of drinking scared me for the same reason. There was this mental dam separating me from a wave of alcohol, and if I unplugged it for just a sip, everything else would come crashing down. I was so sure in my head that I would become an alcoholic. And even though I never met my grandmother, I saw what addiction could do to good people when my mom remarried when I was five and we moved in with my three new brothers: Eric, Bryce, and Curtis.

Bryce, six years older than me, was always looking out for us. He played video games with us, threatened to beat anyone up who messed with us, and had the biggest heart you could imagine. And I thought I would have that forever, but I didn’t.

Bryce and his brothers had an anger inside them from their parents’ divorce and it affected all of us. As a way of rebelling, they started making horrible decisions, which led to addictions. At the time I didn’t know what they were doing, but I saw it break my stepdad and mom down and tear apart the family.

I would listen to these shouting matches between my parents and my stepbrothers regularly, until the day they were kicked out of the house for good. After that, I rarely saw my brothers. The few times I did see them, our relationship was different, if there at all. But with Bryce I always believed the brother I knew was in there somewhere. I could see it underneath his tattoos, and his toughness, and I really wanted him to come back. But years later, when I was a teenager, Bryce went to prison. He got out, only to be sentenced again, this time for eight years.

Early last year he was released from prison and I finally got my older brother back. And the rest of my brothers are all on track now too. But that time in between, where they were gone from my life, will always be a reminder for me to not drink alcohol.

Sure, I know there are plenty of adults who can have a glass of wine with dinner or a drink with friends after work and be okay. And that’s totally fine. But for me, the benefits are very heavily outweighed by the what ifs of it all.

What I’m trying to say is, rather than sit under a table smelling cheap booze and old lady lipstick, it probably would have been more fun out on the dance floor. Even if the DJ was playing “All the Small Things” for the fourth time.