Youth Alcohol Abuse: A Profound Problem
Recent alcohol abuse statistics show that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? More than a few substance abuse professionals declare that liquor, wine, and beer advertisements created by the media are a key reason for the proliferation of teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcoholism authorities claim that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and ease of access of beer, wine, and liquor in our society.
Still other substance abuse professionals affirm that quite a few of our adolescents engage in risky drinking due to the increased pressure that they experience.
From a slightly different outlook, since both parents in a number of families work full or part-time, the lack of parental supervision obviously has to play a major part in the expansion of teenage alcohol abuse. And finally, an assortment of alcohol abuse specialists assert that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our lax society.
Coping Skills and Excessive Drinking
One component of adolescent alcohol abuse that seems to be poorly reported in the alcohol addiction research findings, nonetheless, is the scarcity of educational courses that teach students how to augment their coping skills so that their abusive drinking behavior is substantially diminished or eliminated.
More specifically, science has made obvious the fact that there is an indirect correlation between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. In effect, this means that the poorer the coping skills, the greater the frequency of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a truthful line of reasoning, why isn’t coping skills training an essential part of the academic prospectus in all of our elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools?
A Society That Underscores Teenage Coping Skills
Let us manufacture a scenario for explanatory purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all people are trained how to develop high-quality coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including their final year in high school.
In such a society, when life gets demanding, students who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a healthier and more successful way, contrary to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to put their coping skills into practice.
Stated more explicitly, students who exhibit first-class coping skills will be more able to think clearly and exhibit top quality decision making as opposed to adolescents who, because they failed to obtain top quality coping skills, resort to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, moreover, if teens not only obtained top quality coping skills instruction but also received an exceptional education that stressed the short term and long term destructive results associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills education, it is affirmed, would help adolescents steer clear of the obvious attraction with underage drinking and, therefore, would notably lessen the dangerous drinking behavior displayed by teens in our country.
Teenage Excessive Drinking: Conclusion
There are positively several convincing reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in a destructive manner. Such a thorny issue demands an extensive and more meaningful educational and preventative response by our politicians, students, educators, and parents so that our adolescents can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more productive and responsible way instead of gravitating to alcohol abuse to solve their difficulties.
Tags: adolescent alcohol abuse, alcohol abuse facts, alcohol abuse statistics, mental health, Self Improvement, teen alcohol abuse, teenage alcohol abuse, youth alcohol abuse
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