Recent alcohol abuse statistics reveal that alcohol abuse among teenagers is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Numerous alcohol addiction consultants believe that liquor, wine, and beer ads brought into being by the media are an important reason for the rise in teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcoholism experts emphasize the point that the increase in teenage alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and convenience of liquor, beer, and wine in our society.
Still other alcohol abuse professionals articulate that numerous teens engage in injurious drinking due to the increased disquiet that they feel.
From a slightly different vantage point, due to the fact that both parents in many families work full or part-time, the lack of parental guidance certainly has to play a primary role in the escalation of youth alcohol abuse. And finally, an assortment of substance abuse authorities emphasize the point that the escalation of teen alcohol abuse is due, at least partially, to our permissive society.
Coping Skills Training and Hazardous Drinking
One component of teenage alcohol abuse that looks as if it under reported in the alcohol abuse research results, conversely, is the insufficiency of educational courses that teach students how to enhance their coping skills so that their destructive drinking behavior is fundamentally decreased or eradicated.
More specifically, scientific research has uncovered the fact that there is an indirect connection between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. Basically, this means that the poorer the coping skills, the higher the frequency of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a correct declaration, why isn’t coping skills education a fundamental part of the academic core curriculum in all of our elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools?
A Society That Underscores Youth Coping Skills
Let us construct a scenario for descriptive purposes. Let us imagine a society in which students are trained how to develop good coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including their senior year in high school.
In such a society, when life gets complicated, people who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more productive manner, as opposed to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to apply their coping skills.
Stated differently, students who show evidence of superior coping skills will be more able to think proactively and demonstrate first-class decision making as opposed to teens who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to develop quality coping skills, are drawn to the “quick fix” of hazardous drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, in addition, if teenagers not only got extraordinary coping skills education but also got an outstanding education that highlighted the short term and long term destructive outcomes 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 students keep away from the obvious appeal correlated with adolescent drinking and, therefore, would notably decrease the destructive drinking behavior demonstrated by teenagers in our country.
Teenage Alcohol Abuse: Conclusion
There are positively scores of sound reasons why so many of our teens drink in an excessive manner. Such a tricky subject demands a wide-ranging and more meaningful educational and preventative response by our politicians, educators, students, and parents so that our teens can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more productive and responsible manner instead of resorting to destructive drinking behavior to solve their problems.
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