How not to let your friends influence you:

Let me tell you a little bit about what “great” influences my mates are. I have a couple mates, both lovely people at school, but very different at home.

So a few weeks ago I was invited to one of their houses for a girl’s night, they told me that we were going to have fun; that we would go out for dinner and then go back to the house and chill - maybe watch movies. Wow, this sounded great; I am a chilled person so I obviously said yes as soon as they asked. What happened that night was very different...

Going out for dinner... This turned into going to a bottle store to buy drinks. Movies... what movies? The two of them went behind my back and decided to change the plans and not tell me until my parents had dropped me off so that I wouldn’t chicken out of drinking with them.

Long story short... I do not remember anything about that night. I don’t know what I said to anyone or what I did. They were very bad influences and I was extremely stupid for letting them influence me. I woke up the next morning and realised I sent people messages and called people. I felt so disappointed with myself the next morning. I 100% regret not saying no to drinking with them that night.

I was asked to go back to have another girls night ... they told me that they didn’t want to drink and that they won’t make me drink again if I don’t want to, so I was flipping stupid and I said yes to going around again. This time they didn’t lie to me. We didn’t drink but they bought Hubbly Bubbly. One of my mates (underage with no license) drove us to a park and when we got there, they told me that I had to try this Hubbly Bubbly because it tasted amazing and I wouldn’t get addicted because it had no tobacco or other things in it. My first reply was “No thanks.”

They didn’t like it when I said no. So they called me names and told me I was a chicken because I wouldn’t try it. I did smoke it. I think I regret this more than drinking. It turns out I was allergic to the flavour they used. They laughed when I told them that I thought I was allergic to it and they went to bed.  I sent someone a message telling them that I thought I was allergic to a flavour. This very clever person told me what tablets to take (I had some in my bag for some reason.) In the morning, one of the girls told me that she found a dealer...  After she said that I decided to stop being stupid. I told them that I was going home and that they can do whatever they want.

I had decided to stop being dumb. I got out of that situation and I had to accept that they would probably hate me or say things about me. I made the decision to protect myself and to deal with whatever they would say about me.

You are the only person who can change who you are friends with and you are the only person who can decide what you do. If your friends are bad influences then there’s a simple solution to get out of bad situations: get new friends.