Alcohol abuse statistics reveal that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? More than a few alcohol dependency professionals stress the point that liquor, beer, and wine advertisements produced by the media are an important reason for the rise in teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcohol addiction specialists emphasize the point that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and convenience of liquor, beer, and wine in our society.
Still other substance abuse professionals believe that more than a few of our teens engage in harmful drinking because of the increased stress that they face.
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 indubitably has to play a primary part in the rise in adolescent alcohol abuse. And as a final point, various alcoholism professionals claim that the expansion of adolescent alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our “anything goes” society.
Coping Skills Training and Excessive Drinking
One facet of youth alcohol abuse that looks like it is lacking in the alcohol abuse research findings, however, is the nonexistence of educational courses that teach students how to upgrade their coping skills so that their abusive drinking behavior is significantly lessened or eliminated.
More specifically, science has illustrated the fact that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and excessive drinking. Essentially, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the greater the rate of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is a truthful statement, why isn’t coping skills instruction an essential part of the academic curriculum in all of our high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools?
A Society That Puts Emphasis On Youth Coping Skills
Let us construct a scenario for the purpose of explanation. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are taught how to achieve superior coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.
In such a society, when life gets complicated, individuals who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more rewarding manner, contrary to others who fail to apply their coping skills.
Stated more explicitly, students who show evidence of first-class coping skills will be more able to think clearly and demonstrate quality decision making as opposed to students who, because they do not possess top-of-the-line coping skills, gravitate to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if students not only got exceptional coping skills instruction but also obtained an extraordinary education that emphasized the short term and long term destructive costs associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills education, it is advocated, would help students keep away from the apparent appeal related to adolescent drinking and, consequently, would significantly reduce the abusive drinking behavior displayed by teens in our country.
Teenage Risky Drinking: Conclusion
There are surely numerous sound reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in an injurious manner. Such a thorny subject matter demands a thorough and relevant educational and preventative response by our politicians, educators, students, and parents so that our adolescents can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more productive and accountable way rather than gravitating to dangerous drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.
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