October 3, 2009
Teenage Alcohol Abuse: A Significant Problem
Recent alcohol abuse statistics reveal that alcohol abuse among adolescents is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Many chemical dependency professionals argue that wine, beer, and liquor ads created by the media are an important reason for the spread of teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcohol abuse professionals affirm that the increase in teen alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and ease of access of liquor, wine, and beer in our society.
Still other alcohol abuse authorities stress the point that many of our young people get involved in injurious drinking because of the increased pressure that they feel.
From a somewhat different standpoint, due to the fact that both parents in more than a few families are gainfully employed, the lack of parental guidance evidently has to play a key role in the proliferation of youth alcohol abuse. And last of all, diverse alcohol abuse consultants emphasize the point that the rise in adolescent alcohol abuse is due, at some level, to our “anything goes” society.
Hazardous Drinking and Coping Skills Training
One feature of adolescent alcohol abuse that seems to be under reported in the chemical dependency research literature, conversely, is the dearth of educational programs that teach teens how to augment their coping skills so that their abusive drinking behavior is significantly reduced or gotten rid of.
More to the point, scientific research has disclosed the fact that there is an indirect relationship between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. Fundamentally, this means that the worse the coping skills, the higher the occurrence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a truthful claim, why isn’t coping skills education a key part of the academic prospectus in all of our elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools?
A Society That Stresses Youth Coping Skills
Let us create a scenario for the purpose of explanation. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals 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 complicated, individuals who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a healthier and more productive way, contrary to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to put their coping skills into action.
More explicitly, students who demonstrate first rate coping skills will be more able to think logically and display first-class decision making as opposed to adolescents who, because they failed to obtain good coping skills, are attracted to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, in addition, if adolescents not only got extraordinary coping skills instruction but also obtained a top shelf education that accentuated the short term and long term damaging results associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills instruction, it is emphasized, would help teens avoid the obvious allure of youth drinking and, accordingly, would fundamentally decrease the excessive drinking behavior displayed by the youth in our country.
Teenage Hazardous Drinking: Conclusion
There are definitely several justifiable reasons why so many of our teenagers drink in an excessive manner. Such a knotty problem demands a wide-ranging and more applicable preventative and educational response by our educators, parents, politicians, and students so that our adolescents can learn how to cope with life’s problems in a more productive and accountable way instead of resorting to dangerous drinking behavior to solve their problems.
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