The way home, decided first
Nearly everything that goes badly wrong on a night out happens at the end of it, and usually because there was no plan or the plan fell through. So this is the conversation worth having before the first night out rather than after the first bad one.
- A named way home, settled in advance: a lift, a booked taxi, a specific last bus or train with the time written down. Sorting it out later is the plan that fails.
- A fallback for when the plan collapses, because the last train gets missed and the friend whose brother was driving goes home with someone else. The fallback is usually a phone call, which is the next section.
- Enough money, kept separately from the phone, for a taxi. A teenager whose phone has died and whose money was on it has no way home at all, which is how a long walk alone starts.
- Nobody goes home alone by default. Leaving together, or at least knowing who is leaving with whom and when, is worth more than any rule about what time to be back.
The call that has to be free
The single most protective arrangement a family can have is a standing agreement that a call for help gets help, with no interrogation that night and no punishment afterwards for whatever led to it — including having been drinking, having gone somewhere they said they would not, or having lost their money.
It has to be genuinely unconditional to work, because the alternatives a teenager picks when ringing home feels worse than the problem are the dangerous ones: walking home alone, getting into an unbooked car, staying somewhere they want to leave, or going along with a friend's much worse idea.
If there is a conversation to be had about the evening, it happens the following afternoon. That is not weakness about rules; it is the price of the phone call, and it is a good price.
Spiking
Worth knowing properly, because the symptoms are mistaken for ordinary drunkenness by everyone including the person's friends, and that mistake is what leaves someone alone.
The signs are a sudden and disproportionate change: far more affected than the amount drunk would explain, and coming on fast. Drowsiness, confusion, disorientation, nausea and vomiting, loss of balance, and in some cases losing consciousness.
What to do, for the person or for a friend:
- Tell staff immediately — bar staff, the manager or security. Venues deal with this and have procedures.
- "Ask for Angela." Saying this at a bar in a participating venue is a signal to staff that discreet help is needed, and the posters are usually in the toilets. It is worth a teenager knowing the phrase before they need it.
- Stay with them. Keep talking, keep them reassured, and do not let them leave alone or with anyone they do not know and trust. This is the whole of it, really.
- No more alcohol.
- 999 if they become unwell, and without hesitation if they are losing consciousness. 111 for advice if they are unwell but not in danger.
- 101 to report it afterwards, whether it happened to them or they witnessed it. Reporting matters even when it feels pointless, because venues and areas get flagged.
On prevention: a drink is not left unattended, not accepted from a stranger, and taken back to the bar or thrown away if it tastes odd. And the thing to say explicitly, because victims routinely assume otherwise — being spiked is never the fault of the person it happened to, whatever they were drinking or wearing or doing.
Where there is any possibility of sexual assault, specialist services exist and a GP or sexual health clinic can refer; Rape Crisis runs national helplines across the UK nations.
Alcohol, and what the law actually says
The rules are more specific than most people assume.
- It is illegal for anyone under eighteen to buy alcohol anywhere — shop, supermarket, bar, restaurant or online — and illegal for an adult to buy it for them on licensed premises.
- Sixteen and seventeen year olds may drink beer, wine or cider with a meal on licensed premises if an adult is with them, and the adult buys it.
- Drinking itself is legal from the age of five, which surprises people. The restrictions are on buying, and on where it is drunk.
- Police can confiscate alcohol from under-eighteens drinking in a street, a park or another public place.
- An adult who knowingly buys alcohol for an under-eighteen can be prosecuted.
The Chief Medical Officers' guidance goes further than the law: an alcohol-free childhood is described as the healthiest option, no alcohol at all before fifteen, and for fifteen to seventeen year olds who do drink, only with adult guidance or supervision, no more than one day a week, and never above adult limits.
That guidance is worth knowing about rather than reciting, because the version of this conversation that works is usually about quantity, pace and not drinking anything handed over by someone unknown, rather than a prohibition that will be ignored and then concealed.
The practical bit: someone who is very drunk is put in the recovery position on their side, not on their back, and never left alone to sleep it off. Unconsciousness, cold clammy skin, slow or irregular breathing, or vomiting while not properly awake is 999 rather than a taxi home.
Phones, batteries and location
The standard advice on this used to be to get a teenager a mobile phone, which has rather dated. The useful detail now is the failure mode.
- A dead battery is the actual risk. A phone at eleven per cent at ten o'clock is a teenager with no way to call, no way to pay and no way to get home. A cheap power bank in a pocket solves more problems than most safety advice.
- Location sharing openly agreed is reasonable and is used by most families now. Covert tracking is a different thing and buys the same bad trade as reading their messages — it works until it is discovered, and then it costs the disclosure that matters more.
- Emergency contacts and medical details accessible from the lock screen, which every phone supports and almost nobody sets up.
- Knowing that 999 works with no signal on another network, and from a locked phone.
Taxis
Only a booked private hire car or a licensed taxi flagged down where that is permitted. A private hire vehicle cannot legally be hailed in the street, so a car that offers a lift outside a venue is by definition not operating properly. Checking the licence plate and the driver's badge, and confirming the driver knows the booking name, takes ten seconds. Sitting in the back and sharing the journey with a friend are both sensible habits.
On self-defence classes
Worth being honest, since older advice on this subject tends to recommend martial arts as the answer.
Martial arts and self-defence courses are good things in themselves — fitness, confidence, and a bit of composure under pressure. What there is no good evidence for is that a few terms of classes change the outcome of a real assault by a stronger assailant, and a teenager who believes they can handle themselves may take a risk they would otherwise have walked away from. The confidence is the benefit and also the hazard.
The things that genuinely reduce risk are duller: not being alone, not being very drunk, leaving before the hour at which trouble happens, having a way home, and walking away from a confrontation rather than winning it.
Trouble that is not of their making
- Robbery. A phone is worth less than a stab wound. The advice is to hand it over, not to resist and not to chase, and to report it afterwards.
- Knives. Carrying one is an offence in itself, and carrying increases rather than decreases the risk to the carrier — a point worth making plainly to a frightened teenager who is considering it. Anyone can report concerns anonymously to Crimestoppers, or to Fearless, which is its service for young people.
- Being drawn in. County lines recruitment works on exactly this age group and starts with free things, lifts, status and a sense of being valued. A sudden new phone, unexplained money, new older friends or unexplained travel are the signs, and the route is a conversation rather than a confrontation.
- Walking away. The most useful skill on this entire page is leaving a situation that is turning, early and without needing to explain. It is worth saying that this is not cowardice but the thing that experienced adults do.
Rules that work and rules that do not
Rules that hold tend to be specific, few, and about safety rather than obedience — where they are, who with, how they are getting home, answering a phone call. Rules that collapse tend to be numerous, about things that do not matter much, and enforced unevenly, which teaches that none of them count.
And the part that is hard to hear: the point of all of it is to become unnecessary. A sixteen-year-old who has never had to plan a journey home, judge when to leave, or decide what to do about a friend who is too drunk will have to learn all three at eighteen, with nobody to ring. Supervised practice at independence is the thing being arranged here, not compliance.