Adolescent Alcohol Abuse: A Significant Issue

Alcohol abuse statistics reveal that alcohol abuse among adolescents is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Many alcoholism authorities claim that liquor, beer, and wine ads generated by the media are an important reason for the rise in teenage alcohol abuse.

Other alcohol addiction experts believe that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and ease of access of wine,liquor, and beer in our society.

Still other alcohol abuse authorities argue that many of our teenagers get involved in excessive drinking because of the increased apprehension that they are subjected to.

From a slightly different standpoint, because both parents in more than a few families are employed, the lack of parental guidance indubitably has to play a primary role in the escalation of teenage alcohol abuse. And last of all, different alcohol dependency professionals articulate that the proliferation of youth alcohol abuse is due, in part, to our lax society.

Coping Skills and Abusive Drinking

One element of teenage alcohol abuse that appears to be poorly reported in the alcohol addiction research results, on the other hand, is the insufficiency of educational courses that teach teenagers how to enhance their coping skills so that their dangerous drinking behavior is drastically reduced or done away with.

More precisely, science has made obvious the fact that there is an indirect link between poor coping skills and abusive drinking. In effect, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the greater the occurrence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a correct allegation , why isn’t coping skills instruction an important part of the academic curriculum in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?

A Society That Puts Emphasis On Youth Coping Skills

Let us manufacture a scenario for for the purpose of illumination. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are trained how to develop good coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including their final year in high school.

In such a society, when life gets stressful, individuals who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more creative way, as opposed to others who fail to put their coping skills into practice.

Stated differently, students who reveal high-quality coping skills will be more able to think logically and engage in top-shelf decision making as opposed to teens who, because they failed to obtain good coping skills, resort to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, moreover, if teenagers not only received top quality coping skills training but also received an extraordinary education that highlighted the short term and long term destructive outcomes associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills training, it is emphasized, would help adolescents stay away from the clear charm correlated with teenage drinking and, for that reason, would radically lessen the destructive drinking behavior exhibited by the youth in our country.

Teen Hazardous Drinking: Conclusion

There are definitely a number of justifiable reasons why so many of our teens drink in a dangerous manner. Such a complicated subject matter demands a broad based and relevant educational and preventative response by our students, parents, politicians, and educators so that our teens can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more rewarding and responsible way rather than resorting to excessive drinking behavior to solve their problems.

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