Alcohol abuse statistics reveal that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Quite a few alcohol abuse experts articulate that beer, liquor, and wine advertisements produced by the media are a primary reason for the proliferation of teen alcohol abuse.
Other substance abuse specialists declare that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and accessibility of beer, wine, and liquor in our society.
Still other alcoholism experts believe that many of our teens engage in injurious drinking because of the increased anxiety that they go through.
From a somewhat different outlook, because both parents in many families work, the lack of parental guidance evidently has to play an essential part in the increase in teen alcohol abuse. And finally, an assortment of alcoholism consultants affirm that the increase in adolescent alcohol abuse is due, at some level, to our permissive society.
Excessive Drinking and Coping Skills Education
One facet of teenage alcohol abuse that looks as if it poorly reported in the alcohol addiction research literature, to the contrary, is the scarcity of educational courses that teach teens how to augment their coping skills so that their destructive drinking behavior is extensively lessened or exterminated.
More precisely, science has illustrated the fact that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and alcohol abuse. Essentially, this means that the poorer the coping skills, the greater the incidence of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is a valid contention, why isn’t coping skills education a fundamental part of the educational prospectus in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?
A Society That Puts Emphasis On Youth Coping Skills
Let us manufacture a scenario for the purpose of clarification. Let us imagine a society in which students are trained how to develop solid 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 experts” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more rewarding way, as opposed to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to implement their coping skills.
Stated more explicitly, students who show evidence of good coping skills will be more able to think logically and demonstrate top quality decision making as opposed to teens who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to implement top-of-the-line coping skills, gravitate to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, additionally, if young people not only received top quality coping skills training but also got a top shelf education that outlined 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 instruction, it is asserted, would help students steer clear of the clear appeal associated with underage drinking and, accordingly, would notably diminish the dangerous drinking behavior exhibited by teens in our country.
Adolescent Excessive Drinking: Conclusion
There are indubitably quite a few compelling reasons why so many of our adolescents abuse alcohol. Such a complex subject matter demands a comprehensive and more pertinent preventative and educational response by our educators, parents, politicians, and students so that our youth can learn how to cope with life’s problems in a more fruitful and accountable way instead of gravitating to abusive drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.
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