Before anyone ever takes a hit, or a drink, or a smoke, there is a decision made in the mind - a healthy decision or an unhealthy one. Sometimes as ourselves making a healthy choice is hard because we are tired, stressed, angry, pressured, or influenced by another person - e.g why we end up eating chocolate instead of fruit as eating things like chocolate stimulates our minds. As nicotine is legal to take at the age of 16 by law it has become a well known behaviour for 16 year olds and sometimes younger individuals to do. It's also socially acceptable within a crowd at school and is almost promoted by older peers and even role models in the media.
Suggested reasons for the use of alcohol and tobacco fall into wide categories: Drugs may increase the desired effects of the person, or may decrease the toxic or unpleasant effects of the person. These interactions involve processes of reinforcement or acceptance. Some drugs may change the metabolism of the person, there by affecting there intake, distribution, or elimination from the body has not been truly accepted.
Part of the process of growing up involves trying new things (especially at my age 16), and one of the easiest adult thing to try is alcohol or sex but for this reason Alcohol. Teenagers end up using alcohol for many reasons, including reducing stress - which as performers we are up against a lot -, to feel grown up and fit in - ‘if my friends are doing it, it persuades me to do it’-, because it feels good, out of curiosity, because our parents do, and because it is easy to get.
My personal experience of alcohol started when I was a boy, my dad liked to make me feel like a man, so every couple of weeks or so when we went to the pub after his work, he would slip a straws worth of beer in to my lemonade to make it a weak shandy, and as time went on I was allowed a little stronger shandy and then last year at Glastonbury he treated me to my first beer (well he thought it was). I