With drinking laws dictating when and where alcohol can be purchased and consumed, it is commonly kept away from small children and underage teens. However, kids have a tendency to emulate their parents in an attempt to seem grown-up, even if it isn't something their parents want them to do. So when they see daddy enjoying a cold beer in his chair or mommy having a glass of strange-looking grape-juice with her girlfriends, you'll bet that the kids will want to try some.
Expect the kids to be caught in some manner and punished in some way. Maybe their parents catch them drinking it, see the kids stumbling, notice suspicious winestains in the carpet, or perhaps they'll recognize a hangover when they see one. Or maybe mom notices her treasured bottle of Chateau Lafite 2001 is missing, or dad notices that his 20 year-old single malt scotch whiskey bottle is almost empty.
When the story is not An Aesop about temperance or abstinence of chemical enhancements, it is usually Played for Laughs. May overlap with Wild Teen Party.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Crayon Shin-chan: Shin and Hima once get interested in Hiro's beer, but he won't let them have any because they're underage. They even try getting some from the store, but get caught. In the end, they do get a taste from some beer Hiro spilled, only to find it disgusting.
Fan Works
- Another Brother: During their childhood, Sokka and Zuko once sneaked off with a bottle of their father's wine, convinced they were old enough to drink like men. The following morning, they are both hungover and sick to their stomachs. Hakoda has the both of them work with him in the fishing boat, arguing that if they think they were going to drink like men, they were going to work like men.
- A Blight on Bonesborough: In an effort to help Amity loosen up, Eda tells her that the only rule of the Bad Girls Coven is that There Are No Rules. This spurs Amity to start neglecting her chores and personal hygiene, culminating in her drinking an entire bottle of Eda's apple blood, making herself incredibly sick. Carmila advises Eda that Amity needs more structure in her life in order to function, helping her set up some basic rules.
- In Dæmorphing, when the Animorphs are forced to retreat to Kref Magh, they snatch a bottle of limoncello from Nora which comes out a few times and is passed around.
- Found in the Boiling Isles: Luz's Unusual Upbringing: While her family's attending a gala, Boscha repeatedly attempts to sneak over and swipe some apple blood from the bar.
- In Helluva Dad, Jake didn't mean to get drunk, but was thrown into a beer barrel alongside Moxxie, causing both to wind up utterly wasted.
- Hunters Human Hysterics: It's revealed that Hunter frequently drank alcohol during social events at the Boiling Isles, as well as used it to dull the pain from various injuries. He wasn't even aware that there was a non-alcoholic version of apple blood.
- Off To The Races: Mob first started drinking when she was eight, which developed into a drinking habit. Her brother Sho doesn't care for drinking himself, so he doesn't pick up the habit.
- In Owl's Hell That Ends Well, Fizzarolli tells Loona that he and Blitzo used to sneak drinks when they were younger. He admits that he doesn't view these memories quite as fondly after seeing how Barbie became an addict, and he reminds Loona that drinking won't actually fix any of her problems, just help her forget about them temporarily.
- Vineyard Shrine:
- Taylor hits the bottle HARD as a coping mechanism, which leads to her becoming a Priestess of Dionysus.
- Emma tests one of the wines in her father's cabinet, finding it so foul that she promptly swears off drinking entirely.
- The Omake Wetting the odds (Or: "How Dry I am") has Dinah do this after her powers tell her that alcoholism would protect her from Coil.
- Watching Amphibia: Played for Drama in Make it stop, a one-shot set before the series begins. Sasha visits Anne's house while clearly intoxicated; before Anne can berate her for this, the blonde breaks down crying, asking why the alcohol isn't making the pain go away like her mother always claimed it did. Sasha prevents Anne from alerting her parents to what's happening, ordering her not to tell anyone even while puking her guts up. Though she recovers by the next morning, Anne is left feeling sickened over the whole ordeal, wondering what could have driven Sasha to drink so much in the first place.
