My cultural awakening: ‘Thirteen influenced my hedonistic youth, until a psychotic episode ended it’
My teenage self was shy and miserable, before a coming-of-age film unleashed an adolescence of drink, sex and drugs. It was a years-long party that eventually came crashing down
At 13, what felt like almost overnight, I turned from a happy, musical-theatre-loving child into a sad, lonely teenager. Things I had cared about only yesterday were suddenly irrelevant, as I realised that nothing and no one mattered, least of all me. It’s an angst that adults often find difficult to remember or understand; as the famous line from The Virgin Suicides goes: “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.”
Going to an all-girls Catholic school, I didn’t even really know that sex, drugs and alcohol existed, or that they had currency, until I watched Thirteen for the first time at 14, after seeing a still on Pinterest. The reckless rebellion the two best friends portrayed was seductive to me, and within weeks of watching the film, I’d met some girls from the co-ed school opposite who were having sex, going to parties and taking drugs. Soon, I was doing it all too.
In the provocative 2003 teen drama, which launched the career of Evan Rachel Wood, 13-year-old Tracy gets her tongue pierced, then her belly button. So I got my tongue pierced, then my belly button. I swapped baggy Hunger Games T-shirts for crop tops, low-waisted jeans and push-up bras. I bleached my hair blond and I snuck out on school nights after my parents went to bed. They had no idea what I was up to. I went to parties in mansions, where we’d get really drunk and tattoo each other. I had sex for the first time. I took acid.
Before this, I had felt severely uncool, as if I was standing in front of soundproof glass watching everyone laughing at a joke I hadn’t heard. Suddenly life was in colour again, and not just colour, but fluorescence. Now cool girls wanted to be my friend, and people at school were talking about me; I was interesting, I was somebody. At parties with these cool girls and hot boys, I felt important. Thirteen had taught me that if you did those things then you were cool, and if you were cool, you mattered.
You hear about people who party when they’re young and get tired of it before becoming adults, but that wasn’t what happened to me. I continued the hunt into my late teens, seeking adrenaline, validation, acknowledgment that I was special. Even though I knew it wasn’t healthy, it took me years to understand I didn’t always have to get so blackout drunk that I had to be carried home. I thought that was the whole point, and I was still trying to fill the void that had appeared when I was 13 by being the last one at the party.
That ended in 2024 with a psychotic episode. I was 20, living in university accommodation but not a student, working a nine-to-five job and getting wasted on a Tuesday for no reason. The only thing I had to look forward to was a holiday that I’d been saving for. But when we got there, I pushed things way too far. After days of not sleeping and taking whatever was offered to me, I entered a psychosis that lasted for two-and-a-half days. When I came back to myself and saw the fear in my friends’ eyes, I was forced to confront how I’d been acting since I was a teen, and the damage I’d normalised.
Thirteen offered me a script for how to survive the wilderness of adolescence through excess, and for a lonely teenage girl, that felt like a remedy rather than the warning the film intended it to be. I would have done those things eventually, but the immediacy wasn’t a coincidence. It was like being given an answer I’d been desperately seeking, then turning the corner and finding it waiting for me. But I’ve realised that what I was really running from was myself, and the emptiness I felt within. I thought I could hide inside fun nights and quick highs, but eventually, I had to face myself.
I still want to matter, to feel interesting and alive, but now I find that in friendship, my work and creativity. Thirteen, which ends hauntingly with Tracy alone spinning on a roundabout, didn’t just teach me how to escape myself – it showed me the cost of doing so. Anonymous
In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111.