Teenage Alcohol Abuse: A Complex Issue
Recent alcohol abuse statistics show that alcohol abuse among teenagers is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Quite a few chemical dependency professionals declare that beer, liquor, and wine advertisements produced by the media are a key reason for the spread of teen alcohol abuse.
Other substance abuse authorities assert that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and ease of access of liquor, wine, and beer in our society.
Still other alcohol dependency consultants state that numerous teenagers get involved in alcohol abuse because of the increased apprehension that they experience.
From a slightly different standpoint, due to the fact that both parents in quite a few families are gainfully employed, the lack of parental supervision indubitably has to play a fundamental part in the expansion of teen alcohol abuse. And as a final point, different alcohol abuse professionals articulate that the proliferation of teenage alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our permissive society.
Excessive Drinking and Coping Skills
One component of adolescent alcohol abuse that appears to be lacking in the chemical dependency research literature, then again, is the shortage of educational courses that teach adolescents how to upgrade their coping skills so that their excessive drinking behavior is substantially diminished or gotten rid of.
More specifically, science has disclosed the fact that there is an indirect correlation between poor coping skills and alcohol abuse. In effect, this means that the poorer the coping skills, the higher the rate of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a valid proclamation, why isn’t coping skills training a fundamental part of the educational curriculum in all of our elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools?
A Society That Highlights Teenage Coping Skills
Let us construct a scenario for illustrative purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all people are trained how to achieve excellent coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.
In such a society, when life gets challenging, individuals who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more rewarding way, contrary to others who fail to put their coping skills into operation.
Stated more precisely, students who exhibit first-class coping skills will be more able to think logically and demonstrate first-class decision making as opposed to teens who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to develop outstanding coping skills, are drawn to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if teenagers not only got first class coping skills education but also got a top quality education that underscored the long term and short term devastating outcomes 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 students steer clear of the obvious charm interlinked with teen drinking and, as a result, would drastically decrease the destructive drinking behavior shown by teenagers in our country.
Adolescent Abusive Drinking: Conclusion
There are without a doubt numerous valid reasons why so many of our teens drink in a risky manner. Such a knotty predicament demands a comprehensive and more pertinent preventative and educational response by our politicians, educators, students, and parents so that our youth can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more productive and accountable way instead of gravitating to dangerous drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.
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