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According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, June 1997, alcohol is the leading cause of death among teenagers. Teenage drinking contributes to the high rate of teenage car crashes, traumatic injuries, suicide and date rape. Alcohol is by far the most used and abused drug among America’s teenagers today. According to a national survey, nearly one third (31.5%) of all high school students reported hazardous drinking of five or more drinks in one setting.
Twenty million American’s are alcoholics, and the children of these alcoholics are likely to inherit the disease. More than 40% of those who start drinking at age fourteen or younger become alcoholics. The problem I see is the lack of knowledge about alcoholism being an inherited disease. Children of alcoholics are four times more likely than other children to become alcoholics, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Teenagers, if you have a mother, father, or grandparent with the disease, then you might be susceptible to becoming an alcoholic. It is not a good idea to even have one drink. It is like playing Russian roulette. Abstinence is the best strategy against defying the odds of being another death statistic in the cogs of alcoholism.
I came from an alcoholic background, and I know first hand the destructive affects of what alcohol can do. I had no way of knowing that I would become an alcoholic, even though my grandfather was an alcoholic. I didn’t know that at the age of seventeen, while drunk, I would be driving with my best friend and roll my car three times into a telephone pole. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t hurt, but my friend will have back problems for life. And I certainly did not know that I would most likely pass down the inherited gene to one of my three sons. If I had known these things, maybe, just maybe, I would never have had that first drink.
I can’t tell you in a short article all the pain and suffering I put my mother through when I was a teenage drinker, or the anguish I put my husband through, but I can tell you this, I have been completely freed and forgiven through the love and saving grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I have been alcohol free for over fourteen years!
Teenagers please don’t let yourself become trapped within the depths of this insidious disease; instead become informed about the susceptibility of alcoholism being passed down from one generation to the next. Abstinence and education is the best and most effective means of preventing the use and abuse of alcohol.
All it takes is one drink of alcohol if you carry the gene from a relative; that one drink is ONE too many! And even if you are not susceptible to becoming an alcoholic, alcohol is very dangerous and can make you do stupid things you normally would not do. Abstinence is the best policy.
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