TEENS: THE NEW SUFFERERS OF ALCOHOL ADDICTION

It is easy to understand why a lot of people turn to alcohol to momentarily be relieved of all their worries and uncertainties. Alcohol is a legal depressant and it does not pose any problem especially when they are used moderately. However, in our society today, alcohol drinking becomes inevitably excessive and despite warnings from the media drinking moderately may seem to have escaped the thoughts of alcoholics. Because of this, alcohol addiction is rampant and the worst part is that even teenagers of today are engaged in such addiction.

Alcohol intoxication may result in temporary behavioral and psychological changes in a person. Speech may be slurred and movement may become uncoordinated accompanied by inappropriate behavior. These symptoms are the consequences of drinking, but they are far from the effects of alcohol dependence itself. The simple alcohol intoxication can lead to the more complicated alcohol addiction, which can be defined as the dependence of a person to alcohol. It is a maladaptive cycle of alcohol drinking paving way to considerable impairment in the individual’s areas of functioning. It is manifested by several symptoms. The tolerance level for alcohol intake increases, thus there is a need to drink more alcoholic beverages in order to achieve the desired effect. The person who becomes addicted to alcohol will lose control of his ability to regulate the amount he is drinking despite all his efforts to do otherwise. Most of his time may be spent on drinking and because of this, some important social or recreational activities are taken for granted or even given up. As a result, different relationships with the people around him are severed.

Teens are vulnerable to this kind of addiction. It s a fact that the centers for judgment and self-control in an adolescent’s brain is still developing, hence there is a higher risk for such adolescent to be less careful of the decisions that he is doing. Teen years may be considered as the turbulent years in human development. Furthermore, they have the tendency to exaggerate their problems and in return use alcohol to escape from their dilemmas. And to top it all, puberty is the stage in one’s life when he is influenced to do a lot of things by curiosity and by mere peer pressure. All these make a minor overly exercise his freedom to drink and all these endanger the bright future of these teens ahead of them.

In order to save the youth from wasting their lives, several alcohol rehabilitation programs are made accessible to those youth who have made the conscious choice to quit drinking but have failed to do so. Rehabilitation program will require awareness for such programs will be more effective if the alcoholic, himself, has admitted his situation and that he is willing to undertake the alcohol rehabilitation. It will take a great amount of effort to overcome dependency, not only on the part of the alcoholic but also on the part of his support group – the family and friends.