Worried what your teen's up to on holiday? You should be, says this 18-year-old

[The_Ripper]

Worried what your teen's up to on holiday? You should be, says this 18-year-old (who was astounded by what she saw on her post-exam break)

A girl, scarcely older than 16, was slumped unconscious in an inflatable hoop in the middle of the pool. I'd no idea how long she'd been there, but it was now 10am and her skin was beginning to burn in the already fierce sun.
My mother would have been shocked if she had any inkling that I had been partying well into sunrise, barely catching a few hours sleep. So I could only imagine what this girl's mother would think if she knew that her daughter had skipped bed altogether, choosing instead to stagger from the nightclubs directly to the pool.
The hotel manager appeared next to us, his head in his hands, clearly shocked that such a young girl would drink herself into this state. It was a miracle she hadn't slipped into the water and drowned.

This summer, many young people have died ultimately preventable deaths as a result of the party culture endemic in cheap, booze-fuelled resorts such as San Antonio in Ibiza, Faliraki in Rhodes and Malia in Crete.
In the past five weeks alone, five young people have died, including a 17-year-old boy who fell from his balcony in Bulgaria. Nearly all these deaths are caused by drinking, and there is a culture of drug-taking in the hedonistic atmosphere of the all-night clubs.
Young people throw caution to the wind — we are egged on by our friends, complete strangers and the British tour company reps who make it their job to pour as much drink into us as humanly possible.

For less than £400 a week — including flights — thousands of British teenagers jet off during the holidays to cheap party resorts. Most, like me, are celebrating finishing their A-levels, or the end of their GCSEs. Some are on hen and stag trips.
Holidays like this have become a rite of passage — the first time travelling without parents, the first time without rules regarding behaviour.
Like them, I went abroad for a good time. I'm 18 and left the UK expecting to party with my friends and have fun. What I didn't expect was that I would be so utterly horrified by the behaviour I saw — it was like being let loose in a booze-filled sweet shop, with everyone going absolutely crazy.
The girl in the pool had been staying in the same apartments as us. The morning before she'd passed out in the pool, we'd seen her stumbling past it — completely legless — and repeatedly falling into the water and gasping for air.

Her friends were all in hysterics. None of them looked older than 16 or 17, dressed in their ‘I Love Kavos' T-shirts — some with the slogan ‘Go Hard or Go Home'. At night, they all went out in bottom-skimming shorts and bikini tops.
Our apartments were just a few roads away from the nightclub-lined main street of Kavos. Club faces club, with smoke billowing out of each — there are no smoking restrictions here.
You can't drive down the road for people dancing wildly in the street, 90 per cent of them drunk to the point of falling over, as they grope for support from either a friend or, more commonly, a complete stranger. Condoms litter the street and nearby beach.
Inside the clubs, smoke and dry ice rise from the machines next to the over-sized DJ-decks, strobe lights flash across the dance-floor and even the songs they play seem to be chosen to whip you into a careless frenzy, with many of the club anthems, such as Pass Out by Tinie Tempah, actively celebrating the culture of binge-drinking.
Hundreds of people crowd the bars, their hands outstretched for the ‘free' shots promised by the reps who are grabbing drunk teenagers off the street and throwing them into the nightspots.
Only the first shot is ‘free' — after that you have to pay for the brightly-coloured cheap spirits, which are poured without measures. The most popular drink here is called Ecstasy, a livid cocktail of six different spirits — vodka, rum, gin, bacardi, martini and black vodka. Just one makes you sway on your feet, but most people in the club have been drinking them for hours.

Popular also is the fishbowl — a bowl full of spirits, similar to ‘Ecstasy', mixed with sugary alcopops, which you all drink through straws. A few of those, and it's hard to remember your own name.
Combined with the heat, you quickly lose control of even the most basic functions.
I saw teenagers as young as 16 passed out on the street, with their friends unable to help because they were too drunk to care. No one bats an eyelid — the culture is that each and every night, you stay up until dawn and drink until you are insensible. All the clubs have English names, such as Sex, and, inside, the flashing lights and acrid smoke make it impossible to see who is bumping against you.
Faceless strangers throw their arms around you, grabbing parts of your body. There is absolutely no restraint -— one rep tried to pull off my friend's bikini-style top while the crowd around us laughed hysterically.
Everything is seen as a joke, which means that complete strangers feel entitled to grope you. Many girls are simply too drunk to fend them off. By the early morning, the beach is littered with heaving bodies — and sex is as casual as a handshake.
I'm a completely ordinary teenager who loves partying and sees nothing wrong with it, but I was stunned by the total disregard for personal safety.
I was also genuinely shocked by the behaviour of the reps, who actively entice inexperienced teenagers to drink shot after shot, while physically grabbing young girls on the street and throwing them into the clubs.

It's all seen as hilarious — yet all around us were teenagers with casts on broken arms and ankles, bruises and scratches from accidents that happened when they were drunk out of their skulls.
I saw one boy with his fractured arm in a cast and sling still lurching about by the bar, determined not to let his holiday be ‘spoiled' — determined to get completely hammered.
The one thing I have learned from this holiday is that there is no such thing as ‘innocent fun' and that every ‘good night' comes at a price.
Night after night, I saw young people drink until they were unconscious, before passing out on the street or the beach. Goodness knows what the Greeks think of our ‘culture'.
The problem is that, at night, when you're drinking and dancing, things that seem harmless at the time can rapidly turn into something far more sinister.
How do you know if sex is consensual if you are so drunk you can't remember your own name? And the current craze for ‘balconing' — climbing along the side of holidays apartments — may seem a great idea when you're drunk at 3am, but reality would sharply return were you to fall.
Each day begins at around 2pm, when people start to wake after the night before. The lucky ones go to their beds, while others sleep on benches, on the street, or the beach. They spend the afternoon sunbathing before eating a cheap meal of burger and chips (there's little authentic Greek food here), going out at about ten — and not sleeping ‘til dawn.
Not even the hotel owners try to exercise any control — they only care that you pay for damages. Many will ask for your passport as a way of making sure you pay up.
I was glad to get home in one piece. I would estimate that at least half of the people staying in our apartments had some kind of injury. I do know that the girl on the hoop in the pool made it back — when I flew home to Argyll, Scotland, she was on my plane. Green-faced under her sunburn, — but at least still alive.
While I am a perfect example of a teenager who is doing all I can to rebel against everything my parents are telling me to do, I can now, finally, see why they worry so much. Anything could have happened in Kavos — from alcohol poisoning to rape —for the simple reason that anything, and I mean anything, goes.
This experience isn't about to stop me partying on holiday abroad, but I doubt I will ever return to a dedicated ‘party' resort like this. After all that I have seen, if I were a parent, I would worry. A lot.


LOL POOR GIRL

[Sikotic™]

She needs some dick in her life.

[Hood Crawler]

I partied hard as a teen but never like that man. I have seen a lot of crazy shit with high kids thinking they are invincible. Scary shit.

[Triple OG Rapsodie]

is balconing the new planking?

[MUHFUKKA]

The most popular drink here is called Ecstasy, a livid cocktail of six different spirits — vodka, rum, gin, bacardi, martini and black vodka

so 3 spirits (4 if you wanna count gimmick ass black vodka as different)

[es-jay]

i went on holiday to Kavos a few years ago, it was fun. I wouldn't go again though.