Teen Alcohol Abuse: A Dangerous Problem
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 alcohol addiction authorities emphasize the point that beer, liquor, and wine ads produced by the media are a major reason for the proliferation of teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcoholism professionals assert that the increase in adolescent alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and ease of access of liquor, beer, and wine in our society.
Still other chemical dependency experts emphasize the point that quite a few of our teens get involved in alcohol abuse due to the increased stress that they go through.
From a somewhat different viewpoint, due to the fact that both parents in many families work, the lack of parental guidance certainly has to play a major role in the spread of adolescent alcohol abuse. And last but not least, different alcoholism professionals state that the expansion of youth alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our laissez-faire society.
Coping Skills and Excessive Drinking
One feature of teenage alcohol abuse that appears to be somewhat missing in the alcohol abuse research literature, however, is the insufficiency of educational programs that teach students how to further develop their coping skills so that their dangerous drinking behavior is significantly decreased or exterminated.
Stated more explicitly, science has displayed the fact that there is an indirect link between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. For all intents and purposes, this means that the poorer the coping skills, the higher the incidence of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is a valid declaration, why isn’t coping skills instruction a significant part of the academic prospectus in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?
A Society That Emphasizes Youth Coping Skills
Let us manufacture a scenario for descriptive purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are trained how to achieve superior coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including their senior year in high school.
In such a society, when life gets challenging, students 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 apply their coping skills.
More precisely, students who display solid coping skills will be more able to think logically and exhibit top-shelf decision making as opposed to teenagers who, because they do not possess quality coping skills, resort to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if young people not only got excellent coping skills training but also obtained an exclusive education that focused on the short term and long term destructive outcomes associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Such an emphasis on drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills instruction, it is pronounced, would help teenagers steer clear of the noticeable appeal associated with youth drinking and, as a consequence, would fundamentally decrease the hazardous drinking behavior displayed by adolescents in our country.
Youth Abusive Drinking: Conclusion
There are without a doubt scores of valid reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in an injurious manner. Such a tricky problem demands an all-inclusive and more pertinent educational and preventative response by our politicians, parents, educators, and students so that our adolescents can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more rewarding and accountable manner instead of resorting to alcohol abuse to solve their difficulties.
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Tags: adolescent alcohol abuse, alcohol abuse facts, alcohol abuse statistics, teen alcohol abuse, teenage alcohol abuse, youth alcohol abuse
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