Alcohol abuse statistics show that alcohol abuse among teenagers is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Numerous substance abuse authorities assert that wine, beer, and liquor advertisements brought into being by the media are a primary reason for the rise in teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcoholism professionals argue that the increase in teen alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and ease of access of liquor, beer, and wine in our society.
Still other alcohol abuse professionals emphasize the point that numerous adolescents get involved in alcohol abuse because of the increased disquiet that they experience.
From a slightly different vantage point, due to the fact that both parents in quite a few families work full or part-time, the lack of parental guidance positively has to play an essential role in the spread of youth alcohol abuse. And finally, different alcohol abuse professionals affirm that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due, at least partially, to our permissive society.
Coping Skills Education and Hazardous Drinking
One element of teenage alcohol abuse that seems to be somewhat missing in the alcohol addiction research results, alternatively, is the shortage of educational programs that teach teens how to augment their coping skills so that their hazardous drinking behavior is extensively diminished or eradicated.
Stated more precisely, science has demonstrated that there is an indirect relationship between poor coping skills and alcohol abuse. Fundamentally, this means that the worse the coping skills, the higher the occurrence of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is an accurate statement, why isn’t coping skills training a major part of the academic core curriculum in all of our high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools?
A Society That Accentuates Youth Coping Skills
Let us manufacture a scenario for descriptive purposes. Let us imagine a society in which students are taught how to develop superior coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.
In such a society, when life gets challenging, students who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a healthier and more productive manner, contrary to others who fail to apply their coping skills.
Stated differently, students who reveal superior coping skills will be more able to think clearly and display top-shelf decision making as opposed to teenagers who, because they are deficient in top quality coping skills, resort to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, additionally, if teenagers not only received top quality coping skills training but also received an exclusive education that highlighted the long term and short term destructive outcomes associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these types of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills training, it is declared, would help adolescents avoid the clear allure of teen drinking and, for that reason, would drastically diminish the destructive drinking behavior demonstrated by adolescents in our country.
Teen Hazardous Drinking: Conclusion
There are obviously various sound reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in an excessive manner. Such a tricky subject demands a far-reaching and more meaningful preventative and educational response by our students, parents, politicians, and educators so that our teenagers can learn how to cope with life’s problems in a more productive and accountable manner rather than resorting to risky drinking behavior to solve their problems.