I suppose you could call this a memory, although technically it isn't, because I don't actually remember it happening.

I was 13 at the time. I had a cousin 2 years older than myself, who I idolized. Anything he did, I would do because I desperately craved his approval.

One weekend my cousin came round for a visit. He had managed to get hold of a bottle of particularly strong wine. Under my cousin's example I had begun to "experiment" with alcohol, and I was quite excited when we got into my room and he pulled out this bottle of wine.

It was mid afternoon on a Saturday. Both my parents were at home, but they weren't overly inquisitive when I was in my room, so I felt fairly safe even though they were both strong believers in discipline. My father kept a half-inch thick leather strap handy, which he used on me fairly regularly. But I figured my cousin would look after me.

How wrong I was.

My cousin opened the bottle and took a swig. To my surprise he nearly choked on it and decided that it tasted horrible. He'd never had that particular wine before and he just couldn't handle the taste.

I was determined to prove that I could handle it, so I took small sips at first to get used to the taste and then gradually bigger gulps. My cousin only managed a couple of swigs before he gave up on it and told me that I could have the rest of it. By now I was quite enjoying the stuff, and proceeded to drink the entire contents of the bottle in just a few minutes. I didn't really start to experience the impact until I had almost finished the bottle, by which time there was no turning back.

In fact I don't really remember finishing the bottle. I vaguely recall that I was starting to behave in a very drunken way and that my cousin was getting annoyed with me. At some point he decided that he'd had enough of me for the day and had taken off in a hurry. I've got a very dim memory of staggering out of the house and out into the street looking for him.

Then the memory just goes COMPLETELY BLANK for several hours.

The next thing I recall is waking up on my bed. It was very late in the afternoon, almost dark.

The first thing I noticed was the headache. The worst I'd ever had. I felt like an axe had chopped my head in half.

The next thing I noticed was an overwhelming feeling of nausea. I noticed that there was a bucket next to my bed and that it had already had some vile looking substance in it. I then proceeded to add a bit more of the vile substance to the bucket..

Then gradually, bit by bit, I started to notice the stinging across my back. For some reason my shirt had been removed. I'd been fully clothed, except for shoes, at the time of drinking the wine. But here I was, shirtless, nauseous, with a splitting headache and several stinging cuts across my back.

I looked into the mirror and there was no mistaking it. My back was a mass of deep welts ... the same sort of welts that my father's strap always left. And yet I had no recollection of how they got there.

I've had to rely on what I've since been told by my parents as to what happened during those few hours that I can't remember.

My parents hadn't noticed me leave the house. It was only when a neighbor called around to report that she'd seen me staggering through the street that they realized something was up. They found the empty wine bottle in my room and went out looking for me.

Eventually they found me flaked out in some bushes. My father grabbed me and dragged me off home. Apparently I was yelling abuse at him and wanting to fight him all the way, but my Dad was pretty strong and I didn't have a chance.

When we got home, Dad grabbed his strap, took me to my room, took my shirt off and got my mother to hold me down, while he gave me about 20 very hard cuts across my bare back. Mom said it was the worst whipping she'd ever seen him give me and that it would have been even worse if she hadn't asked him to stop.

When I told my mother I couldn't remember anything about the beating she was very surprised because I was screaming in agony every time the strap landed. But the pain afterwards remained etched in my memory for a long time afterwards and the welts on my back took several weeks to heal.

Unfortunately it didn't cure my drinking. But I must say, it was a few months before I did any more "experimenting" with alcohol and I was a lot more careful not to get caught in the future.