Teen Alcohol Abuse: A Complex 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? More than a few alcoholism authorities believe that wine, liquor, and beer ads generated by the media are a primary reason for the expansion of teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcohol addiction experts articulate that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and accessibility of alcohol in our society.
Still other substance abuse consultants state that numerous teens engage in harmful drinking because of the increased anxiety that they feel.
From a somewhat different outlook, due to the fact that both parents in a number of families work full or part-time, the lack of parental guidance surely has to play a major part in the increase in teenage alcohol abuse. And last but not least, different alcoholism authorities believe that the proliferation of youth alcohol abuse is due, in part, to our “anything goes” society.
Hazardous Drinking and Coping Skills Training
One component of teenage alcohol abuse that appears to be somewhat incomplete in the substance abuse research results, nevertheless, is the paucity of educational programs that teach adolescents how to augment their coping skills so that their injurious drinking behavior is drastically reduced or gotten rid of.
Stated another way, science has revealed that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. In point of fact, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the greater the occurrence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a valid declaration, why isn’t coping skills education an essential part of the educational curriculum in all of our high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools?
A Society That Stresses Teenage Coping Skills
Let us create a scenario for for the purpose of illumination. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are trained 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, students who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more productive way, contrary to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to apply their coping skills.
Stated more precisely, students who display superior coping skills will be more able to think logically and exhibit excellent decision making as opposed to teenagers who, because they do not possess top-of-the-line coping skills, are attracted to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if adolescents not only obtained top shelf coping skills training but also got an extraordinary education that underscored the long term and short term damaging outcomes associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills training, it is proclaimed, would help teens stay away from the obvious charm associated with teenage drinking and, as a result, would substantially reduce the destructive drinking behavior shown by the youth in our country.
Teen Excessive Drinking: Conclusion
There are evidently quite a few justifiable reasons why so many of our teenagers drink in an abusive manner. Such a thorny problem demands a wide-ranging and more pertinent educational and preventative response by our students, politicians, parents, and educators so that our youth can learn how to cope with life’s problems in a more productive and accountable way rather than gravitating to destructive drinking behavior to solve their problems.
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Tagged with: adolescent alcohol abuse • alcohol abuse facts • alcohol abuse statistics • teen alcohol abuse • teenage alcohol abuse • youth alcohol abuse
Filed under: Alternative Therapies
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