Alcohol Addiction Issues and Short Stories

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The following represents various issues, problems, and short stories about people who have faced drinking problems.

Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms and the Worst Thing About Alcoholism

I sometimes try to think about what it is about alcohol addiction that makes it so despicable. Is it the control it takes from a person? Is it the financial difficulties it usually leads to? Is it the number of DUIs a person receives? Is it the hiding of one’s alcohol so that he or she can access the alcohol at any time? Is it the destructive alcohol side effects that alcohol abusers and alcoholics typically experience? Is it the pain that it masks at first only to result in even more pain down the road?

Is it the denial that results from a lack of clear thinking and sound reasoning ability? Is it the alcohol withdrawal symptoms that occur when the alcoholic tries to quit drinking? While each and every one of these is a hallmark of alcoholism, I think that the worst aspect of alcoholism is that it destroys everything that makes a person a human being. It destroys relationships and one’s health.

It puts more than a few people in the poor house. It leads to poor work performance and eventually to unemployment. It destroys a person’s ability to reason and to make solid decisions. And finally, it is the great destroyer of hope. In sum, alcoholism is the great destroyer that must be fought at every turn.

Alcohol Side Effects and Drinking Consequences

“I know I drink more than I should but at twenty-two-years-old, why should I be concerned about the negative alcohol side effects of drinking?” stated Richard. “Just about everybody I know gets drunk once-in-a-while so what’s the big deal about having a little fun while drinking?” Richard probably echoes the thoughts of millions of our teens and young adults, many of whom think that they are so young and strong that they will live forever.

First of all, many teenagers and young adults die each year from alcohol-related accidents, homicides, suicides, crimes, diseases, and traffic fatalities. Second, what young people do today can radically affect their quality of life 40 or 50 years down-the-road. Not only this, but young mothers who drink while they are pregnant may have babies who have fetal alcohol syndrome, an incurable condition that lasts a lifetime. The bottom line: what young people do today can ultimately determine how they will live when they are older.  And if teens and pre-teens start experimenting with drinking today, they run the risk of engaging in adolescent alcohol abuse and teenage alcoholism down-the-road.

The Problem of Teenage Alcohol Abuse

Research statistics show that adolescent alcohol abuse is increasing in the United States. What are the reasons for this? Some experts point to the influence of alcohol advertisements that the media produces. Others point to the acceptability and accessibility of alcohol of in our society. Still others point to the increased stress in the lives of our youth.

Since the husbands and wives in many families are gainfully employed, the lack of parental supervision certainly has to play a significant part in the increase in teenage alcohol abuse. Other alcoholism experts point to our overall permissive society as a key reason why many of our youth are engaging in abusive drinking behavior. The point: there are a variety of reasons why many of today’s adolescents abuse alcohol.

The bottom line: our society needs to address the problem of adolescent alcohol abuse and immediately develop doable alcohol prevention and education programs for all of our youth.

A Birthday Party and Death from an Alcohol Overdose

Betty was a college junior who rarely drank in excess. In fact, her nickname was “Plain Betty” because she studied hard and almost never drank more than one or two drinks at one sitting. In spite of this, Betty died from an alcohol overdose on her twenty-first birthday. “What the heck happened?” asked her parents. Needless to say, her roommate and her friends were stunned.

After all, doesn't alcohol poisoning typically happen to people who regularly get drunk and who chronically abuse alcohol? Dying from an alcohol overdose is not supposed to happen to a person like Betty who probably drank less than two or three times per year.

Yet on her twenty-first birthday, Betty drank significantly more than her liver could process. It didn’t help that Betty barely weighed 100 pounds and was drinking on an empty stomach according to her friends. In short, Betty was anything but a drunk yet died from drinking far more than her small body could metabolize.

Alcohol Effects and Abusive Drinking

Is it reasonable to assume that most teenagers and adults have a fairly good grasp of the number of diseases and illnesses that are related to chronic alcohol abuse Is this assumption, however, grounded on the facts?  Stated differently, do most of the people in our country truly have a good understanding of the negative alcohol side effects that are associated with abusive and hazardous drinking? I ask these questions for one basic reason.

It would appear that if the majority of teens and adults in our society were aware of the vast number of different health conditions and disorders that are caused by excessive and abusive drinking, far fewer people in our society would become alcohol abusers and alcoholics.

If this statement is correct, then it would make sense for our school administrators, politicians, social service agencies, and our community leaders to implement a comprehensive educational program that focuses on the different sicknesses and illnesses that are related to repetitive, long-term alcohol abuse.  Perhaps such an educational and preventative approach would significantly reduce the adolescent alcohol abuse and teenage alcoholism that exist in our country.

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