Romancing The Bottle

I'm ashamed to say it, but I have to admit that I cannot hold my liquor. Over the years I 've used a multitude of reasons to convince myself that this does not matter, from saying that I'm young, that it's one night, everyone's having such a great time, it's all between friends and even going so far as to believe that i can't dance without a drink in my hand... well, three hours later, needless to say, I'm drunk and I'm defintely not dancing...
I used to say when I was younger that I would smoke but I would never drink. I remember always looking at the people around me who were falling down drunk with such distaste and think to myself that I will never let myself look like that.
To be honest, I'm not sure why I've learnt to drink the way I do.. I cannot really decide whether I start drinking by giving in to the peer pressure, or whether I start drinking because I actively crave the alcohol. After all, I know that for everytime I've given in to my friends about having a drink when I had decided I would not, I know that I have also called them up and dragged them to a bar to have a drink... to take the edge off...!! (shudder)
When I think about it, I'm not overly concerned that I have a drinking problem. I can go quite comfortably for a stretch of time without feeling the slightest urge to have a drink, and sometimes when people around me are drinking, I ignore this urge. My problem is that I never taught myself to drink right, to drink responsibly and most important to me, drink gracefully. I never taught myself how to pace myself, when to say no and when to say enough.
Now you can call me lazy, but I have no intention of teaching myself how either. Since there's a part of me that's become wary of the drink, I've come to the conclusion that the only thing for me to do is to take control, free myself from this vicious cycle of drinking and drama, and end my soul-sapping love affair with the bottle.
So for all my friends who have always said I'm so much of fun when I drink and when I party, and that there's no one as crazy as me in a club, I hope you all still find that I'm the same girl, just with a little more dignity.