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? Quite a few alcohol dependency professionals declare that wine, beer, and liquor advertisements created by the media are an important reason for the increase in teen alcohol abuse.

Other chemical dependency authorities think that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the toleration and ease of access of alcohol in our society.

Still other alcohol addiction professionals claim that many of our adolescents involve themselves in alcohol abuse due to the increased anxiety that they face.

From a somewhat different outlook, because both parents in more than a few families work, the lack of parental supervision obviously has to play a significant part in the proliferation of teen alcohol abuse. And last but not least, different alcoholism consultants assert that the proliferation of adolescent alcohol abuse is due, to some extent, to our “anything goes” society.

Hazardous Drinking and Coping Skills

One facet of adolescent alcohol abuse that appears to be somewhat incomplete in the substance abuse research findings, nonetheless, is the nonexistence of educational courses that teach adolescents how to augment their coping skills so that their destructive drinking behavior is radically diminished or gotten rid of.

Stated another way, science has made obvious the fact that there is an indirect relationship between poor coping skills and excessive drinking. In essence, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the greater the frequency of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is a valid contention, why isn’t coping skills education an essential part of the academic core curriculum in all of our high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools?

A Society That Emphasizes Youth Coping Skills

Let us construct a scenario for the purpose of clarification. Let us imagine a society in which students are taught how to achieve excellent coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.

In such a society, when life gets stressful, students who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a healthier and more rewarding manner, as opposed to others who are unsuccessful in their attempts to put their coping skills into action.

Stated another way, students who demonstrate outstanding coping skills will be more able to think proactively and exhibit superior decision making as opposed to adolescents who, because they lack top-of-the-line coping skills, are drawn to the “quick fix” of hazardous drinking, alcohol abuse, and teenage alcoholism.

What would happen in the above “ideal” society, additionally, if adolescents not only received first class coping skills training but also obtained a top quality education that emphasized the long term and short term damaging consequences associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more advanced coping skills instruction, it is asserted, would help teens keep away from the clear charm correlated with teenage drinking and, as a result, would notably diminish the destructive drinking behavior shown by teenagers in our country.

Teen Abusive Drinking: Room for Hope and Optimism

There are without a doubt scores of convincing reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in a dangerous manner. Such a thorny issue demands an extensive and relevant preventative and educational response by our politicians, students, educators, and parents so that our teenagers can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more productive and accountable way instead of resorting to dangerous drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.

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