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:
- Aldrin attends a high school party where the host mixes up everything in his parents' liquor cabinet and has Aldrin drink it as part of a hazing ritual, which gets him sloshed almost immediately.
- During his birthday party, Tyler passes around a bottle of booze from his parents' liquor cabinet and gets everyone at his party drunk.
Films — Live-Action
- The young Lorraine does this offscreen in Back to the Future. After arriving at the High-School Dance, she pulls out a bottle of alcohol to share with Marty, explaining that, "I swiped it from the old lady's liquor cabinet."
- In House Arrest, the kids raid the Beindorfs' wine cabinet during the obligatory Wild Teen Party. When Mrs. Beindorf finds out about it, she yells at them so loudly that they shut down the party immediately.
Literature
- A rare accidental example in Anne of Green Gables. When Anne has Diana over for a fancy tea party at her house, Marilla suggests that Anne serve her the bottle of raspberry cordial in the pantry. However, since Marilla forgot that she put the raspberry cordial in the cellar, the only bottle Anne finds contains 3-year-old homemade currant wine. This gets Diana drunk after three large helpings, causing her mother to forbid Anne from seeing her for a long time, thinking it was on purpose. However, Marilla does point out that Diana having three glasses of anything was quite greedy, even if it had just been cordial, so the temperance aesop is still in play.
- The Doctor Who novel The Stone Rose mentions an incident where a pre-teen Rose Tyler and her friend, Shareen, drank some wine belonging to Rose's mother to get themselves pepped up for a party. Both girls ended up falling asleep after only one glass each, missed the party and got into serious trouble.
- In I Wish You All the Best, Nathan, Meleika, and Sophie talk Ben into going to a Wild Teen Party where Todd, one of the guests, has smuggled in the contents of his father's liquor cabinet. Ben has their Foul First Drink and then has a panic attack, partly due to the effects of the alcohol.
- In The Indian in the Cupboard, Omri uses this as an excuse when his dad catches him sneaking into the liquor cabinet, since he can't exactly say it's for the tiny cowboy in his room upstairs.
- In Midnight, Violet (who is thirteen), her classmate Jasmine, and her adoptive older brother William (who's an older teen but not eighteen yet) try some wine while the parents are away.
- Spoonbenders: When Matty was only two-years old, Teddy (who was supposed to watch him) accidentally drank a glass of his gin. Twelve years later, Irene still uses this to guilt trip Teddy when she makes him look after him. All Teddy has as a retort is that if Matty would get into his gin stash again, it would be on purpose this time.
- Then Again, Maybe I Won't: Tony, his rich next door friend Joel and his old friend from the inner city, Frankie, are hanging out in Joel's basement when Joel jimmies into his father's liquor cabinet. The three boys get drunk.
- This Side of Paradise: When he was a child, Amory was left alone in a hotel and slipped some of his mother's liqueur. While he liked the taste, he got a little drunk and ended up smoking a cigarette, which he reacted to quite negatively. His mom was horrified when she found out but at the same time was amused on the inside.
Live-Action TV
- Played for Horror in "The Sleepover" from Cold Case. At the titular sleepover, one of the girls raids her friend's parents' liquor cabinet after they witnessed abuse being perpetrated within the family. This is the trigger event that leads her to become The Alcoholic throughout her life.
- The Cosby Show: In "I'm 'In' With the 'In' Crowd", 16-year-old Vanessa and her friends play the alphabet game with a bottle of bourbon. It's stated that all of them get very drunk, though Vanessa is the only one shown onscreen.
- Everybody Loves Raymond: In "The Disciplinarian", to get back at Robert for blabbing to their parents about all the times he had snuck out after curfew as a teenager, Ray relates an incident where teenage Robert stole a bottle of their father's peppermint schnapps to take to a concert, getting around the padlock on the liquor cabinet by pushing the cabinet away from the wall and popping out the back panel.
- In Happy Days, "Richie's Cup Runneth Over" has Richie and Potsie (who are fifteen at the time) get drunk on beer at a party.
