Alcohol abuse statistics demonstrate the fact that alcohol abuse among adolescents is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Many chemical dependency specialists emphasize the point that liquor, wine, and beer advertisements generated by the media are a primary reason for the proliferation of teenage alcohol abuse.
Other substance abuse experts articulate that the increase in teen alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and ease of access of wine, beer, and liquor in our society.
Still other substance abuse consultants declare that more than a few of our teenagers get involved in injurious drinking because of the increased anxiety that they live through.
From a slightly different vantage point, due to the fact that both parents in more than a few families work full or part-time, the lack of parental guidance positively has to play a primary role in the expansion of teen alcohol abuse. And as a final point, a variety of alcoholism experts think that the escalation of adolescent alcohol abuse is due, in some degree, to our permissive society.
Hazardous Drinking and Coping Skills Training
One facet of youth alcohol abuse that looks like it is under reported in the alcohol dependency research findings, in contrast, is the scarcity of educational courses that teach teens how to upgrade their coping skills so that their destructive drinking behavior is notably decreased or gotten rid of.
Stated more explicitly, scientific research has demonstrated that there is an indirect correlation between poor coping skills and alcohol abuse. In essence, this means that the poorer the coping skills, the higher the prevalence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a valid contention, why isn’t coping skills education an essential part of the educational core curriculum in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?
A Society That Emphasizes Youth Coping Skills
Let us construct a scenario for explanatory purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are taught 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 demanding, students who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more productive manner, as opposed to others who fail to put their coping skills into action.
Stated more precisely, students who reveal excellent coping skills will be more able to think proactively and display first-class decision making as opposed to teens who, because they lack 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 first-rate coping skills education but also got a first-rate education that emphasized the long term and short term damaging costs associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these types of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills education, it is proclaimed, would help adolescents stay away from the obvious appeal correlated with teenage drinking and, for that reason, would substantially lessen the excessive drinking behavior demonstrated by teens in our country.
Adolescent Hazardous Drinking: Conclusion
There are surely more than a few well thought-out reasons why so many of our teens drink in a hazardous manner. Such a complex issue demands a thorough and more applicable educational and preventative response by our students, politicians, parents, and educators so that our youth can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more productive and accountable way instead of resorting to dangerous drinking behavior to solve their problems.