Detrimental Effects That are Related to Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse

Some of the negative effects linked to alcoholism and alcohol abuse that I learned about in this class without a doubt frightened me. The ruined lives and countless difficulties experienced by most alcohol dependent individuals made me feel like I never wanted to drink alcohol when I became old enough. Stated briefly, I did not want to face the disaster and destruction that alcohol dependent people almost always experience.

Think about this for a moment. What fifteen-year-old individual wants to face premature death due to his or her drinking behavior? What young person wants to become so out-of-control regarding his or her drinking that drinking alcohol becomes the object of one’s life? What teenager wants to go to one of the local alcoholic rehabilitation centers to deal with alcohol-related difficulties before he or she becomes twenty-one?

What adolescent wants to experience alcohol withdrawal symptoms when he or she tries to quit drinking? Why would an individual engage in drinking to such an extent that it would cause serious issues in every area of his or her life? Drinking later in life after a person has a career, a family, and develops personal responsibilities makes sense. But why would a teenager want to sacrifice his or her education, employment, finances, and relationships for a life that focuses on hazardous drinking?

These issues were so significant that I talked about some of them in class throughout the school year. What was downright incredible to me was the number of students who simply didn’t care about the harmful effects of excessive drinking that I talked about. It was almost as if they couldn’t be bothered with the facts and how these results can wreck their lives. For the first time in my life I started to figure out something that my grandfather used to articulate all through my younger years: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

It’s Beneficial, Liberating, and Important to Keep Away From the Unhealthy and Destructive End Results of Drug and Alcohol Abuse

And even at my young age, I also began to comprehend how liberating, beneficial, and important it is in life to stay away from the damaging and unhealthy effects of alcohol and drug abuse.

Other alcoholism specialists emphasize the point that the increase in teen alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and ease of access of beer, liquor, and wine in our society.

Still other alcohol addiction professionals claim that quite a few of our adolescents get involved in harmful drinking because of the increased fretfulness that they go through.

From a somewhat different vantage point, since both parents in many families are gainfully employed, the lack of parental guidance surely has to play a significant part in the proliferation of adolescent alcohol abuse. And lastly, diverse alcohol abuse specialists stress the point that the spread of teen alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our laissez-faire society.

Coping Skills Training and Hazardous Drinking

One facet of adolescent alcohol abuse that appears to be under reported in the substance abuse research literature, then again, is the scarcity of educational courses that teach students how to upgrade their coping skills so that their risky drinking behavior is substantially diminished or eliminated.

Stated more explicitly, scientific research has displayed the fact that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and excessive drinking. Essentially, this means that the worse the coping skills, the greater the rate of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a valid proclamation, why isn’t coping skills instruction an important part of the educational core curriculum in all of our elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools?

A Society That Underscores Adolescent Coping Skills

Let us create a scenario for for the purpose of illumination. Let us imagine a society in which all people are taught how to achieve sound coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.

In such a society, when life gets stressful, students who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more successful way, contrary to others who fail to execute their coping skills.

More explicitly, students who show evidence of first rate coping skills will be more able to think proactively and display first-class decision making as opposed to students who, because they lack outstanding coping skills, are drawn to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, in addition, if teens not only got exceptional coping skills training but also obtained a first-rate education that accentuated the long term and short term destructive consequences associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills instruction, it is affirmed, would help teens keep away from the noticeable appeal interlinked with adolescent drinking and, as a result, would drastically decrease the injurious drinking behavior shown by the youth in our country.

Adolescent Excessive Drinking: Conclusion

There are evidently a number of well thought-out reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in a risky manner. Such a knotty predicament demands a far-reaching and more meaningful preventative and educational response by our politicians, parents, educators, and students so that our adolescents can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more productive and accountable way rather than resorting to excessive drinking behavior to solve their problems.