- In the Roseanne episode "One for the Road", 15-year-old Becky and her friends make "tornadoes" out of a mixture of things from the liquor cabinet plus a splash of root beer.
- Two and a Half Men: After Jake entered his "stupid teenager" phase, he would do this periodically with his Uncle Charlie. Charlie tended to be more angered at the missing liquor than the drunken antics that followed.
Music
- The Fountains of Wayne song "Fire Island" includes "drinking all the alcohol" as one of many forbidden things two kids do while their parents are on vacation.
- Annie Ross' vocalese rendition of the Wardell Gray jazz standard "Twisted" has the singer downing a fifth of vodka at the age of three. The worst that happens is the singer seeing "some crazy scenes" before waking up from the alcohol-induced slumber.
Newspaper Comics
- The The Gambols strip where George and Gaye leave their eleven year old twin niece and nephew to fix their own tea whilst George and Gaye go out for the night.... and said niece and nephew end up drinking a very expensive bottle of wine with their fish fingers and chips!
- Stone Soup has repeatedly used this; Holly, Alix, Andy and Max have each gotten drunk in this fashion.
Video Games
- In Life Is Strange, it is mentioned that when they were younger, Chloe and Max broke into Joyce's wine cabinet and sample some before they accidentally spilled some of it on their white carpet. The stain is still there today and is remembered fondly as a symbol of better times for all parties involved. Years later, Chloe and Rachel partook in underaged drinking frequently and it isn't nearly as cute.
- Yakuza 0: A substory involving twelve-year-old Daigo Dojima has him trying to get Kiryu to buy him alcoholic drinks and take him to a strip club. They do eventually go to a bar, where Kiryu tries to pass off a virgin drink as an alcoholic one. Daigo tastes the difference, though, implying he might actually already be drinking at his age.
Webcomics
- Arthur, King of Time and Space had a storyline in the contemporary arc with Gawain and Arthur drinking, followed by an outside-the-fourth-wall discussion of the morality of this, bearing in mind that they were eighteen year old college students, not "children" in any real sense, but still underage in the US.
- In El Goonish Shive, Mrs. Kitsune wrongly suspects
Nanase of doing this.
- Roxy in Homestuck is a sixteen year old alcoholic, and has been for quite a while. Mind you, it's not clear that there is anything resembling alcohol laws in her Bad Future.
Western Animation
- Bob's Burgers: Attempted in "Bad Tina" by Tina and her new friend Tammy, though they end up drinking non-alcoholic margarita mix mistaking it for the real deal.
- Bojack Horseman: An episode detailing the significant incidences of BoJack coming to rely on alcohol shows that the first time he took a drink was as a very young child while both his parents were passed out drunk. Since they were both using alcohol to numb their dissatisfaction with their lives, it only makes sense that he would try it too.
- In the Defenders of the Earth episode "100 Proof Highway", Mandrake catches Kshin taking liquor from his drinks cabinet and, when Kshin tells him "lots of kids at school drink", conjures up a vision in which an aged-up Kshin dies in a drink driving accident to show him what this could lead to.
- The Moral Orel episode "Maturity" has Orel steal booze from his father's cabinet, thinking that's what he needs to become more mature. Cue a montage of him either acting like a bitter, worn out drunk or dancing because his inhibitions are lowered. In the season 1 tradition of warping that aesop, though, when he is busted drinking and punished, it's not because he's drinking underage, it's because he hasn't earned the right to drink yet: only when he gets a soul-crushing job and a family he doesn't want does he have the right to drown his sorrows.
- In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "One Beer", Buster, Plucky and Hampton (All of whom are young teens at the oldest) drink beer.
Real Life
- Real-life teenagers will often swipe vodka and switch it with water.
- When Jackass star Steve-O was twelve years old, he stole a bottle of wine from his parents' liquor cabinet so he could celebrate the four-year anniversary of the formation of Mötley Crüe. He ended up drinking the whole bottle of wine and puked everywhere.
