Teenage Alcohol Abuse: A Dangerous Problem, The Need For Relevant Parenting And Leadership, And Supplying Stress Management Classes And Coping Skills Training For Our Youth

Recent alcohol abuse statistics demonstrate the fact that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Many alcohol addiction professionals state that beer, liquor, and wine ads generated by the media are a significant reason for the rise in teen alcohol abuse.

Other alcohol dependency professionals state that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and accessibility of beer, liquor, and wine in our society.

Still other alcohol dependency professionals claim that more than a few of our teens involve themselves in destructive drinking because of the increased anxiety that they are subjected to.

From a slightly different viewpoint, due to the fact that both parents in many families work full or part-time, the lack of parental supervision positively has to play a key part in the rise in teenage alcohol abuse. And as a final point, a variety of substance abuse authorities emphasize the point that the proliferation of teenage alcohol abuse is due, in some degree, to our “anything goes” society.

Coping Skills and Excessive Drinking

One aspect of adolescent alcohol abuse that appears to be poorly reported in the alcohol addiction research findings, in spite of this, is the absence of educational programs that teach students how to augment their coping skills so that their risky drinking behavior is significantly diminished or gotten rid of.

Stated more precisely, science has displayed the fact that there is an indirect relationship between poor coping skills and hazardous drinking. In effect, this means that the worse the coping skills, the higher the prevalence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a truthful declaration, why isn’t coping skills instruction a major part of the educational curriculum in all of our elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools?

A Society That Puts Emphasis On Adolescent Coping Skills

Let us create a scenario for the purpose of explanation. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are taught how to achieve solid coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including their senior year in high school.

In such a society, when life gets difficult, students who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a healthier and more rewarding way, contrary to others who fail to put their coping skills into practice.

More precisely, students who demonstrate superior coping skills will be more able to think clearly and engage in quality decision making as opposed to students who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to develop quality coping skills, gravitate to the “quick fix” of excessive drinking, alcohol abuse, and teenage alcoholism.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, moreover, if adolescents not only got top quality coping skills education but also received an exclusive education that emphasized the long term and short term harmful results associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills education, it is pronounced, would help teens keep away from the apparent attraction with teenage drinking and, as a result, would radically lessen the excessive drinking behavior shown by teenagers in our country.

Youth Alcohol Abuse: Room for Success, Hope, and Optimism and the Need For Productive Goal Setting

There are without a doubt scores of compelling reasons why so many of our teens drink in a harmful manner. Such a complex issue, if success, hope, and optimism are to be attained, demands successful goal setting, a far-reaching and more meaningful preventative and educational response by our educators, parents, politicians, and students, and providing stress management classes and coping skills training so that our adolescents can learn how to cope with life’s problems in a more fruitful and responsible manner rather than gravitating to hazardous drinking behavior to solve their problems.